{"id":184936,"date":"2011-12-04T21:37:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-05T02:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/12\/04\/iran-claims-to-have-brought-down-an-rq-170-stealthy-uav\/"},"modified":"2011-12-04T21:37:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-05T02:37:00","slug":"iran-claims-to-have-brought-down-an-rq-170-stealthy-uav","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/12\/04\/iran-claims-to-have-brought-down-an-rq-170-stealthy-uav\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Claims to Have Brought Down an RQ-170 Stealthy UAV"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img21.imageshack.us\/img21\/3308\/e7c61rq1705251.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"300\" \/>The Iranians are claiming that they <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flightglobal.com\/blogs\/the-dewline\/2011\/12\/breaking-iran-claims-rq-170-ki.html\">brought down the Beast of Kandahar<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>The official <strike>Iran<\/strike> Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) is reporting that national military forces have shot down a US Lockheed Martin RQ-170 stealth unmanned air system. The aircraft sustained &#8220;little damage&#8221; and is in the possession of the Iranian military, IRNA reports.<\/p>\n<p>Iranian news agency claims always have to be taken with some degree of scepticism.<\/p>\n<p>The credibility of the online version of the IRNA article is not helped by the accompanying photo. The US Air Force has never released an official picture of the RQ-170, but we can be sure the the UAV in the IRNA article is not it. The IRNA photo instead is a stock image of the BAE Systems Raven delta wing demonstrator, an aircraft that was retired more than seven years ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>NATO is admitting that it lost control of a drone, which, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/dangerroom\/2011\/12\/did-iran-capture-a-u-s-stealth-drone-intact\/\">David Axe notes<\/a> would imply that it&#8217;s <b>not<\/b> an RQ-170, since it is designed to operate autonomously.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the question I&#8217;ve always had is why use an expensive stealthy drone in a theater where the opposition does not even have a radar.<\/p>\n<p>If the Iranians <b>have<\/b> in fact brought down an RQ-170, and right now I would say it&#8217;s less than 30%, it happened because some moron in the Pentagon decided to deploy a system not required by the circumstances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Iranians are claiming that they brought down the Beast of Kandahar: The official Iran Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) is reporting that national military forces have shot down a US Lockheed Martin RQ-170 stealth unmanned air system. The aircraft sustained &#8220;little damage&#8221; and is in the possession of the Iranian military, IRNA reports. Iranian &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1153,1034,1025,1152,1098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-iran","category-technology","category-uav","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184936"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}