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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran shoots down spy plane from Iraq – report
2006-04-09
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 09 – Iran said on Sunday that it shot down an unmanned spy plane from Iraq in the south of the country. “This plane had lifted off from Iraq and was busy filming the border regions”, the semi-official daily Jomhouri Islami wrote.

The plane’s structural markings and systems have given officials “information”, the report added, without elaborating. There have been reports that the United States has been secretly sending unmanned surveillance planes into Iran to gather intelligence about the country’s nuclear sites.
Wonder if they used a super-secret, radar-evading slingshot to bring it down?
Posted by:Groth Hupith9556

#11  Yeah, what N g said. { ;^P
Posted by: Parabellum   2006-04-09 18:20  

#10  Oops, looks like the same answer was typed by a bunch of people at once.
Posted by: lotp   2006-04-09 18:20  

#9  CT - possibly, but there is a pretty severe tradeoff between weight and time in the air. Unless the sensor systems are quite advanced and classified, it's more advantageous to be able to fly them longer most of the time than to blow them up if damaged. At least for the fixed wing UAVs, it's the sensors and perhaps some basic avionics that potentially are of great intel interest but as I noted, with the Shadows much of the payload is off the shelf stuff.
Posted by: lotp   2006-04-09 18:19  

#8  Every ounce of explosives put aboard means one less ounce of sensors/fuel/batteries etc.

Not worth it. Let 'em find our wrecks. It's not like they can use them against us.
Posted by: Parabellum   2006-04-09 18:18  

#7  Can't we put plastique on board, and blow them by radio signal if we lose them over hostile territory?

No point to it, really. W/O a live pilot to put on "trial", nobody realy cares about the hardware. The most expensive part of the uav is the Flir camera, and it is usualy crunched beyond recoverability/exploitability by the crash landing. The airframe and engine is just a "toy" that is available to any wealthy hobbyist. The electronix are usualy cheep.

Remember, all the realy classified stuff is either in the control van in (I hope) friendly territory, or is electronic info on a memory chip that will go away when power is lost.

Most of the time, these brigade/division level uavs are flying over friendly troops, and any destruct charge is more of a hazard than a help. It would be an administrative nightmare (time, training and $$$) to maintain.

Lastly, most of these small to mid size uavs simply do not have the spare payload to carry a 10-20 lbs charge. I, for one would rather have any spare payload go into fuel for more endurance, or as a distant second, some backup systems to insure the damn thing will actualy make it home if something breaks.
Posted by: N guard   2006-04-09 18:18  

#6  Another 12th Century success for the assymetricals of jihadistan.
Posted by: Inspector Clueso   2006-04-09 17:06  

#5  Can't we put plastique on board, and blow them by radio signal if we lose them over hostile territory?
Posted by: Crock Thrager2875   2006-04-09 16:40  

#4  Musta been one of them invisible missiles, eh?
Posted by: Raj   2006-04-09 16:02  

#3  Most likely it was a shadow (or equivalent). They're useful as heck, but not the most mecanicaly or electronicly reliable. Wound up crashing almost all the airfraimes we had by the end of tour. We lost one (jul-aug) while near the Iranian border last year. Later (nov 2005?) the MMs anounced the capture of a "spy plane". From the published photos, I think it was that one.

Anyhoo, I would chalk this up to another shadow (or its equivalent) biting the dust. Write off another $20,000. Guess AAI gets another order.
Posted by: N guard   2006-04-09 16:01  

#2  How much they might learn from a downed UAV very much depends on which model they got. The high-altitude Global Hawks have some of the most sophisticated sensor systems, but are beyond their reach so far as I know. OTOH if they got a Shadow, which is a tactical level asset, much of the sensors are commercial off-the-shelf equipment.

And of course there are the platoon level small UAVs, but I doubt they would be sent across the border except during actual operations - in which case our troops would be there too.

So, most likely the "information" claim is BS, other than to help them price-shop on the internet for digital videocams .....
Posted by: lotp   2006-04-09 15:43  

#1  Well, ya...I'm sure we are buzzing all over these sites.
Posted by: Captain America   2006-04-09 15:22  

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