U.S. Military Sources: Iran Has Missing U.S. Drone | Fox News.
OtherSources: TheTelegraph, Wired, Military.com, BBC
In what could be a devastating setback to US intelligence gathering as well as the war on terror. Iran has reported that it is in possession of a missing US Drone.
The RQ-170 Sentinel went missing over Iran on Monday Military sources confirmed to Fox News. The plane otherwise known in some circles as “the Beast of Kandahar”, is one of the closest guarded secrets the United States Air Force’s cache of weapons. The plane is remotely piloted, it has been speculated that the signal between the ground controllers and the plane had somehow been jammed and then it was brought down. According to reports the Iranian’s didn’t just capture pieces of one. The IRNA reports that the drone was shot down in Iranian airspace with only minor damage. The UK’s news source The Telegraph is also now carrying this report. Wired’s Danger Room carried a story that suggested that this may not be true at 9:08pm last night. Now it appears that the major news sources are starting to confirm the story.
Military.com carried a story that claims the drone went missing last week and the Iran’s semi-official news agency claimed that According to media reports, an unidentified Iranian military official told Fars News Agency that an Iranian cyber warfare unit commandeered the UAV and brought it down.
This story certainly will bear watching as things in the Middle East appear to be ratcheting up a a notch. Speculation has been for some months now that Israel was preparing a strike on the Nuclear Weapons facility in that region. China and Russia have both made comments that attacking Iran would not be in either countries interest and they would be prepared to assist in Iranian defense.
Reuters carried a piece today entitled Analysis: “Cold War” with Iran heats up across Mideast. The article discussed the Proxy War that has been going on already between Israel and Iran as well as Mysterious explosions inside Iran. As well as Computer Virus attacks.
A thought that has occurred to me since reading all this material is. The timing of the military shuttle being delayed just a few days ago. At the time everyone was wondering what it was doing and why the military may not have brought it back. I’d speculate, we may know part of the reason now. Just speculation on my part though, no facts.
Update 12.06.2011 – Military.com has an article this morning stating that Experts are not worried that Iran has captured the stealthy drone. They are certain that the plane broke into many pieces and that Iran does not posses the knowledge to replicate or produce the parts need to make such a stealthy drone work. It is also said they don’t feel that Iran actually shot the drone down. The experts are clearly down playing the loss of such secret and significant data and doing some damage control today.
Update 12.06.2011 – ABC News is reporting that the Drone that has fallen into Iranian hands was on a CIA Mission. This appears to confirm what NBC news first reported on Monday regarding the Drone’s mission.
Update 12.07.2011 – Military.com is quoting an unnamed Military source that has stated the U.S. Drone has spied on Iran from a base in Shindad, Afghanistan for several years now. Iran’s state radio said they will very shortly be releasing video footage of the captured drone. Iranian force’s said the Drone was detected some 140miles within the Iranian borders near the eastern town of Kashmar. Iran’s hardline Kaylan daily quoted unnamed military sources saying they did not shoot down the drone but that the Iranian Military had capabilities to bring down a drone intact and had done so with this one. Mellat another conservative daily, speculated that the any knowledge and technology gathered would be shared with Iranian allies in Syria as well as the Hezbollah, in Lebanon.
Update 12.08.2011 – Iranian state media has released video and photo’s of an intact drone. The war of word continue as both sides experts tussle over how the drone came down. Iran claiming that it’s military brought it down with their military systems. US officials doubt that, as the plane can evade radar as well as programming for dealing with signal loss. Their comments on why the drone came down intact is that it likely ran out of fuel or had some other failure that forced it to land. Source: NYTimes
Source: YouTube
12.09.2011 – War of Words between Iran and the US continues. The US claiming that the drone malfunctioned and landed in Iranian territory and none of their data indicates that the drone was either shot down or forced down by cyber methods. Iran claiming they have not recovered all of the reconnaissance data from the drone and will be using the data in upcoming legal actions against the US. The Afghan ambassador has also been called to explain why Afghanistan has been used by the US for this incursion into Iranian airspace by the Iranian Government. Iranian officials have said the drone would not be returned and they plan to reverse engineer the plane and mass produce it.
Sources: FoxNews, PakistanObserver, JerulsalemPost,