US Spy drone captured

another one? 

Or the one from Tues/Wed??

From what I read they lost communications with it when it was flying so it probably has some auto program to stay orbiting or land gently in the event of failure.

I think the President was a little gun shy on destroying or extracting it when it went down because it was bad enough to be caught "spying" on Iran.  He didn't want to risk a blatant aggressive act on Iranian soil by destroying it or sending in an extraction team.

I imagine making a decision to recover or destroy a downed unmanned plane over a foreign territory that we are not at war with would be a huge decision.  However, I think we have proven that we don't give much regard to borders when we feel it affects our security.

I think the idea of one of our drones going down over another countries sovereign territory is a bit much for us to swallow just to plant some dummy technology. 

Trojan Horse?

Just my paranoid mind at work...send a dummy drone down, monitor via satellite...watch which players show up...Iranian military?  Any signs of Russians, Chinese? etc.  Ya never know.

The US already knows that any technology on it will be sold/supplied to anyone Iran is friendly with.  And I'm sure Iran will scower it themselves. Thats a no brainer.  Whether there is any real technology to be gained.....as China and Russia both have there own drone programs of similiar technology already.  I doubt anything was lost as there would be a plan already drafted if one was lost over enemy territory.  Anything of value was already destroyed.  I'm sure this isn't the first time one has crashed/shot down, etc.

It's the political side of this thats most interesting.  It's a reminder to Iran that "we're watching." and we are watching closely.  It will be interesting to see in the upcoming months/couple of years what Israel does, and how the US reacts to the inevitable confrontation if Iran continues with a nuclear weapons program. 

The US already knows that any technology on it will be sold/supplied to anyone Iran is friendly with.  And I'm sure Iran will scower it themselves. Thats a no brainer.  Whether there is any real technology to be gained.....as China and Russia both have there own drone programs of similiar technology already.  I doubt anything was lost as there would be a plan already drafted if one was lost over enemy territory.  Anything of value was already destroyed.  I'm sure this isn't the first time one has crashed/shot down, etc.

It's the political side of this thats most interesting.  It's a reminder to Iran that "we're watching." and we are watching closely.  It will be interesting to see in the upcoming months/couple of years what Israel does, and how the US reacts to the inevitable confrontation if Iran continues with a nuclear weapons program. 

Hmm let’s see we lost communication with it and the drone reverted to its pre programmed safety mode to fly straight and level then land when it finds a suitable location.  Ok I’ll ask who here would decide to fly your most secret advanced drone in a hostile environment with this safety mode still active.  No I assume we would have a self destruct mode operational instead.  Thought 2 who remembers the brief news reports a few months ago about the virus’s getting into our drone control computers? STORY  Thought 3 who stands to gain the most from the capture of this drone (China) now put these things together.

Launcelot, Galahad, and I wait until nightfall and then leap out of the drone 

Obviously, you need to watch more James Bond movies. Or perhaps an Austin Powers or two.

A self destruct program does not need to be some big explosive device or event this is an aircraft flying very high all you need is a program that wipes the computer files, then goes into a steep dive toward a hard clear surface.

You had to go dark.

Most military equipment is operated by people on or near the equipment that at least have some chance of destroying sensitive material.  The destruction doesn't need to be an explosive per se but something that can produce an electrical charge that fries the circuits and a good old fashion fall from 50,000ft would destroy the optics of whatever cameras it was carrying.  It doesn't really matter if they can reassemble the general structure of the aircraft as long as the subtleties of the technology are destroyed.

It is all happening now, just not publicly.  Stuxnet, was just the most public of these attacks and Israel has been assassinating nuclear scientists in Tehran.  I wonder if they would ever go as far as they did in 1981 with the attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor.