They probably studied at Stanford.

I suspect that Lockheed-Martin cut some corners in the design and construction of the drone. Expect a crash program (and attendant $ expense) to 'harden' the drone systems. The other question is how to harden the GPS systems. That is the weakest link in the system. Light-Squared has proven that GPS signal can be interrupted, now the question is how to make them resistant to interruption.

Thinking that the Iranians are stupid knuckle-draggers is arrogant and reckless and will result in American lives being needlessly lost. The Iranians have demonstrated a resourcefulness time again that has cost their adversaries lives. Ask Israel about their battle with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon....

It is electronic evolution. As a truck driver told me years ago, at a simpler time, "New radar, new radar detector......new radar, new radar detector.......

Unlike all the F14 parts that were attempted to be sold under the past administration.

All these weapons??? One drone? The reason for a drone is when it's lost, you don't lose a crew.

So the GPS system is weak, then why wasn't a self-destruct method employed, this is just stupid. The Iranians have been studying at the best universities in the world and even here in the US, I know a lot Iranians and they are very very bright.

If this is right, then it looks like Ahnadinejad was right, we did give them a drone.

This is propaganda nonsense. Anyone who really thinks that the Iranians have a state of the art US drone that the are being allowed to dissect is naive. The drone is more than likely part of a disinformation campaign and probably contains outdated or otherwise modified systems. The intent is to let the Iranians think they have struck gold when in reality they are going to spend a lot of time dissecting this thing and wind up with information designed to mislead them. If they really had a current state of the art drone the US would already have dropped a bomb or launched a missile to destroy the thing right after they lost control, if that would even be necessary since the drones have on-board self destruct functions.

send another one with a tactical nuke on it

Iran is not a threat to the US.

First a stealth helicopter in Pakistan. Now an advanced drone.

Heads need to roll over this! Iran is not Afghanistan, geniuses.......

Believe 1/2 of what you see and 1/4 of what you hear, even that is being generous. 1st They said they shot it down, 2nd It was a crash landing, and now they landed it themselves????????

an unsubstianted brag.....

Chinese must be laughing. Let the US do all the hard work and then just reverse engineer. Save many many man hours and billions.

This technology will be handed to the Russians and the Chinese. With their new aircraft carrier, they can load up on drone copies. Probably us the GPS system to navigate them.

What a waste of money.

I don't think it is funny to joke about war with Iran.

As someone said, Iran is not Afghanistan. Iran is not Iraq.

Haven't we had enough war-monger and neo-conservative mistakes to realize we are not the Masters of the Universe?

This is what scares me most about putting any of the Republicans in the whitehouse.

Romney has been sabre-rattling a lot lately.

Bad idea.

I see the Obama haters are coming out in droves and blaming misinformation on him.... lol

This is a very good of American military arrogance. The "popular" notion that Iranians are somehow 15th century waxjobs living in mud huts is really stupid and shows how out-of-touch Americans are.

The primay published reason that the FAA forbids American airports and passenger jets to use GPS-guided precision landing systems are that 1) the GPS signals are so weak that they are easily interfered with, either accidentally or intentionally, 2) the GPS satellites require additional precision ground stations to get the necessary precision, and 3) the whole system is easily spoofed by simply broadcasting signals on the same frequencies that prevent the reception of the GPS signals. This is not new information --- it is at least a decade old. Pilots are only allowed to use GPS devices as "adjunct, secondary" navigational aids, even in private aircraft.

The idea that there was not an automatic self-destuct when data link and command guidance signals were lost was a serious design flaw. Every rocket that NASA launches has such systems in addition to command detonation. It is another design flaw that there was no secondary navigation system, such as photographic route comparison to detect the spoofing attempt.

And worse yet, there was some CIA wonderchild at the controls who did not react to this properly. They just assumed that it was broken and went off to the "O" Club for twofers. The CIA is fairly competent at handling paid informants and turncoats. But beyond that, every thing the CIA does is "over-reaching." They have no real competencies in data collection, collation, or analysis and never had. People in the intelligence community (that's what I did for 10 years) have always considered the CIA as "cowboys." My instructions as an analyst were always that if a CIA employee was involved, no matter what the person's clearance status, that NO information was to be given to them, no question was to be answered directly, and no information from them was to be relied on. (The FBA was not far behind them and usually it was presumed that any FBI agent in a plum job, such as in overseas embassies, was gay.)

I agree that it is important to conduct surveillance of Iran's nuclear and military installations. But we have satellites and SIGINT and COMINT and RADINT and many other sources. In addition, everyone seems to forget that we paid the Mossad to train Iran's brutal SAVAK under the Shah. Literally hundreds of these people went sleeper or turned when the ayatollahs came to power. We have plenty of sources of reliable information without some cowboy taking risks of this magnitude "just because he could."

There needs to be some serious heads roll at the CIA. Panneta is not doing his job and this happened on his watch. Very little useful intelligence has ever come from the CIA and most major events have caught them completely by surprise if you needed proof. The Berlin Wall, Gorbachov, the collapse of the USSR, the rapid increase in Chinese military capabilities all caught the CIA by surprise if you need proof of the statement.

Like the Iranians say --- we gave it to them for free. By my calculations it is a gift of around $600 from every man, woman and child in the United States to the ayatollahs.

I see the Obama haters are coming out in droves and blaming misinformation on him

I don't hate Obama. But as our Commander in Chief, he and Panetta are symbolically responsible for this major military flub.

The Iranians have scored big on this hijacking and they know it.

Americans are being fooled by both the US government (by downplaying the matter) and by the Iranian regime.

Panetta should resign and immediate counter-measures with our military technology must be adopted. This is a serious security flaw that has gone public. Very bad, indeed.

Thinking that the Iranians are stupid knuckle-draggers is arrogant and reckless and will result in American lives being needlessly lost.

But this is a necessary narrative in order to convince us that they are an unreasoning horde hellbent on destroying us. If you start thinking that the Iranians are competent, then you start thinking they are reasonably intelligent and then it goes to, "Why isn't it possible to negotiate with them?" And then everything falls apart - there goes an enemy that can be used to scare us.

Notice the number of people even on this board saying that this news is all fake?

Thinking that the Iranians are stupid knuckle-draggers is arrogant and reckless and will result in American lives being needlessly lost.

How? Iran is intelligent and advanced but NOT A THREAT TO OUR COUNTRY.

Funny. I get the impression that a lot of people are thinking Iran is this uncivilized backwater place where everyone is uneducated and the cheif mode of transportation is camel.

These guys are really not behind the times. They have educated people who are specialized in fairly state of the art electronics, physics, you name it. They would probably be more of a challenge in a conventional war then you might suspect. Of course nuking them would be wrong for many reasons not least of which is, they haven't really done anything that deserves such a response ( if there is anything that does...) Let us keep in mind that a great many Iranians are opposed to the current regime and we wouldn't want to kill lots of civilians. Also, I might add that a huge number of people here in the US are utterly opposed to persuing further military goals in the Mideast in general, myself included. If money is what you understand, let me put it this way. We can't afford to have another war.

You could install deep within these drones an internal explosive. They'll detonate upon receiving a specific signal from a satellite, or an encrypted radio signal to do so. Big Baboom. After that, you won't have to worry about these big-ticket, high-tech items of war, falling into enemy hands.

"The primay published reason that the FAA forbids American airports and passenger jets to use GPS-guided precision landing systems are that 1) the GPS signals are so weak that they are easily interfered with, either accidentally or intentionally, 2) the GPS satellites require additional precision ground stations to get the necessary precision, and 3) the whole system is easily spoofed by simply broadcasting signals on the same frequencies that prevent the reception of the GPS signals. This is not new information --- it is at least a decade old. Pilots are only allowed to use GPS devices as "adjunct, secondary" navigational aids, even in private aircraft."

This is utter nonsense. I fly jets in the U.S. national airspace system and fly "stand alone" GPS approaches almost every day. Stand alone GPS approaches require no other source of navigation information. They have been around for many years and are proliferating (by the dozen) each month.

If you don't know what you're talking about, please spare us your boneheaded, high-and-mighty nonsense.

Christian Science Monitor?

More like Oxymoron Monitor....

Perhaps this is a glimpse at the failure of our education system that we cant effectively find engineers to make military equipment better than those in iran.

or

maybe this is a case for why we need to stop paying for foreigners to become college educated here in the US and then let them go home and turn against us!

Haven't we had enough war-monger and neo-conservative mistakes to realize we are not the Masters of the Universe?

This is what scares me most about putting any of the Republicans in the whitehouse.

Ah. You seem to forget that it is the current Administration that bombed Libya with these very military drones. It is the current Administration that accused Iran of attempted assassination on American soil. It is the current Administration that invaded the soveriegn air space of an ally without their knowledge to do a kill-on-site mission. It is the current Administration that did another kill-on-site mission in another nation against someone that still had US citizenship. It is the current Administration that was leading the group that killed 24 members of an allies armed forces. It is the current Administration that has announced it is mobilizing 2500 marines to counter the "military" aggressions of China in the South Pacific.

You can say all you want about what the current stupid set of Republican canidates "say they will do" in a military situation. But the current Administration has acted in the very way you say that the Republican "might" do. If you want to blame a group of politicians regarding present day concerns, you should blame the ones that are actively in office. Not the ones that are not in office or the ones that no longer can do anything about the situation.

"We all feel drunk [with happiness] now," says the Iranian engineer. "

Excellent. Iran has swallowed the hook, along with the bait.

This is utter nonsense. I fly jets in the U.S. national airspace system and fly "stand alone" GPS approaches almost every day. Stand alone GPS approaches require no other source of navigation information. They have been around for many years and are proliferating (by the dozen) each month.

I am not a pilot, but I do have a question for you about this. Would a visual verification be considered another source of navigational information? That is to say that if a GPS system told a pilot that they were landing in LAX, yet the pilot sees the Washington Monument out the left side window, would the ignore the visual verification as to where they are?

If so, they would be flying almost exactly like I would believe a drone would. If you told it, it was landing at a base in Afghanistan, it would not care if it it was actually seeing the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

I can just imagine the outrage if another country had spy drones flying over Kansas. Stop the military madness and mind our own business. We spend almost as much as the balance of the world combined on defense just to make the military industrialist happy.

" Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

The above two quotes are from former President, General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

So this is then theft. Go in and take it back or take it out so they have nothing to play with... Better yet it is a military vehical so is it an act of war?

So what are the odds Obama does anything here? I'd say he probably won't even take a position on it as it might harm him in the polls... Quite the leader that Obama...

BTW the guy interviewed was probably educated at MIT and got grants to boot...

The Iranians hate the United States and Britain. And there are some good reasons for it. In fact, their "hatred" of Israelis more posturing for the sake of Arabs than any active response to a specific wrong. Before the ayatollahs came, Iran (Persia) was actually quite religiously tolerant with large Christian and Jewish communities that went back centuries.

Just a few of the reasons why they hate us:

1) The British and the US in 1943 created Iraq as a country whose borders were set up to insure conflict in the area. For Iran, this meant that a large Shiite community became part of a Sunni-ruled Iraq. Since Iran is the only majority Shiia country in the world, this was seen as a specific slap in the face.

2) For three years the US and Britain forced brutaland repressive Soviet rule on Iran. The Russians finally left in 1946 after having virtually looted the country. From 1947-1951 the country floundered around with a chronically unstable constitutional monarchy half-heartedly supported by the US and Britain who were only interested in oil concessions.

3) Until 1953, there was a series of military coups and counter-coups with the CIA actively involved in one sode or another for every one.

4) The the US, with Britain's blessing, installed the Shah and a brutal and repressive autocracy backed up by the Mossda-trained SAVAK. The people were brutalized and slaughtered by the thousands, but the US got half of all the oil revenue, so they were very happy with the Shah.

5) In the Iraq-Iran War, the US supplied Iraq with military equipment and more importantly to the Iranians, the training and equipment to make mustard gas and binary nerve gas (tabun) which was used against the Iranians. We backed and supplied the very same Sadaam that we later hung.

6) The embassy hostage situation came about because Iran wanted the Shah sent back to Iran to stand trial for crimes against his own people. The US refused, protected him abroad, and finally brought him the the US for permanent residency when he was found to have cancer. This really outraged the Iranian people since only the US and British governments amont major governments actually supported the idea of not returning the Shah to Iran.

7) As a candidate, Reagan agents (including Rumsfeld) made promises of military spare parts and other aid to Iran if they would hold the hostages until after the election. You would think this would have made the Iranians like us at least a little. But instead they decided that there were no conditions in which American politicians could be trusted because Reagan was so willing to sell out his country and support two groups against his country was supposedly opposed --- Iran and the Contras. They kept citing the Persian version of "there is no honor among thieves" as why they never trust American politicians.

8) Then there have been the embargos, the constant bickering, the feckless backing of Israel against everyone, and most importantly the continuous double standard of saying that it is okay for Israel, a warlike country who has fought constantly with its neighbors, to have nukes, but to say that Iranians, who have never attacked a neighbor, cannot have them. No person with more than a 3rd grade intellect sees this as anytiing except dangerous arrogance on the part of the US.

I think that Iran's religious establishment is a crappy excuse for a government is waaaaay off course, especially when they think that the Arab world will allow itself to be led by a non-Arab, non-Arabic-speaking country. The Arab world is almost all Sunni and Iran is Shia and while Americans do not seem to realize the distinction, the bad blood between Sunis and Shiites is vicious. But we are actually forcing the Arab countries into the Persian camp.

You may think what you may about the Iranians. But in truth they are just as smart as anyone else and have a lot of legitimate girievances against the US and Britain.

Did the military stop using the encrypted GPS signals? A loud, unencrypted signal may have overloaded real signals but the receiver should have ignored it for nav purposes.

Longhair

It is amazing how many weapons & weapon parts are literally falling out of the sky into the enemies hands during the current administration.

...all designed under the last administration. Conspiracy?...who knows?

If Longhair's dog got out of the yard he'd blame it on Obama

"Even modern combat-grade GPS [is] very susceptible” to manipulation, says former US Navy electronic warfare specialist Robert Densmore, adding that it is “certainly possible” to recalibrate the GPS on a drone so that it flies on a different course. “I wouldn't say it's easy, but the technology is there.”

Gen. Moharam Gholizadeh, the deputy for electronic warfare at the air defense headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), described to Fars News how Iran could alter the path of a GPS-guided missile – a tactic more easily applied to a slower-moving drone.

So is this article admitting that a US Cruise Missile carrying a Nuclear payload could be re-routed with a Laptop or TV Antenna??? FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(missile)

BGM-109A Tomahawk Land Attack Missile - Nuclear (TLAM-A) with a W80 nuclear warhead. The Block III TLAMs that entered service in 1993 can fly farther and use Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers to strike more precisely

...since the drones have on-board self destruct functions.

Yeah, right. That would be convenient for the enemy - blow them up when taking off.

RichardWalking

You bring up good points. Actually, I am NOT happy with what Obama did in Libya.

I hope he learned his lesson.

However, I am 100 times more concerned with what another Republican would do with Iran.

Bush did not do airstrikes like Obama did. He occupied Iraq. The differences are miles apart.

The conservatives on this blog are talking about nukes and invasion and pre-emptive strikes.

Iran is far more dangerous than Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan put together.

So, your point is valid, USA is still sticking it's nose where it does not belong.

I just don't want us to push our noses in as far Republicans are willing to put it, if you get my drift.

Our most super-duper triple top secret kick-ass spy drone Pwned by Iran! Yeah, I would have to say that does qualify as a VERY, VERY BIG DEAL.

Yeah you don't give Obama credit for bin Laden but you want to blame Obama for this!?? I hate you pathetic hypocritical unpatriotic a$$holes!!!!!!!

CHRIS #1.33 Good read!

Too bad more people don't understand or read enough to at least try to understand. We (Americans) tend to think our S**t doesn't stink and that we are the end all ,be all ,nation of the world. "We are better than everyone else and thats it."

Pretty ignorant I'd say.

Chris-749391... STOP IT! You make to much sense. Some people look at this as a scenario in "Call To Duty" or one of those shooter games, they do not understand this is real stuff and there is no reset button or "multiple lives"... this is real stuff.

My question is this- if they claimed they did this, who is to say the drone wasn't over Afghanistan in the first place, and they hacked it otherwise?

zanilth... what difference does it make where the thing was flying... they've proved they can hijack our stuff... and they have it.

82AllAmericans- I'm commo in the military, and know quite well how 'easily' our stuff can be hacked. You'd have to be completely ignorant to believe that we (or our hardware) were infallable.

The point is if we have a plane flying over Iran, obviously that causes an issue... If they hijack one while it's flying over Afghanistan, then obviously we aren't violating their airspace, and leads to further complications, including (IMHO) adding an airstrike to take it out back on the table.

This is a real embarrassment to this country. It is tantamount to sending Dan Quayle as our entry to the World Spelling Bee!

zanilth... thanks for your service... OK... I'm a retired commo\infantry (among other things) guy who currently works in information data and systems security, I'm not trying to call you out on anything, just that at this point where the drone was flying really does not make a difference... they have it, we've confessed that it was over Iran, we admitted that when they first lied about even having a drone in the area and again when they said it crashed and again still when they "demanded" Iran return it.

Further more, say the drone was over Afghanistan, then that would prove that Iran has a longer reach than we thought... right?

I posted this earlier... check this out if you haven't already... maybe they should be trying to find out how this could have happened.

Exclusive: Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet October 7, 2011

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/

Monky@keyboard, that for sure. we have been complaining more about the mexicans taking your lawn mowing jobs and toilet cleaning. but in reality the people who really take your jobs are the middle easterns and asians that come here to get good education, many of them using financial aids because they are worthy very intellingent people, they even find many ways how not to pay taxes and get wellfare for their olders. they don't do porn and drugs. they don't stop education untill they graduate. the ones that stay here in US take your precious jobs, look around places where you once worked, you will see muslams and asians. the ones that leaves the US just go back to their home country, laughing about the stupidity of the Americans, while you complain that there are no more tomateos picking jobs and your drunes falling from the sky.

I recommend everyone on this blog read:

1.33 Chris-749391

He does not make a political statement, but he gives the 60 history of Iranian/USA tensions, in layman's terms.

Required reading for all of us.

82AllAmericans- Perhaps Obama thought it was better to 'fess up' and not take another embarassment such as the 1960 U-2 incident?

Regarding their 'length' of reach, that doesn't necessarily mean anything... We don't know where they were when they hacked, or where they landed the plane. Assuming we weren't actually over Iran when it happened, they could have had a laptop sitting IN Afghanistan and flew the plane straight from Kabul to where it crashed- assuming it was in Iran at all.

For instance, if you google "Drone in Iran" right now, half the articles that come up state that various anonymous government officials are contesting that it is the actual drone, that the drone crashed in Afghanistan and the taliban gave it to Iran, etc.

While I'm sure those are the made up 'cover' stories if that is the case, it still leads to questions regarding the legitimacy of them even having it. Sure, if we were violating Iran airspace and they captured it, more power to them (to hear a Soldier saying that might seem crazy, but personally I'm more for doing the right thing PERIOD, not doing the right thing for ME and screwing everyone else over.....) but the other options (outright theft, possible false stories, etc.) detract from the actual case enough to open other possibilities.

Americans are dumb because they think Iranians live in mud huts?....you are dumb for taking 35 comments on an internet website for what all 300 million Americans think.

To those folks who think we should "go into Iran and take our property back":

First and foremost it seems to me that the CIA was flying this into Iranian airspace and therefore Iran managing to "down it" was self-defense and NOT theft. If we sent spec ops into Iran to retrieve or destroy it than that could be seen as an act of war and thereby entangling the US in yet another meaningless war.

Iran is not backwater country populated by anti-scientist theocrats but is rather a country that is on the cutting edge of technology. Physics, engineering and science are NOT exclusive to the US and other industrialized countries.

AMF

@zanilth

Thgis was not the first drone that they had downed. They had apparently shot down 7 or 8 of the Predator/Reaper type, but only two of them were substantially intact. Plus they had a ton of the small vehicle-launched type. The Cia has already admitted this (off the record of course.)

Each time they used what they got to reverse engineer for the next step up. They apparently decided that the weak spot in all of them was the use of GPS signals. And, according to their claims, they simply hacked into the drone, and changed the "return home" landing coordinates to one with the same heading and altitude as the home base in Afghanistan. Then when communications was lost the drone tried to return home --- to a runway in Iran. Their only apparent miscalculation was that there was a slight difference in altitude between the Iranian landing site and the real home base, probably resulting in the collapse of the landing gear from a hard landing.

Does everybody really believe that this is accidental on our part? Really? heheheh. Boy those Iranians outsmarted us for sure! hahahaha. Think about it people. Doesn't it all sound just a little too easy? Being a veteran, notwithstanding, I just cannot bring myself to think this is anything but a sacrificial lamb (in wolf's clothing). Most of you may "buy" it, but I have no need for such a purchase, thank you very much. Heehee hahaha, heheheh.........................!

I'm really amazed that this thing could be fooled by a false GPS signal in the first place.

The onboard GPS navigation should be used to supplement a laser ring gyro only - and the system should keep track of the original gyro location signal as well as one compensated for by GPS signals - and if the two ever vary by more than a tiny allowed tolerance, the plane should stick to original gryo readings only until it is within sight of the location of where the base is supposed to be in order to fine tune its actual location before landing.

Better to have one crash into the mountain in the case of a faulty gyro every now and then than to allow a giant back door into the software where anybody with some specialized gear can take control of it at will.

Being able to hack it and jam the GPS to trick it into landing in the wrong place just begs to ask what complete novices programmed the thing??? Did they not realize they were writing code for a spy plane??? N00bs!

This may not at all be what it appears on the face of it.

Remember, the CIA was reportedly (probably true) behind this. While they've made their share of mistakes through the years, they've done plenty that was intentionally fouled up for specific reasons. This report from the 'anonymous engineer' may possibly be exactly what they were hoping to gain if the drone was figuratively utilized as a 'dangle'. The Iranians may have fallen for such a scheme.

The smartest things a nation in Iran's position could have done is absolutely nothing...that the rest of the world could see. The drone is taken into custody, and poof! That's it. Gone for good. Classified their equivalent of top secret or beyond.

If the thing were to just 'disappear' permanently, it would be very tough for us to know if they'd actually gotten it, if they'd not found it, if they'd destroyed it for whatever the reason, etc. Since they've announced all of this, we can be fairly sure they did recover it. We can also be pretty sure that a similar reaction will be reasonably likely in the future when they take our hardware into custody - it'll be leaked for political reasons. Not a bad gauge of the internal security of the Iranian government...it's not very tight.

IF the ostensible 'loss' of this aircraft was in fact a covert operation in and of itself, the Iranians could be gleaning all kinds of disinformation from it. It could have been a less than fully operational airframe (at the end of it's rated service life, perhaps repaired to marginal airworthiness after a prior accident, etc.) that was rebuilt to an, um, 'alternate' set of standards and meant just for Iranian intelligence consumption.

Who knows! The game of espionage is all about deception and keeping the other side guessing.

During the Cold War era, genuine defectors approaching both the US and USSR were frequently turned away because agents of the CIA and the KGB assumed the supposed defector wasn't genuine but a fraud with lots of bad information to 'share'. Both sides lost a lot of valuable 'HUMINT' thinking they'd just defeated yet another 'dangle' attempt. This could be a modernized variation of a 'dangle'.

Too, the fact that this aircraft is type classified (as the RQ-170 Sentinel) and in production most likely means that it's obsolescent and the real 'action' is in a new design the public doesn't know about yet. That's been going on for decades.

This whole thing could be a genuine SNAFU, or maybe it's just meant to look like one. And I'm sure the Iranian agents are looking at it both ways, too, wondering just what we're really up to, if anything.

Like I said, 'keep 'em guessing'!

Chris-749391

Excellent post!! Thank you.

The zionists and their sycophants here are trying to recycle the Iraq lies to justify attacking Iran and as bush the lesser said, "Fool me twice and...and..." Another little fact that escapes America's attention is the First Gulf War. According to all of the sources I have found, Kuwaiti lease holders were slant drilling under the Iraq-Kuwait border into the wholly Iraqi owned Ramaila Oil Field, essentially stealing Iraqi oil. If Mexico did that to whatever tejas has left in the ground, it would be interesting... bush the older being Mr. Oil sent in our kids to die for the oil companies and, in the process, blow to bits, immolate, and otherwise end the lives of thousands of innocent Iraqis trying to escape the corporate holocaust loosed upon them...For Freedom (to lie, cheat, steal, and murder). Ain't we sumthin'?

Just being me, Foreign students in America on students visas are not able to apply for financial aide. To qualify for a student visa a foreign student must first show bank statements that prove they are capable of paying for their own living expenses medical and school tuition. They can't apply for wellfare unless they are legal, permanent residents of America. The tuition fees in American colleges and universities are often ten times higher or more for foreign students than for American students and that is how a university or college can afford to charge lower tuition fees to American students. So you see without those fees charged to foreign students, most working class American students would not be able to afford to go to college or university. Not to mention it's big business for American colleges and universities to have foreign students. Also it helps broaden our personal experiences and understanding of those from other countries, some of whom do eventually get jobs in the tech industry adding to American technological capabilities. Musch of our technology came from foreign scientists such as Germans for our rocket programs and Japanese for our electronics. Would you rather we not have the technology we have at our disposal today?

Think before you speak.

How can we be certain all this information any more is precise ? None of us are there to witness and attest to all of this. All we have ot go by is some Brass telling the news what happened. Or the News getting the scoop from someone some where. But how can we ever really , truly be sure what is being said is all true ? What if the government or what ever other source wants us to think this, and then we can start a new war with iran, or invest money in some new governenment project.. ect ect what ever the case may be. I just have no faith and no trust in government, or news anymore. Its all corrupt

Fix it.

Pure bunk. If you all recall, not long ago Iran touted a new stealth fighter. When they showed images of it, it turned out to be nothing more than an F-5 (an old American fighter now used as a trainer mainly) with a couple extra fins tacked on. . .and none of the trademarks of stealth apparent on the airframe.

Iran has a long history of making fantastic, and utterly false, claims about their advanced weapons technology.

Hmmm... didn't we already know about this capability when N Korea forced one of our GPS Guided recon planes to land back in (GASP!) September?

AFP Report

Either we have a knack for repeating the same mistakes, or this is a Trojan Horse of sorts. In my wildest imaginings, I hope that when the Iranian engineers opened the drone to examine its components, a bunch of flying insects emerged to their utter confusion and our benefit.

But hey, that's wishful thinking, wouldn't you say?

Voice of reason? first I did not speak. however, if your reply integrates your case, that does not means it is the case for every single student that comes to US. second, i never said foreign students that comes here with visas. but for you to know, as part of the game there are many ways to be a student in US, finish education, be come successful and experts in anything that you want and not necessarily being loyal to US, then leave the US to their country where they came from. third, any-one living in US who is not loyal to US, is an enemy.

Yashmak, I agree. This looks nothing like a stealth drone. Google pictures of the RQ-170. It looks like old artist interpretations and nothing like the real vehicle.

Stealth is sharp angled. This looks like a pinata made by the Pillsbury dough boy.

Even our stealth naval vessels don't have a round exterior surface on them.

This is sheer Iranian propaganda. The real drone, if actually lost, was picked up with tweezers.

Just play along. Amindeedanutjob is just trying to keep face in the realization of his, and the Iranian military's, inability to control their own airspace.

Very embarrassing.

JS in SD "This is propaganda nonsense. Anyone who really thinks that the Iranians have a state of the art US drone that the are being allowed to dissect is naive."

So we admit that we lost a Drone at the same time that Iraq says they have one, and even show pictures that match our missing drone, and Obama asks to have it returned.

What were you saying about someone being 'naive'?

Hal, what you say makes sense. We should look at this as a blessing in disguise. Now I don't agree with our policy of meddling in the Middle East and I firmly believe we should stop sending billions (that's Billions) to Israel, to Egypt, to Pakistan, etc. We're spending money and it's getting us nothing--that's not smart business. Having said that, since we are in fact meddling well then at least we should do it right. Now that we know that our drones can be targeted this way we need to find a way to improve them so it doesn't happen again. Otherwise if we don't it will just be another case of us spending money stupidly.

We are stupid to have taken others so lightly. This was a know issue. So why were the bugs debugged? My issue is not Iran, because they are the target. I expect them to put up resistance. My issue is with our suppliers and consultants who are working/providing the service to our military!

REMEMBER, THIS IS A KNOWN ISSUE...

There are so many people here that think countries like Iran are incapable of creating and using advanced technologies. These people, as I've said before, are in complete denial. If you don't think Iran has the ability and means to do what it says then you should cancel your accounts and quit posting.

In 1982, I started working for Burger King right after I turned 16. I was trained by 2 Iranians who had been working there for 2 years while attending college. Over the months I worked with them, I got to know them. They were highly intelligent, always on time and very hard workers. I had asked what they were majoring in. They both were majoring in electronics engineering. Why the story. Well, many Americans are cocky and self centered and obviously blinded by their self righteousness. "How could Iranians be capable of anything close to what the US is capable of?" Well how many times do you need the wake-up call? Iranians, as a people, are hard workers, highly intelligent and highly dedicated to getting the job done. Many have been educated in the US and Europe...for decades.

So far, I haven't seen anything the Iranians have said that they are incapable of doing. They have our drone. That is a moot point. With the help of Russia and China, they will be flying drones over Israel within a year or so, just to prove a point.

The fact that our security was so lax and we knowingly flew this over Iran, a sovereign nation, makes me wonder what schmucks are making the big decisions in our country. There is obviously a reason we haven't dropped missiles on their nuke facilities. My opinion is, our intelligence experts know the Iranians are significantly more capable than anyone we have been at war with since WW2. Even more capable than the North Koreans. We've spent billions developing a technology that is now virtually useless against anyone that can be considered a threat to the US. We handed them our most advanced drone which also could and will be used to develop stealth fighters and maybe even bombers. Additionally, any advantage we had in evading radar detection will be over in as little as a few months to a year. Once they modify their radars to detect this stealth drone, they will be able to detect all of our stealth aircraft. Unbelievable!

Just start your stupid war already. Kill the world. I have listened to this Zionist crap for 30 years now.. In 85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,00,01,02,03,04,05,06,07,08,09,10,11.Irans going to have a nucular bomb any day now....I don't get the last generation. First they had a lot of freedom, had a crap-load of fun, started a sexual revolution, partied their buts off, turned up the rock n roll, next they had great jobs, never voted, let the country be sold off while going to sport venues. Then wanted the next generation to have no fun, a cop on every corner, more laws than any kid could obey, created stranger danger story's to keep the kids locked up, built sidewalks they never used but won't let kids ride a bike or skateboard on anything but the busy street, ok'd tasering those bad kids who did nothing as bad as they did, and now they are scared oldfarts who say the boggy man is everywhere, terrorists are everywhere in our back yard beating them up, declared war on its own citizens today through NDDA, most likely hungry unemployed youth or ones who want to protest now like they had done, they claimed they are the most powerful nation instead of the greatest nation to live in like grandpa had, pretend they liberated nations but just mass murdered them, Think and tought us a Republic is Communist China and gave up our personal libertys, Now lastly they turned to God and want to see Armageddon so they can say I support o ye Israel and help the Zionists usher in the antichrist through rebuilding the 3rd temple, tell each other in secret its because god wants them to support this new thing this decade called christian Zionism (which confuses even the real Jew) Call the only candidate who wants to preserve life a nut... Dang, I heard enough for 40 years under these idiots,,, I'm conditioned already long ago...So Just blow everything up already. Get it on already. Just get it on.

care4mycountry,mychildren,myparents

My hat is off to you, Sir. That is as accurate and concise a synopsis of the last few decades of American life as I think it would be possible to write in English with all nuance intact and the spice of curmudgeonism to give it tang. Bravo! And bang on on every count. I envy you your talent... really.

If it’s just a spy drone then what you can do is scrap the idea of GPS and remote controlling. Just have the drone have a built in map and path route that would take a drone from point A, leaving its launch pad and then to B to C and then to Z, back home. This way it cant be hacked and brought down using jamming devices and other sound devices, this idea would work. The main problem is that the Country of Iran can see the drones on radar or maybe even visibly! If they can spot the drones then they can be shot down or they will figure out a way to take them down and that’s a big loss and waste of time. I don’t know how the drones stay hidden but they could come with a radar jammer of there own and jam the technology that is able to find the drones too or to the point of concealing the drones own area around its self. A problem would be that if it crashed into another air craft like a plane, that lives would be lost. We probably know or can get that info for certain Countries like Iran’s flight patterns and so the problem would not exist most of the time.

We don’t know if all said from Iran is true, that drones have an auto pilot and you can put it into that mode and then keep them there and confuse it of its GPS until you have it land some where you can pick.

I hope he [Obama] learned his lesson.

We can do it, you know when Obama was running for election the first time, I would have agreed with you that he seem that he would make decisions different then Bush did. But I am not ask assured as you that he HAS learned a lesson. The statement he just made in November about China and the South Pacific with the announce of sending 2500+ Marine brigade to the area scares me greatly. He is making a military decision against China. I personally do not see China as an aggressor concerns to the point of needing the Marines. He is sending in the Marines, the military group that normally leads an invasion force for the US.

Bush did not do airstrikes like Obama did. He occupied Iraq. The differences are miles apart.

Actually, he did do air strikes. It was the opening stages of the invasion. We all saw CNN videos of Saddam's palace on fire from the dropping of bombs. Many people's issues with Bush mainly come down to his occupation of Iraq and attempting to compare that to Obama's strategy on Libya. I would point out that in the concept of removing the leader of an opposing countries leader from power, Bush's method achieved that goal in approximately 6 weeks. Obama's method took 7 months.

Bush's occupation was not about the removal of a foreign countries leader. It was about producing a stable country after that first military goal was achieved. As of yet, Obama's has not occupied Libya and has not taken responsibility for being involved in the destabilizing of that country. That is why occasional the news of the human rights violations of the winning militias in Libya still leaks through even on this news media. One tried to take responsibility for the actions, the other has yet to do that.

The conservatives on this blog are talking about nukes and invasion and pre-emptive strikes.

Yep. Some bloggers can be stupid. Good thing bloggers are not in a position of being President and using their blackberries and smart-phones to tweet their opinions publicly.

Iran is far more dangerous than Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan put together.

I would agree with you that Iran is of a more strategic concern to the US then Libya. I would not necessarily state the same for Iraq. Between Iran, Iraq, and Saudia Ariba prior to the first Gulf War, they were I believe the 3 biggest exporters of oil in that area. Libya exported oil, but I believe it was nothing on the scale of what those other 3 countries were doing.

As for Afghanistan, I would normally agree with you on its less than major strategic concerns after Russia left it. But that was before the group directly responsible for the attack on the World Trade center was based in that country and that country's leadership at the time refused to turn them over to us. Everyone seems to forget that. Afghanistan would NEVER have been invaded if their government turned over the outlawed group that killed over 3000 US citizens on US soil in 1 day. Afghanistan war would not have occurred if they gave us Osama Bin Ladin and his colleagues. They refused.

I just don't want us to push our noses in as far Republicans are willing to put it, if you get my drift.

Finally, I would point out that there is at least ONE of the Republican politician that has publicly stated that we should NOT invade Iran. He has for years fought against Iraq actions, Libya actions, Syria actions. He is considered an Isolationist in his states. It has not been one of those statements as a politician of "We should not unilaterally go to war with a country" and than when in the President chair goes to war with Libya without ever getting Congress's agreement. His name is Paul Ryan.

And frankly, judging the entire group on what Bauchman says about Iran while ignoring Obama's already shown actions is just not right. Bauchman will not win the primary, let alone the general election. So what she says is only of issue as to who else it will drop in popularity.

I can just imagine the outrage if another country had spy drones flying over Kansas. Stop the military madness and mind our own business. We spend almost as much as the balance of the world combined on defense just to make the military industrialist happy.

sandtrich, it is not useful to really compare what the US spends in defense compared to what other countries do, unless you also compare what the world demands of the US for its military. Let me take one recent example of what I am talking about.

In March 2011, United Nations passed a resolution calling intervention on situations in Libya for "humanitarian concerns". This Security Council resolution was backed by several nations on the council, enough to pass the resolution. Even those having veto power and did not give a "Yes" vote to it, did not vote against it or veto it. Furthermore, it was greatly supported by many countries in the UN General Assembly. It was supported by the Arab League. It was supposedly the "right thing to do".

Yet it was asked for the US to initate and exercise that resolution. It was asked of the US to send 100+ cruise missiles on that first week. It was asked of the US to shoulder 90% of the financial costs for the United Nations (world government representations) resolution.

If the worlds progressive parties and "democratic" demonstrators want the United States to shoulder 90% of the military action, than the United States will need to have a defense budget greater than many other nations combined.

sandtrich, I know you normally make posts against military actions and you would basically state that the US should not be doing the very thing I mentioned above. I do not know I agree completely with you on a true Isolationists view. But I would point out that the current President seems to be a part of a progressive party philosophy group, and it is that progressive party that believes in a more unified world government and enforcing it with a military actions.

While his oppositions tends to be stereotyped as the more military group, he seems to have done more military actions than any President since Kennedy.

It is amazing how many weapons & weapon parts are literally falling out of the sky into the enemies hands during the current administration.

#1.3 - Thu Dec 15, 2011 1:42 PM CST

Sounds like they out-smarted our military..., and our clueless Commander in Chief...

#1.12 - Thu Dec 15, 2011 2:00 PM CST

I'm Kinda curious why these two post were "collapsed by the community". Is it against the COH to say something negative about our government leaders? Has it become unacceptable to speak ones opinion? Have some people on NV become so over sensitive when it comes to our government leaders, namely Obama, if someone says something negative their comment is automatically deleted or collapsed? God forbid others speak their minds and God forbid if that opinion isn't what yours is. WTH?!

mith-- comments get collapsed based on votes from other users. They probably voted those posts as "no value" or "inflammatory." Posts get deleted only after review from a newsvine moderator who is the final arbiter of whether or not the post needs to be deleted or restored.

So, basically, the answer to your question is that other newsvine readers flagged the posts, probably because they didn't agree with them, and they were collapsed after enough of negative votes were accrued. This is not a case of institutional censorship-- just a bunch of mad newsviners.

Got ya. Silly if u ask me. Thanks WMG-21.

Guess there are some folks that just go around with their panties all bunched up all the time. I don't always agree with what someones says but I don't act like a spoiled 3rd graded and run to teacher and tattle-tail on 'em. It is very rare that I'll report someone.

This thing was hand delivered to the Iranians so they would down load viruses onto their mainframe. The craft lacks the secretive coating. Hold on, someone is knocking on my front door.....

Looking at the Iranian photos and video footage, the "drone" they claim to have in possession looks remarkably like a quickly thrown together mock up model. All one need do is Google up images of an actual Sentinel and compare to what the Iranians have....

Since when have the Iranian's been credible? If they truly caught or intercepted a drone, it would be hush hush....

#86.2

I hope you're correct.

That's right Steven B always question stories like this. Perfect example why you should not trust the media nor the military reports, and of course no one believes politicians. Not too long ago our military said Iran did not shoot down the drone, the drone malfunctioned. Now this report from some Iran tech expert, which begs the question, why would Iran tell us how they downed the drone? BS from the Chirstian Science Monitor

What is so incredible. Look who is running the government. One of the most inept fools in the world. I would say it is highly probable that they did it.

This thing was hand delivered to the Iranians so they would down load viruses onto their mainframe. The craft lacks the secretive coating

Too many spy movies! The Iranians spoofed us and thats it...

patrick demarco... maybe you should read this article before you assume that.

Exclusive: Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet October 7, 2011

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/

…whole lot of denial going on up in here.

Maybe we can get some Irani 'advisors' over here cuz we're going to be needing protection from those drones here at home, as well.

This morning, my neighbor, The Conservative, shocked, called to tell me that BHO had signed the bill allowing 'rendition' of Americans to the Gulag for unclean thoughts which I had assumed he would from the first I heard of it. I hope I get to go to Guantanamo. At least I'll be 'guarded' by Marines!! I tried to explain to him that the current repub freak show was designed to ensure that BHO was reelected because he's doing a better job for the rich than most repubs would be able to do. I'm hoping Ron Paul gets the nomination and wins simply because his almost immediate subsequent assassination will stir up some serious and unaccustomed thinking amongst the 'fooled'...

Collosal failure or collosal stupidity?

Ya. That drone looks like the real thing. Not sure what these people are looking at and claiming this is not the same. And just because its not black doesn't mean it is not painted with stealth paint. This drone would be harder to see from above than if it was black. Likely to avoid being visually detected and shot down by Iran's F-15 Eagles.

Yeah, like we coulda given these drones actual maps with which to navigate so if GPS went down they had a backup. My guess is we have better technology, but in knowing that someone will eventually capture whatever we use, it is not implemented until the older tech is captured. It isn't as big of a deal for a potential enemy to know what tech we currently use as it is for them to know our potential. This way we can stay a step ahead. It is in the best interest of small countries like Iran to appear more powerful than they are and in the best interest of bigger ones to appear weaker than what they truly are.

Who cares???????????I don't! We need jobs not war games.

You're right buddy....America needs jobs , not nintendo pilots.....

Duh!! Dumb question of the moment.

No need to return it. Thats the one that was wired to self-detonate on Saturday.

Maybe after they're done playing with it -- just like the US does with spy aircraft it captures.

What spy aircraft? Remember when the Chinese disassembled a US EP-3 spy plane on Hainan Island? Think the Chinese didn't learn a few things from that? I think they shipped it back to us in a box.

When that ruski defected with his mig25, we sent it back in nicely packed crates. ;)

Glomar Explorerer..........recovered a Russian sub after it sank for study

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSF_Explorer

Daniel from LB...

So, are they going to return it?

#4 - Thu Dec 15, 2011 1:17 PM CST

...would you... and why should they?

No, I don't think I would.

Maybe they are going to fly it over to the US. And who knows what they'll attach to it.

It seems that the US Government is run by pretty dumb people. Probably used to a too comfortable living and they lack of genius ideas. It's human nature to start failing if you're not challenged by the elements. So, they have downed more drones in the past years. Why didn't the media report on them? ... oh, right, nobody from the Government told them to do so. Yeah, the US Media is nothing but a king's clown, running a show for those who like to be fooled.

But this funny episode remembers me of the bad job done on the faking Obama's birth certificate, which a smart guy who was fluent in that software it has been created with debunked.

How dumb is this Government? When aspiring politicians run for office or for any jobs in D.C. they seem to be smart and articulated with great ideas. Once they arrive in D.C. they lose their brains. What happens there to them? Do they go through a brainwashing school which has very low standards? Because once they are done with it, they come out like total fools.

There's no top secret tech on that drone. It's not stealth, it doesn't have powerful radar. Let 'em have it. What are they going to do? Make drones and send them over Afghanistan? Shooting fish in a barrel.

All of our missiles, smart bombs and the like depend on GPS technology. This is the same GPS technology that they spoofed when they hijacked this drone. What are we going to do if we can't shoot anything at them that they can't just turn around and send back to us?

Do you now see why this is such a big deal?

Time for a covert mission to kill the drone.... and from now on the drones will need a self destruct that works if the control sign is lost for more than x minutes.... KABOOM....

Not stealth and no top secret tech? Are you on something?

This was the CIA's RQ-170. THE CIA"s! Its designed to be stealth. That means both shape (obviously) and paint (the shape won't work well without the stealth paint).

This thing doesn't get any more top secret. And yes, they will be flying these along with the Russians and the Chinese. Give it a year or two. And they will likely upgrade their radar which will give them the ability to detect all of our stealth aircraft. YES. It is as bad as it seems.

So you want to make it easy for the enemy to thwart a weapon. All they need is the self-destruct signal.

What part of "yes they can reverse engineer it" are you missing?

A job for the SEALS.

And how exactly would a drone get the lost drone back? Why don't we just chalk it up to the luck of the game: if you spy on another country, your spies -- whether human or machine -- may get lost.

Maybe we should just stop attacking other countries that have not attacked us. Are you that eager for yet another war? Now that we're more or less out of Iraq, sorta kinda, you want another war as a place keeper?

toggy idea good

Send Ollie North to get the drone back...

In the future, we should set it to self destruct anytime ugly banners are displayed.

For what? Invading their airspace. To get back over OUR loss of a remote vehicle?

Kind of. You do know the GPS on those drones work both ways, right?

Ya, you mean like the signal for your cell phone that is always going in and out?

The hard part is to prevent an adversary from triggering the self-destruct option at an inopportune time. Such as when the drone is about to land at its home base. Or even better, every time a new drone takes off.

JC-Easier said then done. The last thing you want is some drone landing at a US base and blowing up because of some error, killing an entire crew.
On top of that these things cost big money and am sure probably take some time to build. Probably would rather not take the risk. Plus these corporations that build these things are too arrogant...probably think nothing can ever go wrong.

If the special signal is hacked, then the drone will follow the next command, in this case "change course".

Rob,how do you kill the crew on a drone? There isn't anyone ON or IN a drone!

Umm...perhaps he meant the crew that launched the drone and will take control of it when it returns? You botch up the self-destruct, or even worse if they can figure out how to hijack it, then it's a wonderful way to kill our own servicemen.

No, that isn't the answer.

Byron...Think outside the box

R.Bondy
He said A crew not THE crew. I had to re-visit that one too.

The US Govt. can not afford to have unmanned drones flying around with 10 or 20 pounds of C-4 in them. What if they go haywire and kill civilians or military peeps.

Plus the weight factor would limit range, flight time.

On manned planes, we do have tiny charges on crypto chips (just a soft pop) but crew still has to push the btn. Not sure how that would work on a uav.

Red Sailor - Unless you've been living inside your ships hull for the past 50 years you'd know the government doesn't care about dead civilians and definitely not about dead military personnel.

Also, since when can the government "not afford" something? Having the funds vs. being able to afford something are two different things the way our government thinks.

Interesting thought. We may have sent them a doctored model full of false information.

No, No! The Christians in Action (CIA) traded them the drone for opium they will sell on the open drug market to finance covert operations as their funding will be cut to help lower our budget deficit.

yeah, in fact we probably actually sold it to them.Our idiot leaders probablly gave it to them in exchange for promises by iran to stop developing nukes. it wouldnt be the first time we gave away national secrets to try and bribe our enemies into doing what we want and it won`t be the last time.our idiot leaders think that everyone worships money as much as they do.Just because our representatives sold out their country for a pocket full of cash from big corporations and wall street banksters doesn`t mean everyone else in the world will sell out their countries for money or a crappy drone.

the Israelis will beat us to it and do it successfully.

Isn't it rumored that Israel has nuclear weapons? Yep. Money is on them. Iran will probably do the equivalent of sticking an elephant with a pin. Not smart.

US flag with skulls instead of stars? Cool.

Israel should pay for the drone. Since we were spying for them Better yet why are they not sending in there own drone maybe they know something? that we didn't share share alike

Got that right. Israel can fight its own wars.

All part of the plan, ask the TLC and the Bilderberg Group.

I think we are looking at a second Cold War here.

The possibility of GPS signal manipulation is well known and may be fairly difficult to resolve without additional hardware (although, I would have hoped that high end drones like this one would have such hardware and been programmed to use it).

Perhaps a primitive inertial guidance system that would notice that the craft was being led astray by GPS signal manipulation and react could be used. Reaction might include self destruct and/or destroy sensitive systems and/or fleeing back to the vicinity of a "safe friendly area" using just inertial nav. Once in the "safe friendly area", likely the GPS jamming problem would have resolved (due to distance from enemy controlled territory with the rouge GPS signal transmitters) but it should certainly be back in range of manual control signals that are strong enough to override whatever jamming the opponent is doing.

Or, perhaps radar could be also be used to verify that the GPS reported location and the actual location are the same - don't cruise missles use radar "topo" maps to figure out where they are?

Of course, this just prevents loss/capture of the drone -- it would not prevent its mission from being aborted.

In contrast, encryption of command and control (which is, supposedly, already done) is much harder for an enemy to break in order to take complete control of a drone.

Agreed that this is the next cold war - and just like the last cold war, it will be fought partially on technology grounds. Those who want to cut military spending extremely deeply and insist that the US doesn't need any more military technological advancements because "our capabilities are already so advanced" are, basically, arguing for conceding the US's role as the most powerful military in the world. That might, or might not, be a good thing -- but it's important to understand that is the decision being made.

Panetta should resign immediately.

JM - Do you think the drone was engineered, built and accepted during Paneta's tenure. Is Paneta a scientist, who should have known all the risks? Do you think we should end all drone flights over Iran? Would that satisfy you or would you start babbling that we are too soft on Iran. Should we start a war? The war in Iraq will cost more than 3.5 trillion dollars. Do you think the Iraq war was worth the loss of lives and treasure? Where are those WMD?

We wouldn't have lost the drone if we were not spying on Iran for Israel. Iran is Israel's fear, not that of the US.

We are thousands of miles away and Iran has never done one thing against the US, despite our helping of Iraq, when Iraq was making war on Iran. We were helping Iraq kill Iranians. Now we are crying that Iran is doing the same to us, despite no real hard proof of the charge.

- Do you think the drone was engineered, built and accepted during Paneta's tenure. Is Paneta a scientist, who should have known all the risks? Do you think we should end all drone flights over Iran? Would that satisfy you or would you start babbling that we are too soft on Iran. Should we start a war? The war in Iraq will cost more than 3.5 trillion dollars. Do you think the Iraq war was worth the loss of lives and treasure? Where are those WMD?

Do you think you know everything I am thinking? Is that how you express your opinions, by embellishing my opinion? Give me a break, please!

Ralph, stick to the topic and stop making excuses for Iran's extremism by blaming everything on America and Israel.

Panetta should resign. Not because he is a bad person or because he is directly responsible for the failure, but because he is symbolically responsible for it. Our military needs new guidance after this major security breeching.

Why doesn't the US just "ask" Iran to give the drone back, or else in 1 week all of their nuclear facilities and air defenses will be annihilated.

Simple and clear.

Chris, you're a dangerous man, in my opinion. You sound like the Japanese fanatics as they planned their attack on Pearl Harbor.

The japanese didn't provide an ultimatum.

And it's not like the UN wouldn't allow such action.

Yes, the Japanese did attempt to do so. In August of 1941 Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye attempted to set up a meeting with Roosevelt in Hawaii. Of course the U.S. knew it was an attempt by Japan to ask for the U.S. to stop sanctions and so the U.S. didn't agree to the meeting. Some say the Oil and other sanctions by the U.S. against the Japanese forced them to attack us. But countries put sanctions and exert economic pressure all the time so one could say the Japanese attack was wrong. Same thing if we were to do a pre-emptive attack on Iran--it would also be wrong.

Agreed. With some combination of magnetic compass or primitive inertial nav, etc, it seems it should be pretty easy to detect the GPS must be confused and do something smarter than landing relatively unscathed at the "faked" landing location.

Of course, every time we lose an advanced piece of military equipment so it can be reverse engineered, guess who wins? Yep, the defense contractors that now get contracts to build a fancier, better, more advanced, neater, cooler, and very expensive next generation of that equipment. The defense contractors may be a lot smarter than you're giving them credit for!

You're right and I'm equally sure that a system as advanced as the RQ-170 was configured with that kind of guidance mode as well as several other standby modes for use in the event of loss of a reliable GPS signal (whether due to jamming, spoofing or other contingencies). Ditto more than one self-destruct mode.

I don't believe the Iranian claims for a minute. First they said they shot it down, now they're saying "We hacked in and took control." What do you believe?

A far more likely explanation is that the Iranians are now mounting a disinformation campaign with this guy, trying to get us to believe that they have some "magic" capabilities that will cause us to stop overflying Iran--while we chase our tails looking for a nonexistent vulnerability or defect in the RQ-170.

Think about it this way: if the Iranians actually had the kind of capabilities they are claiming, why advertise them openly? It would make much more tactical and strategic sense for Iran to keep us wondering about what went might have gone wrong with the aircraft. (Giving us an explict warning that will allow us to devise countermeasures against a cyberattack makes no sense at all.)

Always remember, never forget: the intelligence business is a "wilderness of mirrors" and what may seem obvious is rarely correct. Most likely, it's what the opposition wants one to believe.

BTW, the pictures the Iranians have shown of the drone look like photos of a cheap mockup to me. (At least one U.S. official was quaoted as saying that satellite photos of the crash site showed that the aircraft was fragmented on impact.) They Iranians may very well have what's left of an RQ-170 in their possession, but the pictures they have provided ain't pictures of the real bird.

Probably out of stupidity.

Maybe we just delivered a new strain of Ebola virus or something just as nasty.

If everyone over there starts dying soon we'll know.

...or an inside job...

The next one should be filled with horse crap. They can download that...

Then surely we can stop worrying about Iran ever being able to build anything as complex as nuclear weapons. Or, long-range missiles. Oh, wait, Iran has already demonstrated long-range missiles...

You have to understand that the Iranians have been going to world class universities, and studying computer right science along with our people. So have the Chinese and the Russians, and Indians and the Israelis, all these government are promoting computer science big time, we are not the only kid on the block anymore and we better realize the in a hurry!!!

Don't buy American propaganda so easily.

How do you know the extent of Iran's technology? Invention is facilitated by need. With US drones flying over every bit of your country taking unlimited spy photos, wouldn't you prioritize counter drone technology?

Without such measures, every country is vulnerable to being invaded and "conquered" by US troops who need to do little more than play with their computers in the safe quarters of the Pentagon. From the time America armed the first drones with bombs to take out enemy "terrorists" in their own countries, counter-drone technology became mandatory for protection from our country that has become a predator nation.

Sorry guys, if I don't buy the story. I understand farmers are always on the lookout for a good sale on fertilizer, But, I'm not a farmer, and I'm not buying this load that their selling. This country has a lot at stake if it gets out that their best technology has been compromised, so you discredit and play down what happened.

Do you think our government designed and built this, or a private company was contracted to do it, and then cut some corners?

Nah, too easy...

And who did you vote for................

Hey, we are experiencing, first-hand, the "change" that we were promised in 2008....and now the President, by virtue of lack of any leadership, wants to whack away at the Defense Dept even more....

some private company may have made it and even cut some corners like you suggest but who used it?!? if you buy a car without seat belts aren't you responsible should you get injured as a result?

You voted for them... That proves democracy does not work when the people are a bunch of idiots, more occupied with ipods and imops, and dancing with the planets, than real issues.

stop the madening: That's an absurd analogy.

Do you think the private company that cut corners ADMITTED to the shortcomings ahead of time? Before the contracts were signed? Before the money was paid?

You would be better off asking how many mullahs it takes to hold up a lunch table.