Video of the US RQ-170 Sentinel Spy Plane Landing in Iran

the loss to Iran of the CIA's surveillance drone bristling with advanced spy technology is more than a propaganda coup and intelligence windfall for the Tehran government. The plane's capture has peeled back another layer of secrecy from expanding U.S. operations against Iran's nuclear and military programs.
Just as the Soviet Union's downing of the American U-2 spy plane revealed a hidden aspect of the Cold War, Iran's recovery of the drone has shed light on the espionage that is part of U.S.-Iran hostilities.

Iran has charged the U.S. or its allies with waging a campaign of cyberwarfare and sabotage, and of assassinating some Iranian scientists. The U.S. has accused the Iranian government of helping kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan and plotting to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

"It's beginning to look like there's a thinly-veiled, increasingly violent, global cloak-and-dagger game afoot," Thomas Donnelly, a former government official and military expert with the American Enterprise Institute, said at a Washington conference.

The covert operations in play are "much bigger than people appreciate," said Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser under President George W. Bush. "But the U.S. needs to be using everything it can."

Hadley said that if Iran continues to defy U.N. resolutions and doesn't curb its nuclear ambitions, the quiet conflict "will only get nastier."

Some historians and foreign policy experts compared the drone incident to the Soviet Union's 1960 downing of the U-2 spy plane and pilot Francis Gary Powers. While those two countries sparred publicly on many issues, the world only occasionally glimpsed each side's secret operations.

"When I first heard about the drone, my first thought was thank goodness there wasn't a pilot in it," said Francis Gary Powers Jr., the son of the U-2 pilot and founder of the Cold War Museum.

"They were both on intelligence-gathering missions. They were both doing photo reconnaissance. They were both supporting the U.S. government's intelligence-gathering to find out intelligence about our adversaries," Powers said. The difference this time, Powers said, was that "there are no family members that have to be notified, there's no prisoner in a foreign country."

The U-2 downing shocked U.S. military planners, who thought the advanced aircraft flew too high to be hit by a Soviet missile. Likewise, Iran says it used advanced electronic warfare measures to detect, hack and bring down an RQ-170 Sentinel drone.

Iran aired TV footage Thursday of what current and former U.S. officials confirm is the missing Sentinel. The robotic aircraft suffered what appeared to be only minimal damage.

Iran protested Friday to the United Nations about what it described as "provocative and covert operations" by the U.S. The Tehran government called the flight by the drone a "blatant and unprovoked air violation" that was "tantamount to an act of hostility."

American officials said Friday that U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Iran played no role in the downing, either by shooting it down or using electronic or cybertechnology to force it from the sky. They contended the drone malfunctioned. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the classified program.

Some U.S. experts expressed skepticism that Iran would be capable of such hacking. But others said Iran's capacity to counter drones may have been bolstered by Russia's decision, announced in October, to sell Tehran an advanced truck-mounted electronic intelligence system.

The RQ-170 is stealthy but not infallible, said robotics expert Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.
Singer, who has written extensively about drones, noted Russia's announcement about the sale of an undisclosed number of truck-mounted electronic intelligence systems, called the IL-222 Avtobaza, to Tehran.
http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/loss-of-plane-peels-1256128.html

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[mutley66]

Yeah, that's not a Sentinel, that's corporate footage of Lockheed's prototype Polecat P175, with some bird chatting in Persian over the top.

[zedanilla]

the video shows the "Lockheed P-175 Polecat"

original of this video is 4 years old, look for it on YouTube: Y2c9V71BRn8

:))

[bernardheption]

این فرود عالی چگونه اندک خسارتی در پی داشت؟

[CrushTheNewOrder]

@eyeAMtwinkEE The "UAV killer" is apparently the radio analysis/warfare suite called Avtobaza. At least thats how the rumours go.

But then again, after viruses planted in the UAV control network and cases of Talibans watching the video link from US UAVs in realtime, nothing should surprise you anymore?

[CrushTheNewOrder]

@eyeAMtwinkEE Ofcourse not, Russia could down just about any of your radio-controlled devices. You have any doubts about that? Securing even a GPS-based autopilot homeward is a very daunting task indeed. Try doing that to a pilot.

[CrushTheNewOrder]

@eyeAMtwinkEE In time, yes. Watch this space on YouTube for new Iranian discoveries ;)

[eyeAMtwinkEE]

@CrushTheNewOrder Hm, well word out of the pentagon is that UAV missions aren't being stopped. Apparently this newfangled UAV killer from Russia will have to prove itself once more, won't it?

[eyeAMtwinkEE]

@CrushTheNewOrder In that case, shooting an RQ-170 isn't quite the treacherous task, then is it? In which case, what does that say about the purported "super effective" methods of UAV hunting in which Russia is supposedly so adept?

[CrushTheNewOrder]

@eyeAMtwinkEE The baddest joke is to pass off some fiberglass model plane with a jet engine and GPS tracker as "futuristic technology".

[CrushTheNewOrder]

@eyeAMtwinkEE They just learnt to use this new shiny Russian equipment, and the result is: game over for US spying over Iran. Not bad, eh?

[eyeAMtwinkEE]

@CrushTheNewOrder Considering the Iranian's inability to shoot down a majority of UAV missions over it, Iran is either highly incompetent in your eyes or stopping drones is not quite as simple as you describe.

[eyeAMtwinkEE]

@CrushTheNewOrder Bad jokes for sure, that's why Russian UAV's, despite housing technology from the stone age, are bolstered all over military conferences.