acknowledged having lost a drone near the Iran-Afghan border.
Iran said the drone was an RQ-170 Sentinel, a drone that uses stealth technology and could be a very valuable capture by the Islamic Republic, putting some classified US technology in jeopardy.
The United States did not identify the type of drone lost, but it did not deny Iran’s claims that it was an RQ-170.
The Islamic Republic pounded its chest and announced it would retaliate for the US invasion of Iranian airspace, and it said its retaliation would not be confined to within Iranian borders.
The Sunday announcement from the NATO command in Afghanistan said: “The UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] to which the Iranians are referring may be a US unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status.”
The announcement avoided identifying the RQ-170’s mission when it was lost. The US is understood to fly drones along the Afghan border with Iran searching for military supplies that Iran is shipping to the Taliban. It has found such supplies over the years—but very little of them. That has prompted US officials to suspect Iran is providing enough aid to the Taliban to keep the doors open to the group without supplying enough to really help it militarily.
But the United States doesn’t need to use a stealth drone for that purpose as there is no anti-aircraft threat from the Taliban. It has long been suspected that the RQ-170 might be in Afghanistan in part to fly missions over Iran where there would be a threat from air defenses. Using a stealth drone that was undetectable to Iran would also hide from Iran what parts of Iran the United States was spying on.
Later news accounts said US officials acknowledged that the drone was operated by the CIA, not the military. That made it very likely that the drone was being used to spy deep inside Iran and was not simply watching to see what crossed the border.
It is also known that the RQ-170 was used over Pakistan to hunt for Osama bin Laden and hide the flights from the Pakistanis. It was an RQ-170 that sent live video transmissions to the White House showing the attack on bin Laden’s compound in which he was killed.
The news reports from Iran were contradictory. Most of the reports said the regime’s skilled air defenses shot down the RQ-170 and recovered it almost intact. But if it was shot down, it was unlikely to be recovered in any condition approaching intact. The RQ-170 flies at altitudes around 50,000 feet. Iran is not believed to have equipment able to down an aircraft at that altitude—let alone the ability to track a stealth aircraft. But if it did track the drone and fired a missile that simply nicked the drone enough to cause it to lose power, the 10-mile plummet to the ground would be unlikely to leave any of the drone intact.
The NATO announcement said the drone’s operators “lost control” of the drone. That suggested it might have eventually lost altitude, run out of gas, and glided to the ground, which could explain the Iranian claim to have recovered he drone intact.
On the other hand, the Iranian claim to have recovered it intact may be purely fanciful. The Islamic Republic did not release any photos of the drone as evidence of its claim. News reports in the Iranian media simply used stock photos from the Internet.
Last January, the Iranian Navy claimed it had shot down two US drones over international waters in the Persian Gulf and recovered them largely intact. It pledged to show them to the public. Eleven months have now passed and there has been no such public display. In that case, the United States said it was missing no drones over the Persian Gulf. (It would also be a violation of international law to down a drone over international waters.)
The RQ-170 is a spy drone. The designation RQ means it does not carry any weapons. The drone was first photographed near Qandahar in Afghanistan in December 2009. The US Air Force then acknowledged the existence of the aircraft for the first time, but did not give any specifications.
The drone looks a bit like a miniature B-2 bomber. But it is missing some visible elements that are normally routine in stealth designs, such as notched landing gear doors, exhaust shields and sharp leading edges.
The magazine Aviation Week speculated that the designers avoided including “highly sensitive technologies” due to the near certainty one of the drones would be lost given that it has only a single engine.
The Fars news agency said, “Our air defense and electronic warfare units managed to identify and shoot down an advanced unmanned spy aircraft—an RQ-170—after it briefly violated the eastern border.” (If it “briefly” violated the border, that would imply it flew back into Afghanistan before it was shot down.”)
Fars said the drone “was downed with slight damage. It is now under the control of our forces.”
State television, on the other hand, reported that Iran’s cyber warfare unit managed to take over the controls of the drone and land it in Iran, a claim that was not taken seriously in the United States. The radioed flight orders to the aircraft are encrypted.
State television also quoted an unnamed military official as saying, “The Iranian military’s response to the American spy drone’s violation of our airspace will not be limited to Iran’s borders.”
A Majlis deputy claimed in July that Iran had shot down a US spy drone flying near the planned uranium enrichment site at Fordo near Qom. But the Iranian military later said that report was false.