but what stands out is the world’s near total silence and unwillingness to condemn Washington for espionage.
Iran is boasting almost hourly about its capture. It is also claiming that it is decoding the contents of the drone’s spy equipment. And it has said that it will reverse engineer the drone and then build an even better version of it.
None of that is being taken seriously in the West. But there are serious questions about just what happened to the drone and how much Iran will learn from it.
Meanwhile, President Obama confirmed Monday that the United States has asked Iranto return the drone. That elicited ridicule from Iranian officials who failed to understand that Obama’s position maintained the US fiction that the drone was not sent flying over Iran, which would be illegal, but had simply gotten out of control and wandered into Iran. Obama was saying the plane was just lost and Iran should therefore return it.
Iran has threatened to file suit against the United States for violating its airspace. It would then have to prove that the drone had not just malfunctioned and was intentionally sent over Iran. To prove that, it would have to provide the decoded contents of the drone. Some believe Iran
would end up with egg on its face if it couldn’t decode the contents as it claims it is doing and prove the drone was sent over Iran.
Most noteworthy, however, has been the silence of governments around the world since Iran reported capturing the drone December 4. The Iran Times has seen news reports of only two governments condemning the United States and supporting Iran on this issue thus far. Namibian Foreign Minister Utoni Nujoma was visiting Iran and was quoted in the Tehran media as condemning the United States for the drone overflight. Iran’s PressTV quoted Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Miqati as denouncing the drone while meeting Saturday with Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon. No other countries have been cited in the Iranian media as supporting Iran, a surprising turn of events.
The government with the biggest problem at this point is Afghanistan. The drone was launched from Afghanistan; it reportedly flew from the air base at Shindand, the closest Afghan airfield to Iran. Iran has complained to Afghanistan about the violation of its airspace. An embarrassed Afghan spokesman said the government was earnestly “probing the issue.”
Mohsen Pak-Aeen of Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said the incident proves US military bases in the region are a serious security threat, a point Iran can be expected to harp on in the coming months.
It is almost universally believed the drone was sent into Iranian airspace, probably to look for secret nuclear sites. The RQ- 170 Sentinel is a stealth aircraft that can evade radar. Most drones flown over Afghanistan are looking for Taliban and Al-Qaeda activity. But those forces don’t have radar so stealth drones aren’t required. Iran has long been on the prowl seeking to shoot down a US drone for the propaganda value. So stealth drones are needed over Iran.
But what happened to the drone? The first Iranian news reports said the drone had been shot down. But that soon changed as Iranian officials said the drone flew into a cyber trap and was taken over by Iranian experts who landed it intact.
Brig. Gen. Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, the Pasdar aerospace commander, said, “It fell into the trap of our electronic warfare unit, which managed to land it with minimal damage.”
No one in the United States seems to believe that. Drones are designed specifically with that threat in mind. They only accept coded communications. US officials say the drone simply mal- functioned. US drones are designed to fly themselves back to their base if something goes wrong and radio contact is lost.
But this drone did not fly home. And it did not run out of gas and crash in smithereens. Iran put the plane on display last week and it looked almost brand new in the video that was released.
Analysts who examined the video closely said it looked like one wing may have broken off and an instant repair was made by Iran.
Most curiously, Iran displayed the drone with signs and curtains hanging from the wings so there was no view of the undercarriage—suggesting to some that the plane had crash landed, destroying the undercarriage and breaking a wing but otherwise leaving it intact.
One possibility was that the drone ran out of gas and simply glided to a landing somewhere, tearing off the undercarriage.
Bill Sweetman, an aviation analyst, told CNN the RQ-170 would be largely intact if it came down in what is called a flat spin or falling leaf departure. He said in that case the belly would be badly banged up, but the electronics inside would likely emerge in one piece.
Another possibility that must be considered is that Iran is telling the truth this time and did manage to take control of the drone and land it—albeit so in-competently that the drone lost its undercarriage. The embarrassment of that would explain why the aircraft was displayed with its underside obscured.
If that is what happened, the loss to the United States would be very serious. It would mean the CIA could not fly any more drones over Iran and a major
source of intelligence would be lost forever. Some analysts speculated the CIA is now flying drones—all empty of spy gear—repeatedly over Iran to see if Iran can take control of any and land them. If they all return safely, that would tend to disprove Iran’s claims.
The popular media is saying the Islamic Republic hasachieved a technological windfall with the capture of the plane and its spy gear.
But specialists are saying that is not true—though they worry that Iran might sell access to the drone to China or Russia, either of which could learn a lot.
The basic design of stealth aircraft has been public knowledge for more than two decades.
Part of the stealthiness is achieved by the unique shape of the aircraft.
Photos of stealth aircraft go back to the 1980s.
But a major part of the stealthy characteristic is the unique covering that absorbs radar waves rather than reflecting them back. The video of the drone on display showed how little the Islamic Republic knows about stealth aircraft. The two Pasdar officers in the video were running their bare hands over the drone’s surface. But the chemicals humans secrete damage the stealth surface. People working on stealth aircraft always wear plastic gloves—but not the two Pasdar officers, indicating a high level of ignorance.
The contents of the drone are unknown to the public. It is assumed to be carrying “nuclear sniffers”—gizmos that can detect very small quantities of nuclear residue emitted by sites on the ground in order to pinpoint where nuclear work is being conducted.
It is also assumed to be carrying high resolution video. Drones are better than satellites to keep a continual watch on a site. A satellite takes a snapshot every time it passes over a site. But a drone can linger for hours and photograph the activity and the comings and goings at a suspicious site.
The Islamic Republic wouldn’t gain a lot from possession of either of those. The nuclear sniffers supply no need to Iran. Specialists say that possession of the high resolution cameras does not mean they can automatically be reverse engineered.
The manufacturing skills are not part of the cameras. Iran might, however, be able to make use of the cameras it has captured in making its own spy flights over Afghanistan or Iraq. But Iran’s drones are not stealthy and it isn’t clear they would last very long flying over neighboring states.
Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, said drones have been known to fly with the new AESA radar, a very advanced state-of-the-art radar. Singer said Iran could learn a lot about modern radar technology if the drone it captured has that radar. He said Russia and China would also be most anxious to get their hands on that radar.
The Mehr news agency re- ported that both Russia and China have asked for access to the drone, but the Pasdaran said that was not true.
Most Western specialists think Iran lacks the capability to exploit much of the technology in the drone. National security analyst Richard Aboulafia was more than a bit demeaning when he said, “It’s like dropping a Farrari into an ox cart technology culture. But I’m sure they can sell it to someone who can get some information out of it. But the mission systems are likely to be too encrypted to be of use to anyone.”
These analyses were being voiced by people who knew something about technology. But no one who actually knew the RQ-170 was talking. So the comments were really just educated speculation.
Drones are lost quite frequently. According to the Drone Crash Database on the web, since January 2007 the United States has lost 63 drones, mostly in the United States. That is just over one per month. But none of the known losses has involved a stealth drone.
Iran said the drone landed near Kashmar, which is 240 kilometers (150 miles) from the Afghan border in Khorasan Rezavi province. (See map on page three for location.)