A definition of IranyFollow

So, things in the middle east just got even more interesting. Apperently we have now confirmed that Iran is in posession of the wreckage of one of our top of the line super duper classified RQ-170 sentinel drones, or a reasonable fascimile therof. Whether they shot it down, or it just crashed on its own is beside the point, but basically they are now in posession of working samples of our latest miniature jet engine technology, our latest stealth materials and design technology, and likely our latest control hardware, though hopefully that at least they were smart enough to put some sort of self destruct on. the first two are bad enough as it is. This is essentially the gary powers thing all over again, except with less pilots involved, and Iran is small enough we could bl;ow it up and no one would really care. I'm sure the drone is on its way to china by now, but what we have here is a pretext if they want one. it will be interesting to see how the next 2 weeks play out in regards to Iran.



http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=248269
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_RQ-170_Sentinel

'US army: Iran is in possession of our spy drone'
By JPOST.COM STAFF AND REUTERS
12/06/2011 02:23

American army officials concerned that Tehran has US's top-secret unmanned aircraft after it was lost during mission in Afghanistan, Fox News reports; Iranian Revolutionary Guard preparing strike attack, report says.

Iran seems to be in possession of the same RQ-170 drone that the Iranian military said it shot down Sunday, Fox News reported Monday according to American military sources.

US officials failed to say whether or not Iranians shot the unmanned spy plane down, as per Iranian reports.

Iran on Sunday said that its military had downed the drone in an eastern province. Shortly after those Iranian reports, a NATO official said that the drone may have been one that went missing during a mission in Afghanistan the week before.

The Iranian and US reports differ over whether Iran had managed to take down the top-secret spy aircraft, and in what condition the Iranian army found that grounded jet.

The incident comes at a time when Tehran is trying to contain foreign outrage at the storming of the British embassy on Tuesday, after London announced sanctions on Iran's central bank in connection with Iran's nuclear enrichment program.

Iran has announced several times in the past that it shot down US, Israeli or British drones, in incidents that did not provoke high-profile responses.

Also on Monday, British newspaper the Telegraph reported that the Revolutionary Guard was raising its preparedness for war fearing a strike after mounting international pressure, and a number of mysterious explosions that rocked different cities in the country.

Western intelligence officials said that Iran was deploying artillery and guards to key defensive points, as well as arranging "long-range missiles" and "high explosives" fearing a potential attack, according to the Telegraph.

Could say the same about a lot of countries, but no one listens to me when I say we should just coat them in Willy Pete and deal with the consequences later.

Er, what else would you need a pretext for, sending them a birthday card? A war. "give us our toy back, you stole it" "no" "invade". It's definitly too late to do any good in terms of keeping the cat in the bag regarding that hardware. I'm certain the chinese already have half of it by now. hell, the russians probably bought the other half on principal, not that they really need it.

The part that scares me here is there is a definite rationality for "now". Iran doesn't have nukes "yet". All their nominal islamic allies are either pissed at them, keeping their distance because they are kind of ******* insane, or have their own troubles. There is the core of a popular uprising that could be leveraged, Israel is ready to go in now, and more importantly of all, what country switches leaders in the middle of a new war? Especially if Iran shoots first. It will be a rogue missile launch or something along those lines. Maybe a border skirmish. I don't know. but it will be something. And truth be told, I don't really think there will be too much protest on the republican side either. Alot of the war hawks see Iran as the last big problem to solve in the middle east.

I could very well be wrong. But it wouldn't suprise me in the least if we have had U.S. airstrikes in Iran by February.

Nothing sparks the economy like another war, gogo 1940's theory of economics!

And Iran... Iran's so far away.

Unmanned Arial Vehicle. 100 million dollars
18 Year old with a joystick. 40K/year
Forgetting the 100 dollar self destruct system. Priceless.

Maybe I'm confused about who "they" is supposed to be. The US isn't going to go to war over this. Iran isn't going to go to war over this.


Our Republican senator said about the same thing last night. When you deploy these tools, there's a chance you'll lose one. You can either never use them or accept the risk that you might lose it.

The drone was fitted with self-destruction mechanisms for various scenarios but, since we lost contact with it, we have no way of knowing what condition it's in. For example, it has a mechanism to destruct in event of a crash but we don't know how it "landed" and whether it was in a way to trigger that mechanism.

Supposedly it's telling that Iran hasn't released any actual photos of their treasure, just stock pictures accompanying the government releases. Which could be taken to imply that the drone isn't exactly in trophy condition.

Also, the nickname "Beast of Kandahar" reminds me of this. Which doesn't inspire confidence.

Edited, Dec 6th 2011 10:07am by Jophiel

Given how pointless and expensive America's latest wars in the region have been, why would anyone want to start another one?

I know I'm a socialist lesbian pagan from Canadaland, and therefore prone to pacifism and not privy to the secrets of American logic, but in what way does it make sense to create even more lifelong generational enemies in that region of the world?

Edited, Dec 6th 2011 11:54am by Olorinus

Given that the drone was reported to have lost contact with control, it likely went into a failsafe mode and landed, meaning there's a good chance this thing is not only intact, but operational. Setting them to blow themselves up if their link blips would probably get pretty expensive.

Are we going to go to war over it, I doubt it. But I'm willing to bet we already have people trying to intercept it on its way to China. Iran isn't advanced enough to reverse engineer the thing and China would be tripping over themselves to get their hands on it.

Remember that this technology isn't exactly cutting edge (it was confirmed to be in existence several years ago) so we probably already have better, if not operational, at least in development. Also, there's a good chance China already has info on this technology since they've been in our systems for awhile now, so if they do get this, it's only going to bump them ahead a few years tech wise.

(A) It just happily landed itself blind in the mountains of Iran because it couldn't handle a "blip"?
(B) Having your top secret drones park themselves on your enemy's lawn over a "blip" seems an even worse solution than having it explode.

We have UAVs that autonomously operate and land on aircraft carriers. Scanning the terrain and finding a less than horrible landing spot to ditch is not only reasonable, but likely. I doubt it would be ready to take off again after that landing, but I don't think it forgot how to fly as soon as it lost the link.

As far as blowing itself up, I'm sure conditions for self destruction exist. I just doubt that losing the link with it's controller, something that is probably very common since it's a satellite link, is a condition for that. The difference is that this thing got out of range before the controller could reconnect with it (assuming). At which point the thing could turn itself into a fireball telling whoever it's spying on exactly where it is without any guarantee that it's completely destroyed, or it can ditch somewhere until it can be recovered.




What's Iran going to do with it? They can poke it with a stick until it does something, or give it to someone who can reverse engineer it.

I just had this awesome mental image of some dudes poking a drone with a stick and a car alarm going off and then it slowly fades into a slow motion mushroom cloud.