Iranian press has published a video showing Iranian military personnel inspecting the drone, which David Cenciotti points out is adorned in a special desert camo configuration. But camouflage isn’t worth shit if your drone gets knocked out of the sky without of any sort of self-destruct mechanism or means of getting it back.
So what happens now? The US looks stupid, having been unable to destroy, or even find, its stolen toy. And Beijing will probably be sending a briefcase full of cash to Tehran pretty soon now — their burgeoning drone program is still far behind America’s, and they’ll be eager to dig into the Sentinel’s extremely sophisticated electronic innards. [David Cenciotti]
light487
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 8:38 AM“But camouflage isn’t worth shit if your drone gets knocked out of the sky without of any sort of self-destruct mechanism or means of getting it back.”
Wouldn’t that be the point of the camo? So that if it did go down, the enemy couldn’t find it “easily”.. when it is flying around in “desert camo” it’s not really effective… in the blue sky.. but on the ground it would be.
They knocked it out of the sky, so they claim, so they knew where to look for it and since they live there, they had to travel less time to get there and more lead time on knowing it was downed. And even if they didn’t knock it down, they still knew it was downed before the US could act.
Though Beijing might do that, I think it’s a bit ignorant of you to say such a thing when the source article you are referencing makes no mention of such a possibility. Keep the racist comments for your circle of friends and keep the articles free of that silliness please.
Considering the leaked picture of the latest Chinese spy drone, and the rumours of all the other spy drones they have.. I find it difficult to swallow the statement that China’s drone program is “far behind America’s”.. especially considering that this very drone was downed and unrecoverable makes the US drone program a little behind what you appear to perceive as it being.
attila
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 9:03 AMWas a sonic boom created when you whipped the “racist!” card out at such speed?
Anyone who doesn’t think that China will be very keen to get a look at this drone is the ignorant one, not the other way around.
light487
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 9:05 AMNor any OTHER country.
The point is that the comment, within the article, was unnecessary and unfounded. It doesn’t add anything to the article about Iran revealing their captured “US Super Drone”.. it was not sourced from the original article.. why is that comment even there.
adam
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 11:59 AMThis is what is wrong with our society people like you that are so politically correct and will jump on anything to label it as offensive or racist.
DarkAura
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 12:29 PM” was unnecessary and unfounded” I agree with this point completely
To say it was racist is a bit far but really not that far from the truth
On another note didn’t they say they shot it out of the sky? Looks in pretty good shape for something that got shot and then crashed….
K3
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 2:04 PMShot by electric interference beams of some sort, IIRC
Ollie
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 12:11 PMInferring that China would buy the drone off Iran is far from racist fella.
People are quick to throw the term around without really knowing its meaning. Racism is anything that infers that my race is better than your race. It’s that simple. How does saying China is going to buy it off Iran infer some sort of racism?
RB
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 1:41 PMThis. If anything I would classify it as ‘stereotypical’, not ‘racist’.
James Mac
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 9:09 AMIf Russia is still building their reactors, I think the Russians might get right of first refusal.
Christian
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 9:35 AMbomb them!!!!!
Christian
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 9:36 AMseriously, bomb the shit out of them and make sure it destroys the drone or get it back.
olearymo
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 9:52 AMYes. I can’t see a single problem with that course of action. As well as being entirely moral, I can’t see it *possibly* backfiring!
RB
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:48 AMCan’t help but think that the US may have loaded this thing up with all sorts of viruses and ‘lost’ it intentionally. Trojan Drone?
Maybe I give them too much credit :/
Ash
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:51 AMoo oo can we get http://www.ifixit.com/ to do a tear down for us? :D
RB
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:52 AMlol, coming soon to Instructables: How to Build your very own Super Drone…
Rusty
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 11:34 AMUnless the flags are really big it is a lot smaller than I thought it would be. Wing span is supposed to be around 20m and possibly up to 27m acording to Wikipedia. I calling fake.
Steve
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 8:56 PMMaybe it’s faked. They’ve done this before pretending they have a captured US soldier (with really shit quality footage) when it was pretty just a soldier Action Man toy.
geoffc
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 11:40 AMu idiots – get back to work…
attackofhthenet
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 12:39 PMwhy does a unmanned drone need a cockpit window?
WN
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 1:15 PMwhy does a robot need a head? or eyes?….
why does the drone need a cockpit window????
for the camera!!!!!..
Osiris Fox
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 1:26 PMUm, that’s not a window at all… It’s a grill covering an air intake.
DarthDVD
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 3:14 PMok watched the youtube clip… and it looks like its made out of paper mache..
DarthDVD
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 3:20 PMOh Lookit, Iran Faking that they have Russian Missles
http://defensetech.org/2010/04/19/iranian-s-300-sams-or-a-bunch-of-oil-drums-welded-together/
David B
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 3:57 PMThere is better footage around the net of it, as well as the actual footage they showed to confirm it.
Look in Wikipedia. It shows a pic of people standing next to it, which gives a much better indication of the size.