Iran shoots down US drone

[Sephirius]

I don't think this is a real deal example.

I keep looking back to the intake form and it just seems out of place and not particularily stealthy as well as the color of the damn thing; aren't the US birds normally white or Air Superiority Grey? this seems a weird green color, even when the lighting and footage is taken into account.

[UnderAGreySky]

So, devil's advocate for a moment. Iran has managed to duplicate ground control systems for drones and figured out how to hack the datalink. What are the immediate consequences?

Higher standard of encryption for the datalink, if architecture allows it, or sudden bids issued to Lockheed / Raytheon / etc to develop higher bit encryption. Tighter controls on emissions to and from UAVs, with even more emphasis given to burst transmission. No doubt they've already swapped their existing set of encryption keys just to be safe.

[weemadando]

Obama has asked for his young back.

Seems that the intact thing may be legit.

[Kanastrous]

How does asking for the return of the wreckage make its apparent intact-ness as presented by the Iranians 'legit?'

[Alkaloid]

Because it would indicate that they are concerned it is intact enough for someone to get something useful from.

[Kanastrous]

'Intact enough' means pretty much anything larger than fingernail-sized fragments (and fragments that size can be useful for chemical analysis, where composites or coatings are concerned).

The fact that the US has acknowledged that the drone went down in Iran, and the fact that the Iranians published imagery, and the fact that the US has asked for the return of whatever the Iranians are holding, do not add up to "the images of an intact aircraft are necessarily legit." It's a complete disconnect.

Maybe it did falling-leaf its way to a mostly-intact bellyflop, maybe it's in small chunks and fragments. Either way, the US wanting it back tells us nothing except that, whatever the Iranians have, the US wants it back.

[weemadando]

Terminology is what made me think. Asking for the "captured" drone back, rather than "recovered", "salvaged" or "crashed".

[Shroom Man 777]

Articel

(CNN) -- President Barack Obama said Monday that the United States has asked Iran to return a U.S. drone aircraft that Iran claims it recently brought down in Iranian territory.

"We've asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said in a news conference, alongside Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

A top Iranian military official previously vowed not to return the unmanned American stealth plane that it says it has.

"No nation welcomes other countries' spy drones in its territory, and no one sends back the spying equipment and its information back to the country of origin," said Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy commander of Iran's military, the semi-official Fars news agency reported Sunday.

"It makes no difference where this drone originated and which group or country sent it to invade our airspace," Salami said. "This was an act of invasion and belligerence."

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday criticized Obama's decisions on the drone, but for an entirely different reason. He said that, after the aircraft went down, the president should have ordered an airstrike over Iran.

"The right response to that would have been to go in immediately after it had gone down and destroy it," the Republican, who served with President George W. Bush, told CNN's Erin Burnett. "You can do that from the air ... and, in effect, make it impossible for them to benefit from having captured that drone."

Instead, "he asked nicely for them to return it, and they aren't going to," Cheney said.

American officials have not confirmed that the drone shown in a video released last Thursday by Iranian media is a U.S. aircraft. But Pentagon spokesman George Little has said that an American drone is missing and had not been recovered.

Two U.S. officials have confirmed to CNN that the missing drone was part of a CIA reconnaissance mission that involved both the intelligence community and military personnel stationed in Afghanistan.

Iran's official Iran Republic News Agency said the country's armed forces had downed the drone near Kashmar, some 225 kilometers (140 miles) from the border with Afghanistan on December 4.

Salami said downing the plane was "very valuable for us" and "a victory for us and a defeat for our enemies," IRNA reported.

He also said Iran had downed other drones earlier but had not announced those instances because they were not as important.

Iranian TV has aired images of what it says is the drone, an apparently intact RQ-170 drone propped on a pedestal and triumphantly displayed.

One U.S. official said the United States can't be certain it's the real stealth drone, because U.S. personnel don't have access to it. But he added there's no reason to think it's a fake. However, a second senior U.S. military official said that a big question is to how the drone could have remained virtually intact given the high altitude it is believed to have crashed from.

The condition of the drone in the video suggests it was not shot down but suffered a system failure, aviation analyst Bill Sweetman said. There are no burn marks from a fire, no holes and no outward damage. Sweetman noticed a dent along the leading edge but doesn't know what that means.

"It's fairly clear here from the pictures that the outer wings have been separated. The question is, did that happen in the accident or (did they take) them off to move the aircraft?" Sweetman asked.

Iran's U.N. ambassador said in a letter last week that the drone flew 250 kilometers (150 miles) into Iranian territory "to the northern region of the city of Tabas."

The letter from Ambasador Mohammad Khazaee to U.N. Secretary-Genera Ban Ki-moon and the heads of the General Assembly and Security Council said the drone "faced prompt and forceful action" by the armed forces.

"My government emphasizes that this blatant and unprovoked air violation by the United States government is tantamount to an act of hostility against the Islamic Republic of Iran in clear contravention of international law, in particular, the basic tenets of the United Nations Charter," Khazaee's letter said.

He called for U.N. condemnation of U.S. "acts of aggression," as well as "clear and effective measures to be taken to put an end to these dangerous and unlawful acts in line with the United Nations' responsibilities to maintain international and regional peace and security."

[Sea Skimmer]

I don't think this is a real deal example.

I keep looking back to the intake form and it just seems out of place and not particularily stealthy as well as the color of the damn thing; aren't the US birds normally white or Air Superiority Grey? this seems a weird green color, even when the lighting and footage is taken into account.

The intake looks fine to me and more stealthy then the F-117. The color of fighters is indeed grey, but no reason exists why that would hold true for a specialist drone that may even be repainted for specific missions; or well, for if they fly it night or day. The earlier pictures of the RQ-170 suggest more then one paint scheme.

I'm now leaning a lot more towards its real, having seen more footage and more photos. It does in fact have some minor damage on the leading edges.

[Sephirius]

Article

He called for U.N. condemnation of U.S. "acts of aggression," as well as "clear and effective measures to be taken to put an end to these dangerous and unlawful acts in line with the United Nations' responsibilities to maintain international and regional peace and security."

That's what they're doing. By spying on you loose cannons

I agree with cheney, first thing they should have done was airstrike the crashsite. With another drone for maximum irony.

[Kanastrous]

Somehow, when I read that ^ all I could think was 'second drone flies in, crashes, Iranians dance around wreckage, Three Stooges theme plays.'

[Simon_Jester]

Article

He called for U.N. condemnation of U.S. "acts of aggression," as well as "clear and effective measures to be taken to put an end to these dangerous and unlawful acts in line with the United Nations' responsibilities to maintain international and regional peace and security."

That's what they're doing. By spying on you loose cannons

Actually, yes. That's what the concept of "airspace" means: you do not have a right to fly your planes over another country' land without their permission. If you fly your plane over their land, and they don't want you to, they are totally within their rights to warn your plane off. If your plane is a mindless robot and can't fly away, they're within their rights to shoot it down.

Again, we call this "airspace." And strictly speaking, hell yes the US is violating Iranian airspace with these drone flights, because the US has decided that it cares more about getting information on Iran than it does about the principle of not violating other people's airspace.

Of course, the US is far from the only country to violate people's airspace with reconnaissance flights, but that doesn't mean that the US has a right to do so. And flying reconnaissance aircraft over someone can reasonably be taken as provocative- what if they're scoping you out for an attack?

The Iranians may be loose cannons, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible for someone else to commit acts of aggression, provocations, or even outright acts of war against them.

[Kanastrous]

Does 'airspace' conventionally top out at any particular altitude? Technically surveillance satellites could be described as 'violating airspace' too, but one rarely if ever hears bitching about them, even when sometimes it's known for a stone fact that one is overhead...

[Terralthra]

If I recall correctly, there are a number of suggestions ranging from 30 km all the way up to 160 km, based on where the nation or group of nations defines "space" as starting. During the Cold War, Russia declared that its airspace went above its territory infinitely.

[Kanastrous]

...and presumably rotated across the celestial sphere, every twenty-four hours...

[Kryten]

Does 'airspace' conventionally top out at any particular altitude? Technically surveillance satellites could be described as 'violating airspace' too, but one rarely if ever hears bitching about them, even when sometimes it's known for a stone fact that one is overhead...

Sovereignty (and hence airspace) stops at the edge of space, due to the Outer Space treaty, but there isn't an official diplomatic definition of where exactly that is.

[Serafina]

Since those drones could easily be armed (from the POV of the Iranians and other countries the USA screws over), shooting them down really is the most prudent action. Or are you saying that countries do not have a right to defend themselves against a military threat? Especially when the removal of said threat doesn't endanger human lives, as in the case of drones.

[Simon_Jester]

I don't say the US is wrong to fly drones over Iran. I don't want to weigh in on that. My point is that the US can't reasonably complain if the drones get shot down, and the Iranians can reasonably complain about the drones being over their airspace- that's how the game is played.

Think about it: turnabout should always be fair play, but if the Iranians flew a drone over US airspace, the US would do everything it could to intercept them, and would scream to high heaven about it.

[Sephirius]

I don't say the US is wrong to fly drones over Iran. I don't want to weigh in on that. My point is that the US can't reasonably complain if the drones get shot down, and the Iranians can reasonably complain about the drones being over their airspace- that's how the game is played.

Think about it: turnabout should always be fair play, but if the Iranians flew a drone over US airspace, the US would do everything it could to intercept them, and would scream to high heaven about it.

^ yeah, kind of like what's happening now anyway, except in reverse.


EDIT: The more I look at it the more I think it's just a big carved up block of foam. I don't doubt that they probably found some wreckage of the thing but nothing as intact as that, and basically used wikipedia for the design and the bits they did have for extrapolation of size.

[Kanastrous]

I'm thinking a block of halvah.

Also - I guess Sea Skimmer would be a good fellow to ask - as a matter of practice, we know that drones are kind of dumb compared to piloted-from-a-cockpit aircraft, we know that on-board control systems fail, we know that control links go down or get interrupted - is it really a matter of practice to load up a drone aircraft like this with such super-secret stuff that its capture will do real and serious damage? Because given all that it seems that we likewise know that sooner or later something like this will happen, and something will fall into hands in which we don't want it. It seems a little much to believe that the technology extricable from this vehicle would really be at the level of game-changing, for someone with wreckage in hand.

[Sea Skimmer]

Well, it’s very unlikely to be the very latest stealth technology, the grilled inlet says its not, but the computers and sensors onboard are bound to be more sensitive. Among other things, its simply bad for Iran to get a look at the cameras and thus know the capabilities they have, helping it conceal future activities and deduce what the US may already have detected. The flight control and communications gear could be pretty sensitive, but if the USAF has any sense then the most important software would erase itself in a crash. Its also possible the aircraft has a radar; Darkstar was designed to take a radar or cameras, RQ-170 may have both at once, and radar hardware would be bad news to loose. Its alos just BAD to loose anything stealth, because one of the big issues with stealth is the detail design, how you put the skin and internal guts together to avoid bad seams, not just design stealthy shapes and materials, and do so in a way that can be built at a sane cost and maintained in the field. An intact stealth drone is a massive prize in that respect even if its outdated.

How much damage could be done kind of depends on what China already knows. China is still far behind the US technologically (so bad that they just had to order more Russian engines for the J-10, they can't make enough domestic engines for the plane after years of production!) so even dated US stuff is of great use to them in putting together pieces of information.

[Shroom Man 777]

That's what they're doing. By spying on you loose cannons

Someone's spying on that massive war-happy aggressor nation which strategically encircled another much smaller nation by bombing and invading the living daylights out of the two nations right next to that nation?

Oh, you meant another loose cannon, and not the loose rocket artillery batallion that's laid waste to that part of the world. I'm sorry.


Skimmer: Wasn't the existence of the RQ-170 made public just in the last couple of years? How "dated" is it?

And man. Wasn't the Iranian UAV program like, barely on par with 1960s USAF drone tech? Well... here's to hoping for the advancement of Iranian science and technology.

[Kanastrous]

A friend floated a fun idea - fun, but probably a reach - the drone is a plant. It did not 'accidentally crash' on Iranian territory; it's filled with decoy material to mislead the Iranians about our drones' capabilities.

It's an appealing thought. No particular way to verify or invalidate it, though.

[Simon_Jester]

Making the decoy plausible (and flyable) would entail more work than just not bothering, and would teach the Iranians more, since they'd at least get to look at a drone that did in fact fly and was in fact stealthy enough that they wouldn't go "hey, wait a minute, how come this one's highly visible on radar and all the others weren't?"

[Pelranius]

How much damage could be done kind of depends on what China already knows. China is still far behind the US technologically (so bad that they just had to order more Russian engines for the J-10, they can't make enough domestic engines for the plane after years of production!) so even dated US stuff is of great use to them in putting together pieces of information.

Actually the Chinese have been doing fine with the WS-10A turbofan engine (started fitting it onto their J-15/SU-33 prototypes, have a whole boatload of J-11B derivatives of the Su-27, and derivatives of those derivatives, floating around).

They have to continue ordering AL-31Fs because 1) The J-10B, which has been fitted with the WS-10A recently, is still undergoing tests and probably won't be ready for production until 2013 at best. Letting the Chengdu J-10 production line sit idle for two years is a very bad idea. 2) You still need AL-31s to replace the engines on the preexisting 200-300 J-10s already flying around. Modifying them so you can fit them with WS-10s would be extremely expensive and rather pointless. 3) Buying AL-31Fs is an easy way to score brownie points with the Russians.