US Denies Drone Capture, But Iran Has Pictures
Catapult Drones Had Been Touted by Navy Just Days Before
Iranian claims to have captured a US drone were met by quick denials from the US Navy, which is continuing to insist it isn’t missing any drones. Iran has something else though: it has pictures.
Iranian state media showed images of the captured drone, apparently one of the smaller types of “catapult-launched” drones that the Navy has been so recently fond of. Such drones are fired by an oversized slingshot and often land in the water for later recovery.
Catapult drones have been hyped in multiple Navy reports in recent days, and late last week the launching of prototype X-47Bs by a steam-powered catapult was touted as a step toward more affordable drones.
The drone in the pictures was smaller than these, and has been speculated to be a Boeing ScanEagle, a military version of the SeaScan, a cheap drone used to track fish at sea. ScanEagles have been heavily used by the military in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Yonatan
December 5th, 2012 at 2:21 am
US, keep sending them in. Iran can then reverse engineer the results of your multi-billion dollar research programs. Maybe they will sell the data to China too. Blowback is a bitch.
MarketingFile
December 5th, 2012 at 6:51 am
Yup … Not only the financial loss but the loss of "perception" . Most people really underestimate the value of "perception of superiority"
curmudgeonvt
December 5th, 2012 at 7:35 am
Those dreaded pictures…like the Congresscritters who stand straight-faced and deny having said something really stupid or incriminating…only to have the proof played back for them from tape (or flash) for all to see and hear. In this day and age of cell phone cameras and Ipads – some that take videos – you'd think these idiots would take more care saying what they actually believe and think. Personally, I hope they continue to think they're made of Teflon. It's so much easier now to pin these scumbags with proof now than it used to be. I like it!!!!
PEACE EVER AFTER
December 5th, 2012 at 8:21 am
Brings to mind the time Kruschev made a liar out of Eisenhower on the U-2 incident