Merry Christmas to America and to her allies!
U.S. Weighed Options to Recover, Destroy Drone in Iran
FoxNews.com
12/7/2011
The U.S. initially contemplated several plans to recover or destroy the drone that ended up in Iran late last week, a senior U.S. official confirmed to Fox News.
The U.S. did not go through with the plans, apparently because of the risk involved. But the source told Fox News that officials examined several possibilities for dealing with the downed RQ-170 drone.
“Of course we did,” the official said. “It would have been imprudent not to.”
Among the options, the U.S. considered sending in a special-ops team to retrieve the drone; sending in a team to blow up the aircraft; and launching an airstrike to destroy it.
The official also refuted Iranian claims that the country shot down the drone.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that the U.S. considered a mission to recover or destroy the drone. The newspaper reported that officials, though, were concerned such a mission could be considered an act of war. Some reportedly argued that Iran might not even discover the missing aircraft since it crashed in a remote area of the country.
Iran, though, now claims to have the aircraft.
Fox News has learned that the drone was part of a joint CIA-military reconnaissance operation. NATO has said the drone may have been one that was flying a mission over western Afghanistan before operators “lost control” of it.
Related:
Could Google Reveal Secret Spy Drone Lost in Iran?
John Brandon
FoxNews.com
12/10/2011
Google may be compromising national security – all in the name of better mapping technology.
At Google Maps, anyone can search for the names of military bases and zoom in to see airstrips and possibly even top-secret military drones like the RQ-170 Sentinel lost in Iran last week. Aviation website Flight Global has done just that, and claims to have found the secret airstrip at Yucca Lake, Nev., used for testing the RQ-170.
The Google Maps site shows satellite images of either a Predator or Reaper drone on the airstrip, although Flight Global says the RQ-170 was tested there as well — information that’s surely of interest to the Iranian military, said Cedric Leighton, a retired Air Force colonel.
“Iranians would be most interested in operational bases because that tells them how we fly our surveillance missions,” Leighton told FoxNews.com.
Sure enough, other Nevada military bases at the Tonopah Test Range like the Creech Air Force Base are also viewable at Google Maps. With this information, anyone — even foreign military — can look up satellite images to inspect secret U.S. spy planes.
“Google is making public what was once the sole province of the military and intelligence community, making this a brave new world for the intel agencies as well,” he said.
Google did not immediately return FoxNews.com requests for comments.
The largely unknown RQ-170 drone from Lockheed Martin made headlines in recent days when it was lost in western Iran. Experts say the drone is the most advanced model yet with high-definition cameras, sensors that can scan for nuclear armaments, and an advanced stealth shell that hides the plane from detection.
On Thursday, a senior U.S. official exclusively confirmed to Fox News that the crashed drone shown on Iranian state television is indeed a fully intact RQ-170 Sentinel…
The article continues at FoxNews.com
H/T GTF
Update: Iranian Regime Announces It Will Simulate US RQ-170 Drone. Yeah. Who didn’t see that coming?
