Iran Shows Downed Spy Drone

[ant1999e]

Why don't we just sell our stealth technology to China? At least we'd get something for it. (sarcasm)

Iran Shows Downed Spy Drone as U.S. Assesses Technology Loss

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/12/09/bloomberg_articlesLVYBU21A74E9.DTL#ixzz1g4mRAluW

(Updates with Schwartz beginning in seventh paragraph, adds China report beginning in 10th paragraph.)


Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The unmanned RQ-170 Sentinel is still highly classified, yet since one came down in Iran five days ago, it's a lot less secret.

Three U.S. defense officials said the plane the Iranians displayed on television yesterday appears to be the Lockheed Martin Corp. RQ-170 that controllers lost contact with on Dec. 4. The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have declined to comment on the matter.

Three U.S. intelligence officials said the greatest concern now is that the Iranians will give Russian or Chinese scientists access to the aircraft, which is designed to be virtually invisible to radar and carries advanced communications and surveillance gear.

Studying it may give two technologically sophisticated potential adversaries insight into the unmanned spy plane's flight controls, communications gear, video equipment and self- destruct, holding pattern or return-to-base mechanisms, officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the RQ-170 is part of a Secret Compartmented Intelligence (SCI) program, a classification higher than Top Secret, and because the investigation into the loss of the drone is also classified.


Reverse Engineering


In addition, they said, the remains of the RQ-170 could help the Russians, Chinese, Iranians or others develop Infrared Surveillance and Targeting (IRST) or Doppler radar technology that under some conditions are capable of detecting stealth aircraft such as drones and the new Lockheed Martin F-35s.

There also is a danger that the fallen Sentinel's shape, special coatings, control surfaces, engine inlet and other unique qualities could help other countries develop or improve their own radar-evading aircraft, such as China's J-20 stealth fighter.

"There is the potential for reverse engineering, clearly," Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz said yesterday during a taping of the television show "This Week in Defense News," according to Air Force Times. "Ideally, one would want to maintain the American advantage. That certainly is in our minds."

If the jet "comes into the possession of a sophisticated adversary, there's not much the U.S. could do about it," he said.

The intelligence officials said that Chinese or Russian access to the drone is a greater concern than a possible Iranian effort to reverse-engineer the RQ-170, which they said is unlikely given the drone's special coatings and other materials.


Stealing Secrets


"Buy, Build or Steal: China's Quest for Advanced Military Aviation Technologies," a new report from the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, says that stealth technology is a high priority for Beijing since "few things differentiate the lethality of an air force more than the level of technology in its most advanced aircraft."

"China will likely rely more heavily on espionage to acquire those critical military aviation technologies it cannot acquire legitimately from foreign suppliers or develop on its own," the report concludes.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration didn't seriously consider bombing the wreckage or sending special operations forces into Iran to destroy or retrieve it because either would be an act of war, two U.S. officials said.
Hacking Claim
Reverse engineering the Sentinel or its components would be difficult and time consuming, the intelligence officials said. The most troubling prospect is that the Iranians' second claim about how they brought it down -- by hacking into its controls and landing it themselves -- might be true, said one of the intelligence officials .
The official said the possibility that the Iranians, perhaps with help from China or Russia, hacked into the drone's satellite communications is doubly alarming because it would mean that Iranian or other cyber-warfare officers were able to disable the Sentinel's automatic self-destruct, holding pattern and return-to-base mechanisms.

Those are intended to prevent the plane's secret flight control, optical, radar, surveillance and communications technology from falling into the wrong hands if its controllers at Creech Lake Air Force Base or the Tonopah Test Range, both in Nevada, lose contact with it.


Targeting Computer Networks


In recent years, one of the officials said, computer hackers thought to be part of extensive Chinese or Russian cyber espionage efforts have attacked the computer networks of numerous defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin; broken into two satellite ground stations and planted keystroke logging software in some military computers -- including some that are used to control some U.S. drones.

It isn't known whether that malware has been found in RQ- 170 computers, or only in those used to control less advanced drones such as the Predator and Reaper, made by General Atomics Aeronautical of San Diego, that are used by the Air Force and CIA in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere.

Two U.S. intelligence officials said that while the drones' and other military and intelligence computer networks are kept separate from the public Internet, investigators have uncovered what they said are numerous instances when thumb drives containing Chinese and other malware have infected classified networks. Often, they said, such infections have spread quickly and proved very difficult to eradicate.


Television Debut


The drone made a 2 1/2 minute television debut yesterday on Iran's state-owned Press TV channel. Two U.S. officials with knowledge of the RQ-170 program said that some details, including the seams on the drone's fuselage, its access ports and its unusual air intake, appear to confirm that it's genuine.

The official Iranian Republic News Agency reported that the Foreign Ministry protested the "violation of Iran's airspace by a U.S. spy drone on Dec. 4," the day Iranian forces claimed to have shot down the aircraft 140 miles inside the Iranian border from Afghanistan.

The RQ-170 was flying a reconnaissance mission inside Iranian airspace when its controllers lost contact with it, U.S. officials said.

The officials said that for three years the U.S. has been flying two types of unmanned surveillance missions over Iran and along the Afghanistan-Iran border from a 9,200-foot runway at a former Soviet airbase in Shindand in western Afghanistan's Herat province.

In addition to monitoring construction and other activity at suspected Iranian nuclear facilities from high altitudes, the officials said, the CIA has been using drones to monitor cross- border traffic and Iranian support for insurgents.

The CIA, not the Air Force, flies the missions inside Iran so they are covert operations that the U.S. government can deny.

[Tombstone RJ]

what a complete cluster by the USAF. Congrats you fuggen idiots.

[Meck77]

How the hell does something like that "come down" in one piece. Something smells.

http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=7426

[Rohirrim]

I can't believe they didn't have self-destruct explosives on that thing.

[ant1999e]

Pentagon had plans to destroy it but the pres said no. Between this and the helo we've lost a lot of secret technology.

[Tombstone RJ]

Why would the pres say no to destroying it?

[mhgaffney]

I can't believe they didn't have self-destruct explosives on that thing.

They probably did -- but something went wrong.

This is a big break for the 9/11 truth movement. We have an eyewitness account at Shanksville of a drone on 911 within a mile of the crash sight of UAL 93 - -minutes BEFORE th4e crash.

The drone has never been ID --- now we know the US had been developing drones secretly.

This drone was classsified.

In my forthcoming book Black 911 I will document the case for the use of radar cloaking technology and drone aircraft on 911.

Notice, the story mentions that this drone was designed to evade radar.

Thanks to Ant for posting.!!!!

MHG

[ant1999e]

Why would the pres say no to destroying it?

Afraid it might have been seen as an act of war. Tough decision but I think you destroy it.

[ant1999e]

They probably did -- but something went wrong.

This is a big break for the 9/11 truth movement. We have an eyewitness account at Shanksville of a drone on 911 within a mile of the crash sight of UAL 93 - -minutes BEFORE th4e crash.

The drone has never been ID --- now we know the US had been developing drones secretly.

This drone was classsified.o

In my forthcoming book Black 911 I will document the case for the use of radar cloaking technology and drone aircraft on 911.

Notice, the story mentions that this drone was designed to evade radar.

Thanks to Ant for posting.!!!!

MHG

Fail!!!!

[UltimateHoboW/Shotgun]

Pentagon had plans to destroy it but the pres said no. Between this and the helo we've lost a lot of secret technology.

How did this Duck stain become the President? DUCK DUCK DUCK

[mhgaffney]

The US is using advanced drones -- controlled by people in a hanger in Georgia - -to kill thousands of so called terrorists who most of the time turn out to be innocent people attending a wedding or funeral --

So where is the outrage?

There is none because we are murdering Arabs or Muslims.

But there is powerful evidence that one of the CIA's super secret drones was used on 9/11 to bring down UAL 93 at Shanksville.

I will present the evidence in my forthcoming book Black 911 --

Ant and the other knee jerks can whine -- who cares?

The truth will out.

Too early to know if the sentinel was used at Shanksville -- or a cousin.

But there is little remaining doubt that classified technology was used against the American people on 9/11 -- by the powers that be.

MHG

[ant1999e]

The US is using advanced drones -- controlled by people in a hanger in Georgia - -to kill thousands of so called terrorists who most of the time turn out to be innocent people attending a wedding or funeral --

So where is the outrage?

There is none because we are murdering Arabs or Muslims.

But there is powerful evidence that one of the CIA's super secret drones was used on 9/11 to bring down UAL 93 at Shanksville.

I will present the evidence in my forthcoming book Black 911 --

Ant and the other knee jerks can whine -- who cares?

The truth will out.

Too early to know if the sentinel was used at Shanksville -- or a cousin.

But there is little remaining doubt that classified technology was used against the American people on 9/11 -- by the powers that be.

MHG

So go and make a.thread.about it.:tinfoilha:threadjac
I swear, you're.as bad as.LABF.

[ant1999e]

what a complete cluster by the USAF. Congrats you fuggen idiots.

BTW, I think this was run by the CIA.

[sirhcyennek81]

They probably did -- but something went wrong.

This is a big break for the 9/11 truth movement. We have an eyewitness account at Shanksville of a drone on 911 within a mile of the crash sight of UAL 93 - -minutes BEFORE th4e crash.

The drone has never been ID --- now we know the US had been developing drones secretly.

This drone was classsified.

In my forthcoming book Black 911 I will document the case for the use of radar cloaking technology and drone aircraft on 911.

Notice, the story mentions that this drone was designed to evade radar.

Thanks to Ant for posting.!!!!

MHG


Way to exploit 3100 dead. Fraud.

:Broncos:

[Rohirrim]

Pentagon had plans to destroy it but the pres said no. Between this and the helo we've lost a lot of secret technology.

I'll believe that when it's substantiated.

[Rohirrim]

The US is using advanced drones -- controlled by people in a hanger in Georgia - -to kill thousands of so called terrorists who most of the time turn out to be innocent people attending a wedding or funeral --

So where is the outrage?

There is none because we are murdering Arabs or Muslims.

But there is powerful evidence that one of the CIA's super secret drones was used on 9/11 to bring down UAL 93 at Shanksville.

I will present the evidence in my forthcoming book Black 911 --

Ant and the other knee jerks can whine -- who cares?

The truth will out.

Too early to know if the sentinel was used at Shanksville -- or a cousin.

But there is little remaining doubt that classified technology was used against the American people on 9/11 -- by the powers that be.

MHG

Now you're losing me. I thought it was mini-nukes. Now it's invisible drones? I'm having a hard time keeping up here.

L. Ron?

Is that you?

[elsid13]

what a complete cluster by the USAF. Congrats you fuggen idiots.

Except it was being run by the CIA according to many new outlets. And thing happen and equipment never works like supposed to all the time. Mr. Murphy always come into play.

[orinjkrush]

Nevertheless, the Obama administration didn't seriously consider bombing the wreckage or sending special operations forces into Iran to destroy or retrieve it because either would be an act of war, two U.S. officials said."

wrong answer. take it out immediately. let em bitch about it. shoulda taken out the black copter too. this is what happens when dumb **** amateurs don't understand the foundations of national security. (unless of course this was a double agent kinda op....we gave em an infected duplicate so we can infect their stuff when they try to get it to work....heheheehe. prolly too hard to get that to work though)

[elsid13]

Nevertheless, the Obama administration didn't seriously consider bombing the wreckage or sending special operations forces into Iran to destroy or retrieve it because either would be an act of war, two U.S. officials said."

wrong answer. take it out immediately. let em b**** about it. shoulda taken out the black copter too. this is what happens when dumb **** amateurs don't understand the foundations of national security. (unless of course this was a double agent kinda op....we gave em an infected duplicate so we can infect their stuff when they try to get it to work....heheheehe. prolly too hard to get that to work though)

They must of felt that Iranian air defense was to ready for that option and they didn't have any other assets that could penetrate the active radar screening with being detected.

[Haroldthebarrel]

Nevertheless, the Obama administration didn't seriously consider bombing the wreckage or sending special operations forces into Iran to destroy or retrieve it because either would be an act of war, two U.S. officials said."

wrong answer. take it out immediately. let em b**** about it. shoulda taken out the black copter too. this is what happens when dumb **** amateurs don't understand the foundations of national security. (unless of course this was a double agent kinda op....we gave em an infected duplicate so we can infect their stuff when they try to get it to work....heheheehe. prolly too hard to get that to work though)

what if a nation sent a drone surveying in us territory and exactly same happened letting the us study it? how would you consider the scenario if they either sent in elite soldiers to blow it up or blew it up with a rocket? how many in the us would consider that an act of war?
Not singling theposter out, just curious.

[ant1999e]

I'll believe that when it's substantiated.

http://www.newkerala.com/news/2011/worldnews-121628.html

US made covert plan to 'retrieve or destroy' stealth drone captured by Iran
Washington, Dec 7 : US officials were planning to conduct a covert mission to retrieve or destroy a stealth drone that recently crashed in Iran, but ultimately dropped the secret operation as it wasn''t worth the risk of provoking a more explosive clash with Tehran, an American official has revealed.
American army officials have confirmed that Iran is having a missing top-secret unmanned aircraft. They said the drone developed mechanical difficulties and remote pilots lost control of the aircraft, and said officials knew immediately it had crashed in eastern Iran.

Iran, however, claimed that the spy plane was shot down by its armed forces and had suffered minor damage.

According to an official, US considered various options for retrieving the wreckage of the RQ-170 drone, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Under one plan, a team would be sent to retrieve the aircraft. US officials considered both sending in a team of American commandos based in Afghanistan as well as using allied agents inside Iran to hunt down the downed aircraft.

Another option would have had a team sneak in to blow up the remaining pieces of the drone. A third option would have been to destroy the wreckage with an airstrike, the paper said.

However, the officials worried that any option for retrieving or destroying the drone would have risked discovery by Iran.

“No one warmed up to the option of recovering it or destroying it because of the potential it could become a larger incident,” the paper quoted the US official, as saying.

“If an assault team entered the country to recover or destroy the drone, the US could be accused of an act of war by the Iranian government,” the official added.

Meanwhile, George Little, the Pentagon press secretary, declined to comment on the discussions over options to recover the drone.

According to the paper, US officials are concerned about the remains of the craft falling into Iranian hands, but don''t believe the aircraft''s technology can be reverse engineered with ease.

[ant1999e]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577082822643123332.html?K EYWORDS=stealth+drone#articleTabs%3Darticle

BY JULIAN E. BARNES

U.S. officials considered conducting a covert mission inside Iran to retrieve or destroy a stealth drone that crashed late last week, but ultimately concluded such a secret operation wasn't worth the risk of provoking a more explosive clash with Tehran, a U.S. official said.

Tehran said it shot down the unmanned craft.

But the U.S. official said the drone developed mechanical difficulties and remote pilots lost control of the aircraft, and said officials knew immediately it had crashed in eastern Iran.

Initially, officials in Washington didn't believe Iran had detected the drone crash.

The stealth drone was developed for the ...

[epicSocialism4tw]

Just when you think that he has found all of the ways to fail, Obama proves that he can always find more ways to fail.

[W*GS]

Just when you think that he has found all of the ways to fail, Obama proves that he can always find more ways to fail.

You're the expert on Fail - hell, you're the God of Fail...

[Boomhauer]

TobRJ - "what a complete cluster by the USAF. Congrats you fuggen idiots."
Re; It was a CIA op, and yes they are "fuggen idiots". Have been for decades.

A couple points -
1) If that's it and it really did land in one piece, maybe without landing gear, then it was successfully hacked and that risk now applies to any and all UAV/UCAVs. There have been previous incidents of Predators being hacked/crashed in Pakistan, but this is the first report of a 'hostile takeover' - if that's the term.
2) While the optics, electronic surveillance, communications and flight control were likely newer tech, the plane's design and construction is on par with the F-117 and B-2. Of particular note is the intake screen and exhaust grate not present in modern designs. The body and leading edge shape, and overall proportions, also differ from modern UCAVs like the X-45 and X-47 being tested for the Navy.

[Tombstone RJ]

BTW, I think this was run by the CIA.

I know when the story first hit the news the radio report I heard said the USAF had no comments on the incident. Either way, it's a total and complete cluster and Iran is going to sell the tech to China and russia.

[orinjkrush]

TobRJ - "what a complete cluster by the USAF. Congrats you fuggen idiots."
Re; It was a CIA op, and yes they are "fuggen idiots". Have been for decades.

A couple points -
1) If that's it and it really did land in one piece, maybe without landing gear, then it was successfully hacked and that risk now applies to any and all UAV/UCAVs. There have been previous incidents of Predators being hacked/crashed in Pakistan, but this is the first report of a 'hostile takeover' - if that's the term.
2) While the optics, electronic surveillance, communications and flight control were likely newer tech, the plane's design and construction is on par with the F-117 and B-2. Of particular note is the intake screen and exhaust grate not present in modern designs. The body and leading edge shape, and overall proportions, also differ from modern UCAVs like the X-45 and X-47 being tested for the Navy.

you know our stealth stuff value is on par with the enigma machine of WWII. we can't let this stuff go to the Chinese/Russians. bomb the damn stuff. there's enough plausible deniability to claim it was a meteor hitting the earth. sheesh.

[orinjkrush]

Just when you think that he has found all of the ways to fail, Obama proves that he can always find more ways to fail.

obama had nothin to do with it. he was golfing on oahu. his natl secur advisors are bull**** though.

[orinjkrush]

what if a nation sent a drone surveying in us territory and exactly same happened letting the us study it? how would you consider the scenario if they either sent in elite soldiers to blow it up or blew it up with a rocket? how many in the us would consider that an act of war?
Not singling theposter out, just curious.

dude, this is happening almost every day with the drug cartels. are we at war with Mexico yet? (yes, but really no.)

[ant1999e]

obama had nothin to do with it. he was golfing on oahu. his natl secur advisors are bull**** though.

But he did make the call not to destroy the a/c.

[orinjkrush]

But he did make the call not to destroy the a/c.

well, you're right there.

[mhgaffney]

The reason was given in the news. To go in would have been a blatant act of war.

This on top of the gross violation of Iranian airspace.

[mhgaffney]

This is another in a long line of cases.

Everything the CIA touches turns to shyte.

[mhgaffney]

Way to exploit 3100 dead. Fraud.

:Broncos:

Huh?

So -- are you saying that Iran was behind 9/11? Or maybe you are generalizing -- since Al Qaeda attacked us -- it's open season on Muslims.

Listen to yourself. You are insane.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

But he did make the call not to destroy the a/c.If that happened then it was definitely the ONLY call to make.

Just as if the Russians lost a spy vehicle over Alaska, you don't send your military into another country. That IS an act of war.

People seem to forget if we piss off enough people in the Middle East they can cripple us economically in a matter of months if they so desire.

[ant1999e]

If that happened then it was definitely the ONLY call to make.

Just as if the Russians lost a spy vehicle over Alaska, you don't send your military into another country. That IS an act of war.

People seem to forget if we piss off enough people in the Middle East they can cripple us economically in a matter of months if they so desire.

BS. One of our A/C was just went down behind enemy lines. We were spying on them. Already crossing the act of war line.
And the middle.east is.in no.condition to all of the sudden join forces against us.

[El Jué]

Now the Iranians are all like
http://www.reelfilm.com/images/gods1.jpg

[Bronco_Beerslug]

BS. One of our A/C was just went down behind enemy lines. We were spying on them. Already crossing the act of war line.
And the middle.east is.in no.condition to all of the sudden join forces against us.

You should have stayed true to your word ("I'm done with politics" or some such crap you uttered here recently).

While downing a spy aircraft could be considered an act of war by the country being spied on, there is no doubt that foreign troops entering your country IS an act of war.

And what don't you understand about cutting off our oil lifeline? (they don't have to "join forces against us")

[ant1999e]

You should have stayed true to your word ("I'm done with politics" or some such crap you uttered here recently).

While downing a spy aircraft could be considered an act of war by the country being spied on, there is no doubt that foreign troops entering your country IS an act of war.

And what don't you understand about cutting off our oil lifeline? (they don't have to "join forces against us")

I was being sarcastic about being done with politics azz hole.

We invaded Pakistan to kill OBL. Was that ok?

If they were going to cut off the oil, they would have already done it. And if they did, how would they survive without the revenue?

Keep on making excuses for your boy.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

We invaded Pakistan to kill OBL. Was that ok?
Tell me that you are really not this ignorant and uniformed?
Our Intelligence and military has been based and operating in Pakistan, with their full blessing, for years.

For you to believe that we invaded Pakistan to get OBL shows you for the total fool you are (Right Wing propaganda impregnated).


If they were going to cut off the oil, they would have already done it. And if they did, how would they survive without the revenue?
Again, you weren't paying attention.
We get only a minimal amount of oil from Iran. They can sell any amounts from an Euro or American embargo to China, India, etc.. who can't get enough.

But the question is what happens from either internal ME conflicts (fighting among themselves) OR outside attacks on ME nations.
All that oil (35% of the entire world's consumption) flows through the narrow
Strait of Hormuz on a daily basis.


Keep on making excuses for your boy.
Is this all you are left with?

[barryr]

Hmm, so Obama scared to destroy the drone for fear Iran will call that an act of war? So what is Iran calling the drone in the first place? Oh, an act of war. Yeah, that worked well Obama. Idiot.

[elsid13]

Hmm, so Obama scared to destroy the drone for fear Iran will call that an act of war? So what is Iran calling the drone in the first place? Oh, an act of war. Yeah, that worked well Obama. Idiot.

Stop being so stupid. It wasn't about what Iran thought, the decision was it worth the lives of American Service Men vs a drone. Because the only way to ensure the assets was destroyed was putting boots on the ground and we lost the element of surprise when the Iranians find the thing. So do you think it worth the potential death of Americans for piece of equipment that most likely damaged and wiped?

[ant1999e]

Stop being so stupid. It wasn't about what Iran thought, the decision was it worth the lives of American Service Men vs a drone. Because the only way to ensure the assets was destroyed was putting boots on the ground and we lost the element of surprise when the Iranians find the thing. So do you think it worth the potential death of Americans for piece of equipment that most likely damaged and wiped?

If you don't want boots on the ground, send in another drone to destroy it.

[cutthemdown]

I'm critical of Obama but in this case there may not have been much he could do considering the risk reward. When the **** hits the fan with Iran, and it will someday, we want to do it from a better perspective then we were retrieving a spy drone etc etc. We want to bomb them because of nuclear proliferation, not to retrieve a drone.

Going to have to split from my repubs on this one and say it's just a bad break but not something we can hang on the President.

Now if I get more information i may change my mind.

[cutthemdown]

If you don't want boots on the ground, send in another drone to destroy it.

I'm not saying that wasn't possible, only that I feel it's tough to 2nd guess and play armchair president.

Fact is a fight is coming. IMO the USA doesn't want to let Iran dictate the terms of that. Getting drawn into something that blows up from a drone destroying mission etc etc not part of the plan. Sometimes when you have the power, having the patience to not use it is the sign of a smart President.

[cutthemdown]

Stop being so stupid. It wasn't about what Iran thought, the decision was it worth the lives of American Service Men vs a drone. Because the only way to ensure the assets was destroyed was putting boots on the ground and we lost the element of surprise when the Iranians find the thing. So do you think it worth the potential death of Americans for piece of equipment that most likely damaged and wiped?

I think if they told the President this technology, if in the wrong hands, will cost American lives down the road, then yes you do it. But another factor is that Iran may want to get the fight started under their terms. One were they can make world think they are the victim. As in the evil Americans invaded us, we have to shoot missiles all over the place and go ape ****.

We want this fight to be when we say it happens, and we want it to be over nuclear weapons. I'm leaning towards Obama listened to his military advisers and made a smart choice to just take the loss.

[barryr]

Stop being so stupid. It wasn't about what Iran thought, the decision was it worth the lives of American Service Men vs a drone. Because the only way to ensure the assets was destroyed was putting boots on the ground and we lost the element of surprise when the Iranians find the thing. So do you think it worth the potential death of Americans for piece of equipment that most likely damaged and wiped?

Yeah, I bet we just couldn't do anything. We currently have American troops risking lives in Afghanistan for what purpose? Stupid is being upset over Iraq when our troops went there, but having nothing to say about our troops wasting away in another country simply because you happen to like this current president, who has been just a great success I might add.

[ant1999e]

Go ahead and make more excuses.

Iran says it will not return US drone

http://news.yahoo.com/iran-says-not-return-us-drone-075134561.html

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran will not return a U.S. surveillance drone captured by its armed forces, a senior commander of the country's elite Revolutionary Guard said Sunday.
Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy head of the Guard, said in remarks broadcast on state television that the violation of Iran's airspace by the U.S. drone was a "hostile act" and warned of a "bigger" response. He did not elaborate on what Tehran might do.
"No one returns the symbol of aggression to the party that sought secret and vital intelligence related to the national security of a country," Salami said.
Iranian television broadcast video Thursday of Iranian military officials inspecting what it identified as the RQ-170 Sentinel drone.
Iranian state media have said the unmanned spy aircraft was detected over the eastern town of Kashmar, some 140 miles (225 kilometers) from the border with Afghanistan. U.S. officials have acknowledged losing the drone.
Salami called its capture a victory for Iran and a defeat for the U.S. in a complicated intelligence and technological battle.
"Iran is among the few countries that possesses the most modern technology in the field of pilotless drones. The technology gap between Iran and the U.S. is not much," he said.
Officers in the Guard, Iran's most powerful military force, had previously claimed that the country's armed forces brought down the surveillance aircraft with an electronic ambush, causing minimum damage to the drone.
American officials have said that U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Iran neither shot the drone down, nor used electronic or cybertechnology to force it from the sky. They contend the drone malfunctioned. The officials had spoken anonymously in order to discuss the classified program.
But Salami refused to provide more details of Iran's claim to have captured the CIA-operated aircraft.
"A party that wins in an intelligence battle doesn't reveal its methods. We can't elaborate on the methods we employed to intercept, control, discover and bring down the pilotless plane," he said.

[ant1999e]

Stop being so stupid. It wasn't about what Iran thought, the decision was it worth the lives of American Service Men vs a drone. Because the only way to ensure the assets was destroyed was putting boots on the ground and we lost the element of surprise when the Iranians find the thing. So do you think it worth the potential death of Americans for piece of equipment that most likely damaged and wiped?

The loss of this drone may put at risk the lives of many servicemen in the future. The fact that we can enter enemy airspace unnoticed to take out their air defenses or whatever else we need is what helps keep them alive in combat. Big picture...

[elsid13]

Yeah, I bet we just couldn't do anything. We currently have American troops risking lives in Afghanistan for what purpose? Stupid is being upset over Iraq when our troops went there, but having nothing to say about our troops wasting away in another country simply because you happen to like this current president, who has been just a great success I might add.

Afghanistan was the logistic base were the attack on 9/11, and along with the tribal regions remains the the center of gravity for Al-Qaeda. Iraq was conflict of convenience. And for the record I was and still am under the belief once we broke Iraq we were responsible for putting back together.

[elsid13]

The loss of this drone may put at risk the lives of many servicemen in the future. The fact that we can enter enemy airspace unnoticed to take out their air defenses or whatever else we need is what helps keep them alive in combat. Big picture...

Big picture, the Iranian don't have the industrial capacity to exploit or reengineering anything they found from the crash. Also in in the 4 to 6 years it would take the Chinese or the Russian to figure out what we did, the next generation of tool will be in play.

[mhgaffney]

Too soon to know for sure -- but the big story here could be a connection to 9/11.

MHG

[ant1999e]

Big picture, the Iranian don't have the industrial capacity to exploit or reengineering anything they found from the crash. Also in in the 4 to 6 years it would take the Chinese or the Russian to figure out what we did, the next generation of tool will be in play.

I hope you're right. I'd imagine we were already working on the next gen.

[sirhcyennek81]

Too soon to know for sure -- but the big story here could be a connection to 9/11.

MHG


Shut the **** up.


:Broncos:

[mhgaffney]

Shut the **** up.


:Broncos:

I suggest you google "Susan McElwain" and "Shanksville."

Her testimony has been up at youtube for years. This woman was in her vehicle -- on 9/11 -- less than a mile from the UL 93 crash site. Just before the crash an AC buzzed her van --

The AC was no more than 40-50 feet from the ground.--

From her description -- the AC was not a manned AC.

It was probably a drone -- an UAV. It has never been identified, however.

What was it doing there?

I met McElwain earlier this year when I visited Shanksville. When I arrive home later this week -- the first item on my to do list will be to contact her and send her the link to this story.

The big question: Is this what she saw on 9/11?

I have only 2 regrets coming to India:
1. I did not bring my Mac
2. I missed the last 2 Bronco games.

MHG

[ant1999e]

I suggest you google "Susan McElwain" and "Shanksville."

Her testimony has been up at youtube for years. This woman was in her vehicle -- on 9/11 -- less than a mile from the UL 93 crash site. Just before the crash an AC buzzed her van --

The AC was no more than 40-50 feet from the ground.--

From her description -- the AC was not a manned AC.

It was probably a drone -- an UAV. It has never been identified, however.

What was it doing there?

I met McElwain earlier this year when I visited Shanksville. When I arrive home later this week -- the first item on my to do list will be to contact her and send her the link to this story.

The big question: Is this what she saw on 9/11?

I have only 2 regrets coming to India:
1. I did not bring my Mac
2. I missed the last 2 Bronco games.

MHG

I suggest you STFU!!!

[sirhcyennek81]

I suggest you google "Susan McElwain" and "Shanksville."

Her testimony has been up at youtube for years. This woman was in her vehicle -- on 9/11 -- less than a mile from the UL 93 crash site. Just before the crash an AC buzzed her van --

The AC was no more than 40-50 feet from the ground.--

From her description -- the AC was not a manned AC.

It was probably a drone -- an UAV. It has never been identified, however.

What was it doing there?

I met McElwain earlier this year when I visited Shanksville. When I arrive home later this week -- the first item on my to do list will be to contact her and send her the link to this story.

The big question: Is this what she saw on 9/11?

I have only 2 regrets coming to India:
1. I did not bring my Mac
2. I missed the last 2 Bronco games.

MHG

I suggest you stop changing your theory about 9/11 every time something you claimed gets debunked. I would also suggest that you cease making money on the 3100 who died that day.

:Broncos:

[elsid13]

I hope you're right. I'd imagine we were already working on the next gen.

It takes 10 years plus to field something in DoD (if we are lucky), what you are seeing on the battlefield today is based on designs 10 years old. LM, NG and Boeing have already started the next generation of drones that will show up in next couple of years.

[ant1999e]

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-calls-iran-back-downed-us-drone-180734188.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is pressing his request that Iran return the U.S. surveillance drone captured by the country's armed forces.
Obama said he wouldn't comment "on intelligence matters that are classified." But, he said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. "We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said.
Iran TV reported earlier Monday that Iranian experts were in the final stages of recovering data from the RQ-170 Sentinel, which went down in Iran earlier this month. Tehran has cited the capture as a victory for Iran and displayed the nearly intact drone on state TV. U.S. officials say the aircraft malfunctioned and was not brought down by Iran.

[alkemical]

what a complete cluster by the USAF. Congrats you fuggen idiots.

They also ****ed up on that Recon plan in china before too.

http://articles.cnn.com/2001-04-01/us/us.china.plane_1_chinese-aircraft-chinese-f-8-chinese-fighter-jet?_s=PM:US

[alkemical]

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

A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones.

The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. military’s most important weapons system.

“We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,” says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. “We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know.”

Just food for thought - the I.T. war is WWIII IMO.

we're falling behind in some key areas... :(

[Bronco_Beerslug]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/
Just food for thought - the I.T. war is WWIII IMO.

we're falling behind in some key areas... :(
We aren't. Just because we don't broadcast what we are doing doesn't mean we don't have the best and brightest working on it.

[alkemical]

We aren't. Just because we don't broadcast what we are doing doesn't mean we don't have the best and brightest working on it.

lol, of course we do...that's outsourcing @ it's finest!

[Bronx33]

Idiot obama asks for it back.

[cutthemdown]

This on the heels of the Lebanon CIA debacle, having all your agents outed lol, is not good.

[alkemical]

We aren't. Just because we don't broadcast what we are doing doesn't mean we don't have the best and brightest working on it.

Also, one other question - someone beat us to the punch - and we still haven't figured it out to the point that it got press.

What's that say?

[mhgaffney]

You guys are confused. You use the word "we" like you and the CIA are on the same page.

Here's a hint. The CIA does not work for you. They don't even work for US. Nor for Obama.

The CIA works for Wall Street investment bankers. Always has.

[Tombstone RJ]

You guys are confused. You use the word "we" like you and the CIA are on the same page.

Here's a hint. The CIA does not work for you. They don't even work for US. Nor for Obama.

The CIA works for Wall Street investment bankers. Always has.

Actually, the CIA works for Israel and the zionists and those dirty jew bankers who own everything.LOL

[Smiling Assassin27]

cheney raised a good point. why did obama not destroy the drone the moment he knew it was down? apparently, obama had a few options to do just that on his desk and decided to just ask the iranians nicely.

[ghwk]

cheney raised a good point. why did obama not destroy the drone the moment he knew it was down? apparently, obama had a few options to do just that on his desk and decided to just ask the iranians nicely.

Because literally bombing the country for a drone is an all out act of war imo and the downside far outweighed the upside. It is always known that weaponry has a life cycle and there is always the possibility technology will end up in enemey hands so while they aren't thrilled about it it was a calculated fact it would happen.

I personally hope this thing is recording everything and wakes up and does some sort of burst transmission then explodes. Or the technology was meant to fall into their hands and it is riddled with viruses.

[ant1999e]

I think we're losing more than most really understand.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/world/middleeast/drone-crash-in-iran-reveals-secret-us-surveillance-bid.html

WASHINGTON — The stealth C.I.A. drone that crashed deep inside Iranian territory last week was part of a stepped-up surveillance program that has frequently sent the United States’ most hard-to-detect drone into the country to map suspected nuclear sites, according to foreign officials and American experts who have been briefed on the effort.

Until this week, the high-altitude flights from bases in Afghanistan were among the most secret of many intelligence-collection efforts against Iran, and American officials refuse to discuss it. But the crash of the vehicle, which Iranian officials said occurred more than 140 miles from the border with Afghanistan, blew the program’s cover.

The overflights by the bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, built by Lockheed Martin and first glimpsed on an airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2009, are part of an increasingly aggressive intelligence collection program aimed at Iran, current and former officials say. The urgency of the effort has been underscored by a recent public debate in Israel about whether time is running out for a military strike to slow Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon.

In a recent speech, President Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, hinted at secret efforts by the United States to keep watch on Iran’s nuclear program.

“We will continue to be vigilant,” Mr. Donilon said last month at the Brookings Institution. “We will work aggressively to detect any new nuclear-related efforts by Iran. We will expose them and force Iran to place them under international inspections.”

Iran said over the weekend that it had recovered the RQ-170, the same drone deployed over Osama bin Laden’s compound before he was killed in May. Senior intelligence officials were disturbed that the drone was publicly discussed in the coverage of the Bin Laden raid, in part because of the fear of exposing its use over Iran.

A statement Sunday from the American-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said Iran might have recovered an “unarmed reconnaissance aircraft” lost while “flying a mission over western Afghanistan.” But several experts noted that the stealth technology of the RQ-170 — which greatly reduces the chances that the drone can be detected by radar — had little use in western Afghanistan, because the Taliban have no radar to detect flights.

Iranian officials have said that the aircraft was detected near the town of Kashmar, 140 miles from the Afghan border, and that it was shot down or crashed because its control systems were hacked by the Iranian military. American officials say that those stories are fanciful, and that the drone was lost because of a malfunction.

Either way, the centerpiece of what had been a covert program is now in the hands of Iranian forces, which may share the captured technology with other countries. There are differing accounts of the extent of the damage to the craft; Iran has not published photographs of the wreckage, though officials have said video of the drone may soon be broadcast on television.

Two officials said that the United States briefly considered going in to retrieve the downed drone, or to destroy it, as first reported Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal, but the operation was deemed too risky. There are questions about whether Iran could reverse-engineer the technology, though they certainly could sell the vehicle to China, Russia or other countries with a deep interest in it.

“The flights from Moscow and Beijing to Tehran were probably quite full the last few days,” said P. W. Singer, who studies military robotics at the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Singer said that the most sought-after technology on the craft is probably its array of sensors, which may include sophisticated radar that is more advanced than anything Russia or China use currently.
Dennis M. Gormley, a missile and drone expert at the University of Pittsburgh, said reverse-engineering the aircraft itself would be difficult even for a sophisticated military. “Unless somebody put the engineering drawings in the U.A.V.,” he said, using the abbreviation for unmanned aerial vehicle, “it won’t be easy. In any complex piece of aviation equipment, you have to replicate the tolerances precisely.”

In Abbottabad, Pakistan, the RQ-170 was used to model the Bin Laden compound. In Iran, among other missions, it is looking for tunnels, underground facilities or other places where Iran could be building centrifuge parts or enrichment facilities.

One such site, outside Qum, was revealed by President Obama and the leaders of France and Britain in 2009, though it appears that Israel played a major role in detecting that site. One senior official said recently that “we’ve got nothing of that scale yet,” but added “we are looking every day.”

Surveillance of Iran is nothing new: American satellites have been trained on its nuclear facilities, their missile bases and their defenses for many years. But the RQ-170 Sentinel, which can fly at an altitude of 50,000 feet, is considered vital to the effort.

While an orbiting surveillance satellite can observe a location for only a few minutes at a time, a drone can loiter for hours, sending a video feed as people move about the site. Such a “pattern of life,” as it is called, can give crucial clues to the nature of the work being done, the equipment used and the size of the work force.

“It’s basically like staking out a Mafia social club,” said John Pike, who tracks military technology at the Web site GlobalSecurity.org. “If I’m just looking at brick-and-mortar targets, satellite’s fine. But if I want to see what people are doing all day, the drone is a whole lot better.”

In addition to video cameras, independent experts say the drone almost certainly carries communications intercept equipment and sensors that can detect tiny amounts of radioactive isotopes and other chemicals that can give away nuclear research.

News reports in South Korea in 2009 said the United States planned to base the RQ-170 drone there to fly surveillance missions over North Korea, whose nuclear and missile programs are a top American intelligence target.

[Smiling Assassin27]

I dont' see anything but downside. ant's article explains exactly what they want to happen--give the job to russia or china to build drones for iran using our technology. is it likely? not at the moment. but had we destroyed the drone, we wouldn't have to worry about this possibility.

[Bronx33]

This is a colossal screw up by obama that drone should have been destroyed asap via air strike ( end of story) his asking for it back kinda reminded me of a SNL skit.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

cheney raised a good point. why did obama not destroy the drone the moment he knew it was down? apparently, obama had a few options to do just that on his desk and decided to just ask the iranians nicely.WTF is "cheney?
If you do just a very little research, you find out why we didn't invade Iran and go after it.

Using anything other than Right Wing media disinformation sites is hard, I know, but if you want to inform yourself accurately, try and expand your mind a little.

[Bronx33]

Because literally bombing the country for a drone is an all out act of war imo and the downside far outweighed the upside. It is always known that weaponry has a life cycle and there is always the possibility technology will end up in enemey hands so while they aren't thrilled about it it was a calculated fact it would happen.

I personally hope this thing is recording everything and wakes up and does some sort of burst transmission then explodes. Or the technology was meant to fall into their hands and it is riddled with viruses.


It wouldnt have been carpet bombing it would have been a surgical strike.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

It wouldnt have been carpet bombing it would have been a surgical strike.

It would be a direct act of war.
Just as if Russia or any other country lost a spy vehicle in the U.S. and invaded our country looking for it.

[elsid13]

It wouldnt have been carpet bombing it would have been a surgical strike.

Let work this mental exercise that you just put forward.

First you have down asset, within known range but without exact coordinates. This eliminate using Sub launched tomahawk because you need some idea where the target is to program Tomahawk. Maybe when the tactical Tomahawk is field this would be a option;because it's going to be networked and has ability to loiter over a region looking for a target.

Second you have limited time frame to reach the objective before the Iranian find it, this eliminates your ability to task B-1,B-2 (located in the US) or reposition F22 into the region to support the destruction of the asset. All these aircraft are designed to penetrate air defense without preparation of entry. The Iranian are inside our decision loop (the old OODA loop), so this eliminates that choice.

Third, you have very active Iranian Air Defense. Because you can not get your fifth-generation bomber or fighter in the area in time you left with either flying F-18 off a CVN in the Indian Ocean, a Raptor if one is in the area or attempting the vertical insertion of SF/Seal/Force Recon unit to land and destroy it. The probability of success if pretty low, and probability of discovery is pretty high because the Iranian are aware of what going on and are scrambling all their defenses to counter a potential American insertions. All the options usually require eliminating or jamming C2 nodes to be successful.

So yes there are military options on the table but are they worth the national security and political fall out if we are not successful? What happens if the Iranian shoot down a F-18 and take a pilot captive? and we have them paraded on Iranian TV? Are we willing to eliminate/destroy an Iranian C2 post to get our troops/planes in or out? Or what happens if SOC team meet resistance on the ground?

So it little be harder then just saying we can use precision strike to solve this problem.

[ant1999e]

This is a colossal screw up by obama that drone should have been destroyed asap via air strike ( end of story) his asking for it back kinda reminded me of a SNL skit.

The things i bolded are just some of the advantages we will probably lose because they will now know how we do what we do and will be able to counter our techniques. I get Elsid's point but the technological advantage we may have lost will have long time consequences.

[Bronx33]

Let work this mental exercise that you just put forward.

First you have down asset, within known range but without exact coordinates. This eliminate using Sub launched tomahawk because you need some idea where the target is to program Tomahawk. Maybe when the tactical Tomahawk is field this would be a option;because it's going to be networked and has ability to loiter over a region looking for a target.

Second you have limited time frame to reach the objective before the Iranian find it, this eliminates your ability to task B-1,B-2 (located in the US) or reposition F22 into the region to support the destruction of the asset. All these aircraft are designed to penetrate air defense without preparation of entry. The Iranian are inside our decision loop (the old OODA loop), so this eliminates that choice.

Third, you have very active Iranian Air Defense. Because you can not get your fifth-generation bomber or fighter in the area in time you left with either flying F-18 off a CVN in the Indian Ocean, a Raptor if one is in the area or attempting the vertical insertion of SF/Seal/Force Recon unit to land and destroy it. The probability of success if pretty low, and probability of discovery is pretty high because the Iranian are aware of what going on and are scrambling all their defenses to counter a potential American insertions. All the options usually require eliminating or jamming C2 nodes to be successful.

So yes there are military options on the table but are they worth the national security and political fall out if we are not successful? What happens if the Iranian shoot down a F-18 and take a pilot captive? and we have them paraded on Iranian TV? Are we willing to eliminate/destroy an Iranian C2 post to get our troops/planes in or out? Or what happens if SOC team meet resistance on the ground?

So it little be harder then just saying we can use precision strike to solve this problem.


Great write up maybe your right and maybe your wrong hopefully we find out the truth of what options he did have but i really do wonder if that multi million dollar drone had a GPS? Say it did and we send a tomahawk in to follow the signal and blow the thing up iran makes a bunch of claims pisses and moans then we simply (deny) it we dont know what you're talking about. They did it daily when they are asked if they sent weapons and IEDs to the insurgents in iraq.


Its obvious barry choose to do nothing i am just curious what options he did have and if hes a giant pussy or not i am almost certain we the people wont get the whole truth lets see what happens.

Also what does this mean?

The Iranian are inside our decision loop

[cutthemdown]

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



Just food for thought - the I.T. war is WWIII IMO.

we're falling behind in some key areas... :(

You would think we would do well in the IT area?

[mhgaffney]

One thing is very clear. Up until this point, the advanced surveillance has found no hard evidence of an Iranian bomb.

If we had the story would have been headline news.

The VOID of evidence supports the opinion of all US intelligence agencies -- that Iran is nowhere near a nuclear weapons capability.

The Israeli bluster is just that. Probably meant for home consumption -- to keep the Israeli people scared (hence, distracted) from continuous political scandals in Israel involving high level political figures.

[Bronx33]

One thing is very clear. Up until this point, the advanced surveillance has found no hard evidence of an Iranian bomb.

If we had the story would have been headline news.

The VOID of evidence supports the opinion of all US intelligence agencies -- that Iran is nowhere near a nuclear weapons capability.

The Israeli bluster is just that. Probably meant for home consumption -- to keep the Israeli people scared (hence, distracted) from continuous political scandals in Israel involving high level political figures.


No its not clear

[Bronco_Beerslug]

G\.
Its obvious barry choose to do nothing i am just curious what options he did have and if hes a giant p***Y
Nominated for stupidest post of the year.



"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02

"I am truly not that concerned about him."
- G.W. Bush, responding to a question about bin Laden's whereabouts,
3/13/02 (The New American, 4/8/02)

“What I have said is we're going encourage democracy in Pakistan, expand our non-military aid to Pakistan so that they have more of a stake in working with us, but insisting that they go after these militants. And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaida. That has to be our biggest national security priority.”

Obama - Second presidential debate: foreign policy, Oct. 7, 2008

It is said that only the hard decisions make it to a President's plate. This was one. Obama's inner circle was deeply divided. After more than an hour of discussion, Obama dismissed the group, saying he wanted time to reflect — but not much time. The next morning, as the President left the White House to tour tornado damage in Alabama, he paused on his way through the Diplomatic Reception Room to render his decision: send the SEALs.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2069571,00.html#ixzz1gVCnMClB

By BRIAN ROSS (@brianross) , RICHARD ESPOSITO, MATTHEW COLE, LUIS MARTINEZ (@LMartinezABC) and KIRIT RADIA (@KiritRadia_ABC)
December 18, 2009

On orders from President Barack Obama (http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cruise-missiles-strike-yemen/story?id=9375236), the U.S. military launched cruise missiles early Thursday against two suspected al-Qaeda sites in Yemen, administration officials told ABC News in a report broadcast on ABC World News with Charles Gibson.

One of the targeted sites was a suspected al Qaeda training camp north of the capitol, Sanaa, and the second target was a location where officials said "an imminent attack against a U.S. asset was being planned."

The Yemen attacks by the U.S. military represent a major escalation of the Obama administration's campaign against al Qaeda.


On 1 August 2011 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Yemen), US drones and reportedly Yemeni aircraft attacked three targets with bombs and missiles in South Yemen, killing 15 suspected al Qaeda militants and wounding 17 others. The locations targeted included al-Wahdah, al-Amodiah, and al-Khamilah in Abyan province. One of those killed was reportedly militant leader Naser al-Shadadi. According to the Yemen Post "At least 35 US drone attacks were reported in Yemen over the last two month."[35][36][37]

On 24 August 2011, unidentified aircraft attacked suspected al-Qaeda militants near Zinjibar. The strikes reportedly killed 30 militants and wounded 40 others.[38]

According to Yemeni officials as reported in the Long War Journal, US airstrikes in southeast Abyan province on 30 August to 1 September 2011 killed 30 AQAP militants. The militants were reportedly engaged in combat with Yemeni military forces.[39]

Two airstrikes by US-operated aircraft on 21 September 2011 reportedly killed four AQAP fighters in Abyan and seven AQAP fighters in Shaqra.[40]

On 30 September 2011, US drone-launched missiles killed four people, including Al Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, in Al Jawf Governorate. The strike also killed Samir Kahn, American-born editor of Inspire magazine. The strike marked the first known time that the US had deliberately targeted US citizens in a drone attack.[41]

A reported drone strike in Zinjibar on 5 October 2011 killed five AQAP militants.[42] According to Yemeni government officials, a US airstrike on 14 October 2011 killed seven AQAP militants, including Egyptian-born Ibrahim al-Bana, AQAP's media chief.[

[alkemical]

You would think we would do well in the IT area?

We don't encourage it here. We don't encourage DIY.

I posted about how China is funding hackerspaces to help drive innovation - they even have given 3d printing machines to their citizens to play with and figure out "something".

We don't encourage that here any more.

We're good at what's in a book - but we're bad at applied knowledge.

[elsid13]

Great write up maybe your right and maybe your wrong hopefully we find out the truth of what options he did have but i really do wonder if that multi million dollar drone had a GPS? Say it did and we send a tomahawk in to follow the signal and blow the thing up iran makes a bunch of claims pisses and moans then we simply (deny) it we dont know what you're talking about. They did it daily when they are asked if they sent weapons and IEDs to the insurgents in iraq.


Its obvious barry choose to do nothing i am just curious what options he did have and if hes a giant p***Y or not i am almost certain we the people wont get the whole truth lets see what happens.

Also what does this mean?

Tomahawk don't follow a signal they are programmed to GPS location or when the tactical tomahawk is deployed it will use GPS and sensor to identify a list of target based upon performance parameters.

Also "inside the decision" refer to the concept entitled OODA loop (it out of fashion now, but still has a good idea.) Because of the limited time frame involved, the Iranian had inside track and could react to the down drone, before we could deploy aircraft from the US.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/OODA.Boyd.svg/800px-OODA.Boyd.svg.png

Attached is the description http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

[Tombstone RJ]

There's simply no way the US could have destroyed the drone without further risk to overall national security and perhaps inciting all out war between the US and Iran.

Like I said this is a class A cluster **** by the CIA and has effectively given our enemies our latest and greatest stealth/reconn intel gathering hardware/software, etc.

heads should roll.

[mosca]

GTFO. These drones have the best technology money could buy. And some people are trying to claim that we couldn't tell where they were when they went down? Yeah, right. There is no way that we couldn't know the coordinates of where they were, and on top of that, there is no way that we couldn't have launched a precision strike to take it out. It baffles the mind.

It makes so little sense that it leads to the conclusion that there's more than we know to this story.

[orinjkrush]

Info on Tom Donilon, our esteemed NSA advisor:(bottom feeder attorney)


Thomas E. Donilon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tom Donilon

Donilon in the Oval Office. (2010)
23rd National Security Advisor
Incumbent
Assumed office
October 8, 2010
President Barack Obama
Deputy Denis McDonough
Preceded by James Jones
Deputy National Security Advisor
In office
January 20, 2009 – October 8, 2010
President Barack Obama
Preceded by James Jeffrey
Succeeded by Denis McDonough
Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs
In office
April 1, 1993 – November 7, 1996
President Bill Clinton
Preceded by Margaret Tutwiler
Succeeded by James Rubin
Personal details
Born May 14, 1955 (age 56)
Providence, Rhode Island, United States
Spouse(s) Catherine Russell
Children 2
Alma mater Catholic University of America
University of Virginia
Profession Lawyer
Thomas E. “Tom” Donilon (born May 14, 1955)[1] is the National Security Advisor in the Obama Administration,[2] and has had a career as a U.S. political advisor, government official and lawyer.[3] Previously, he served together with diplomat Wendy Sherman as Agency Review Team Lead for the State Department in the Obama transition,[4] and as Deputy to National Security Advisor James Jones early in the Obama administration. Donilon replaced Jones as National Security Advisor on October 8, 2010.[5]
Contents [hide]
1 Early life and education
2 Private sector
3 Government and political work
4 Personal life
5 References
6 External links
[edit]Early life and education

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Donilon attended La Salle Academy, earned a B.A. at The Catholic University of America in 1977 and a J.D. at the University of Virginia in 1985. He served on the Editorial Board of the Virginia Law Review.
[edit]Private sector

He worked as Executive Vice President for Law and Policy at Fannie Mae, the federally-chartered mortgage finance company, as a registered lobbyist from 1999 through 2005.[3] This line on his resume raised eyebrows when his appointment to the Obama transition team was announced, given that the company had been seized by federal regulators.[6]
Before his appointment to the Obama Administration, Donilon was a partner in the Washington office of the law firm O'Melveny & Myers, where he advised companies and their boards on a range of "sensitive governance, policy, legal and regulatory matters." [7]
[edit]Government and political work

Donilon worked as assistant secretary of state for public affairs and has served as the Clinton administration's Secretary of State chief of staff. Although he has no military experience and worked as a lobbyist, Donilon was "intimately involved in many major foreign policy issues, including negotiating the Bosnian peace agreement and the expansion of NATO". [3] Donilon figures prominently during formulation of strategy for Afghanistan and associated discussions in Bob Woodward's 2010 book, "Obama's Wars."[8]
Donilon was 'criticsed' by General Jones who once disparaged Donilon, for his lack of overseas experience, telling him that as a result: "You have no credibility with the military," according to Bob Woodward's "Obama's Wars." Jones said that Donilon was not good in his dealings with his staff at the National Security Council, displaying "too little feel for the people who work day and night....". Donilon did visit Afghanistan March 2010 during President Obama's six-hour late-night visit to the country.[9]
[edit]Personal life

Donilon is the brother of Mike Donilon, a lawyer and political consultant who has been chosen to serve as Counselor to Vice-President Joe Biden. He is married to Catherine M. Russell, who has been named Chief of Staff to Jill Biden, and they have two children.[10][11]

[elsid13]

GTFO. These drones have the best technology money could buy. And some people are trying to claim that we couldn't tell where they were when they went down? Yeah, right. There is no way that we couldn't know the coordinates of where they were, and on top of that, there is no way that we couldn't have launched a precision strike to take it out. It baffles the mind.

It makes so little sense that it leads to the conclusion that there's more than we know to this story.

Dude the AF "lost" two nuclear weapons* and those are most controlled items we have, you don't think we can not lose a drone flying 7000 plus miles from the control center in Nevada? Dude you would be surprised how much stuff we lose all the time.

[El Guapo]

Wshould have blasted this thing to high hell. seeing those pics/vids infuriates me daily. No way they can "control" it as they claim.e

[ant1999e]

Dude the AF "lost" two nuclear weapons* and those are most controlled items we have, you don't think we can not lose a drone flying 7000 plus miles from the control center in Nevada? Dude you would be surprised how much stuff we lose all the time.

They weren't lost, just misplaced.
And these drones were controlled from the AOR.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

They weren't lost, just misplaced.
.
LOL


Nathan Wyeth: "Haven't you ever been lost?"

Henry Frapp: "Lost?? Hmmm... been fearsome confused for a month or two, but I ain't never been lost!"

[Requiem]

They weren't lost, just misplaced.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_DoR5oTarwF8/TLh51o1TcNI/AAAAAAAAACM/Vnfiso2Oi2Q/s1600/ROFL_MAO.jpg

[elsid13]

They weren't lost, just misplaced.
And these drones were controlled from the AOR.

You were right they were just misplaced, the fuses sent to Taiwan were also misplaced. Point remain US military ain't perfect and neither are the systems we use.

And unless RQ-170 is different then other UAV, they are maintained and launched in country, but controlled by either ground station in country or in US. Since this was under CIA control I wouldn't be surprised if the ground control station was CONUS.

[Bronx33]

Tomahawk don't follow a signal they are programmed to GPS location or when the tactical tomahawk is deployed it will use GPS and sensor to identify a list of target based upon performance parameters.

Also "inside the decision" refer to the concept entitled OODA loop (it out of fashion now, but still has a good idea.) Because of the limited time frame involved, the Iranian had inside track and could react to the down drone, before we could deploy aircraft from the US.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/OODA.Boyd.svg/800px-OODA.Boyd.svg.png

Attached is the description http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop


Now the big question is did barry had GPS coordinates.

[Tombstone RJ]

GTFO. These drones have the best technology money could buy. And some people are trying to claim that we couldn't tell where they were when they went down? Yeah, right. There is no way that we couldn't know the coordinates of where they were, and on top of that, there is no way that we couldn't have launched a precision strike to take it out. It baffles the mind.

It makes so little sense that it leads to the conclusion that there's more than we know to this story.

the point is that it's reasonable to assume that the reason the US lost track of the drone is because Iran hacked into the flight control system and effectively landed the friggen thing--that's why there is so little damage.

The magnitude of this cluster is still lost on you isn't it.

Iran downed the plane because they tracked it and hacked into the software. Either that or there is a mole inside who is helping them out. Do you see how bad this is now??

[Bronx33]

the point is that it's reasonable to assume that the reason the US lost track of the drone is because Iran hacked into the flight control system and effectively landed the friggen thing--that's why there is so little damage.

The magnitude of this cluster is still lost on you isn't it.

Iran downed the plane because they tracked it and hacked into the software. Either that or there is a mole inside who is helping them out. Do you see how bad this is now??

I think i read some where they are programmed to fly home if communications are lost but it landing there safely does kinda point to hacking or the thing ran out of gas and it landed itself who the **** knows.

We will probably never get the truth about this mess fact is the scumbag Iranians will sell it off to the highest bidder..

[alkemical]

GTFO. These drones have the best technology money could buy. And some people are trying to claim that we couldn't tell where they were when they went down? Yeah, right. There is no way that we couldn't know the coordinates of where they were, and on top of that, there is no way that we couldn't have launched a precision strike to take it out. It baffles the mind.

It makes so little sense that it leads to the conclusion that there's more than we know to this story.

Which is really funny, because if you talk to most people - they know the whole story. :)

But agreed, what information are we unaware of, that led to this decision. I posted a Wired article about how there is malware/virus on the drones, and they can't get rid of it.

What if this "code", might allow for an override?

Interesting stuff.

[alkemical]

the point is that it's reasonable to assume that the reason the US lost track of the drone is because Iran hacked into the flight control system and effectively landed the friggen thing--that's why there is so little damage.

The magnitude of this cluster is still lost on you isn't it.

Iran downed the plane because they tracked it and hacked into the software. Either that or there is a mole inside who is helping them out. Do you see how bad this is now??

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

A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones.

The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. military’s most important weapons system.

“We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,” says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. “We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know.”

Just food for thought - the I.T. war is WWIII IMO.

we're falling behind in some key areas... :(

..

[mosca]

the point is that it's reasonable to assume that the reason the US lost track of the drone is because Iran hacked into the flight control system and effectively landed the friggen thing--that's why there is so little damage.

The magnitude of this cluster is still lost on you isn't it.

Iran downed the plane because they tracked it and hacked into the software. Either that or there is a mole inside who is helping them out. Do you see how bad this is now??
At what point in time did I try to downplay the seriousness of this report? Learn to read and stop acting like you're on crack.

[ant1999e]

Tell me that you are really not this ignorant and uniformed?
Our Intelligence and military has been based and operating in Pakistan, with their full blessing, for years.

For you to believe that we invaded Pakistan to get OBL shows you for the total fool you are (Right Wing propaganda impregnated).


http://news.oneindia.in/2011/05/09/osamaraid-nawaz-calls-it-attack-on-pakistanssovereignty-aid0126.html

[mosca]

Tell me that you are really not this ignorant and uniformed?
Our Intelligence and military has been based and operating in Pakistan, with their full blessing, for years.

For you to believe that we invaded Pakistan to get OBL shows you for the total fool you are (Right Wing propaganda impregnated).
Alright, let's stop all the games already. Everyone knows that "officially" we are not in Pakistan, but "unofficially" that we've been there for years. Pakistan prolly had knowledge of OBL being where he was, and when we went in to take him out, of course they had to publically denounce it. But everyone knows that we've been operating there for years.

[ant1999e]

Is hijacking of a military aircraft considered an act of war???

http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-iran-hijacked-us-drone-says-iranian-engineer-164100415.html

In an exclusive interview, an engineer working to unlock the secrets of the captured RQ-170 Sentinel says they exploited a known vulnerability and tricked the US drone into landing in Iran.

Iran guided the CIA's "lost" stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according to an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone's systems inside Iran.
Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone’s stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety.
Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan.
"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian engineer told the Monitor, giving the most detailed description yet published of Iran's "electronic ambush" of the highly classified US drone. "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain."
The “spoofing” technique that the Iranians used – which took into account precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and longitudinal data – made the drone “land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center, says the engineer.
The revelations about Iran's apparent electronic prowess come as the US, Israel, and some European nations appear to be engaged in an ever-widening covert war with Iran, which has seen assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, explosions at Iran's missile and industrial facilities, and the Stuxnet computer virus that set back Iran’s nuclear program.
Now this engineer’s account of how Iran took over one of America’s most sophisticated drones suggests Tehran has found a way to hit back. The techniques were developed from reverse-engineering several less sophisticated American drones captured or shot down in recent years, the engineer says, and by taking advantage of weak, easily manipulated GPS signals, which calculate location and speed from multiple satellites.
Western military experts and a number of published papers on GPS spoofing indicate that the scenario described by the Iranian engineer is plausible.
"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.”
In 2009, Iran-backed Shiite militants in Iraq were found to have downloaded live, unencrypted video streams from American Predator drones with inexpensive, off-the-shelf software. But Iran’s apparent ability now to actually take control of a drone is far more significant.
Iran asserted its ability to do this in September, as pressure mounted over its nuclear program.
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.
“We have a project on hand that is one step ahead of jamming, meaning ‘deception’ of the aggressive systems,” said Gholizadeh, such that “we can define our own desired information for it so the path of the missile would change to our desired destination.”
Gholizadeh said that “all the movements of these [enemy drones]” were being watched, and “obstructing” their work was “always on our agenda.”
That interview has since been pulled from Fars’ Persian-language website. And last month, the relatively young Gholizadeh died of a heart attack, which some Iranian news sites called suspicious – suggesting the electronic warfare expert may have been a casualty in the covert war against Iran.
Iran's growing electronic capabilities
Iranian lawmakers say the drone capture is a "great epic" and claim to be "in the final steps of breaking into the aircraft's secret code."
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Fox News on Dec. 13 that the US will "absolutely" continue the drone campaign over Iran, looking for evidence of any nuclear weapons work. But the stakes are higher for such surveillance, now that Iran can apparently disrupt the work of US drones.
US officials skeptical of Iran’s capabilities blame a malfunction, but so far can't explain how Iran acquired the drone intact. One American analyst ridiculed Iran’s capability, telling Defense News that the loss was “like dropping a Ferrari into an ox-cart technology culture.”
Yet Iran’s claims to the contrary resonate more in light of new details about how it brought down the drone – and other markers that signal growing electronic expertise.
A former senior Iranian official who asked not to be named said: "There are a lot of human resources in Iran.... Iran is not like Pakistan."
“Technologically, our distance from the Americans, the Zionists, and other advanced countries is not so far to make the downing of this plane seem like a dream for us … but it could be amazing for others,” deputy IRGC commander Gen. Hossein Salami said this week.
According to a European intelligence source, Iran shocked Western intelligence agencies in a previously unreported incident that took place sometime in the past two years, when it managed to “blind” a CIA spy satellite by “aiming a laser burst quite accurately.”
More recently, Iran was able to hack Google security certificates, says the engineer. In September, the Google accounts of 300,000 Iranians were made accessible by hackers. The targeted company said "circumstantial evidence" pointed to a "state-driven attack" coming from Iran, meant to snoop on users.
Cracking the protected GPS coordinates on the Sentinel drone was no more difficult, asserts the engineer.
US knew of GPS systems' vulnerability
Use of drones has become more risky as adversaries like Iran hone countermeasures. The US military has reportedly been aware of vulnerabilities with pirating unencrypted drone data streams since the Bosnia campaign in the mid-1990s.
Top US officials said in 2009 that they were working to encrypt all drone data streams in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan – after finding militant laptops loaded with days' worth of data in Iraq – and acknowledged that they were "subject to listening and exploitation."
Perhaps as easily exploited are the GPS navigational systems upon which so much of the modern military depends.
"GPS signals are weak and can be easily outpunched [overridden] by poorly controlled signals from television towers, devices such as laptops and MP3 players, or even mobile satellite services," Andrew Dempster, a professor from the University of New South Wales School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems, told a March conference on GPS vulnerability in Australia.
"This is not only a significant hazard for military, industrial, and civilian transport and communication systems, but criminals have worked out how they can jam GPS," he says.
The US military has sought for years to fortify or find alternatives to the GPS system of satellites, which are used for both military and civilian purposes. In 2003, a “Vulnerability Assessment Team” at Los Alamos National Laboratory published research explaining how weak GPS signals were easily overwhelmed with a stronger local signal.
“A more pernicious attack involves feeding the GPS receiver fake GPS signals so that it believes it is located somewhere in space and time that it is not,” reads the Los Alamos report. “In a sophisticated spoofing attack, the adversary would send a false signal reporting the moving target’s true position and then gradually walk the target to a false position.”
The vulnerability remains unresolved, and a paper presented at a Chicago communications security conference in October laid out parameters for successful spoofing of both civilian and military GPS units to allow a "seamless takeover" of drones or other targets.
To “better cope with hostile electronic attacks,” the US Air Force in late September awarded two $47 million contracts to develop a "navigation warfare" system to replace GPS on aircraft and missiles, according to the Defense Update website.
Official US data on GPS describes "the ongoing GPS modernization program" for the Air Force, which "will enhance the jam resistance of the military GPS service, making it more robust."
Why the drone's underbelly was damaged
Iran's drone-watching project began in 2007, says the Iranian engineer, and then was stepped up and became public in 2009 – the same year that the RQ-170 was first deployed in Afghanistan with what were then state-of-the-art surveillance systems.
In January, Iran said it had shot down two conventional (nonstealth) drones, and in July, Iran showed Russian experts several US drones – including one that had been watching over the underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordo, near the holy city of Qom.
In capturing the stealth drone this month at Kashmar, 140 miles inside northeast Iran, the Islamic Republic appears to have learned from two years of close observation.
Iran displayed the drone on state-run TV last week, with a dent in the left wing and the undercarriage and landing gear hidden by anti-American banners.
The Iranian engineer explains why: "If you look at the location where we made it land and the bird's home base, they both have [almost] the same altitude," says the Iranian engineer. "There was a problem [of a few meters] with the exact altitude so the bird's underbelly was damaged in landing; that's why it was covered in the broadcast footage."
Prior to the disappearance of the stealth drone earlier this month, Iran’s electronic warfare capabilities were largely unknown – and often dismissed.
"We all feel drunk [with happiness] now," says the Iranian engineer. "Have you ever had a new laptop? Imagine that excitement multiplied many-fold." When the Revolutionary Guard first recovered the drone, they were aware it might be rigged to self-destruct, but they "were so excited they could not stay away."
* Scott Peterson, the Monitor's Middle East correspondent, wrote this story with an Iranian journalist who publishes under the pen name Payam Faramarzi and cannot be further identified for security reasons.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Alright, let's stop all the games already. Everyone knows that "officially" we are not in Pakistan, but "unofficially" that we've been there for years. Pakistan prolly had knowledge of OBL being where he was, and when we went in to take him out, of course they had to publically denounce it. But everyone knows that we've been operating there for years.
This is true, everyone knew that except the author of this thread.

And we have been doing this publicly (giving them billions of dollars every year) for years for the right to use our Intelligence and military there. And no matter how loud they b**** publicly, they probably will continue to take our money and let us continue on.

[ant1999e]

This is true, everyone knew that except the author of this thread.

And we have been doing this publicly (giving them billions of dollars every year) for years for the right to use our Intelligence and military there. And no matter how loud they b**** publicly, they probably will continue to take our money and let us continue on.

What I know is that we planned and executed an attack on foreign soil without permission from that country. If we would have let them in on our plans, OBL surely would not have been there as someone in that government was protecting him. For the record, I have no problem with this.
What I find amusing is how you blindly support and excuse every failure our current president has had but for eight plus years you have and still criticize those who supported Bush.
You congratulate our current president for leaving Iraq but fail to realize that a. He is following the Bush withdrawal plan.
b. He attempted to keep us there longer but couldn't get Iraq to agree.

[ant1999e]

So Slug, is the hijacking and theft of an American aircraft by the Iranians an act of war or you gonna let that one slide?

[Bronco_Beerslug]

So Slug, is the hijacking and theft of an American aircraft by the Iranians an act of war or you gonna let that one slide?

I don't believe their newest version of events because of prior statements from them (threatening Afghanistan for letting us use their country to launch missions into Iran, etc...).

Spying is a complex business, hardly ever an "act of war". Sometimes you win some....Sometimes you lose some.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

What I know is that we planned and executed an attack on foreign soil without permission from that country. If we would have let them in on our plans, OBL surely would not have been there as someone in that government was protecting him. For the record, I have no problem with this.
What I find amusing is how you blindly support and excuse every failure our current president has had but for eight plus years you have and still criticize those who supported Bush.
You congratulate our current president for leaving Iraq but fail to realize that a. He is following the Bush withdrawal plan.
b. He attempted to keep us there longer but couldn't get Iraq to agree.

1st... Us "peons" are not privy to actual military/intelligence covert operations and never should be in most cases (for security reasons). There is speculation that Pakistan Intelligence assisted the U.S. in the OBL raid. If they did, the U.S. could never divulge that for obvious reasons.

2nd... Obama stated in 2007 that he would end the Iraq war. Obama is ending the Iraq war now and ending the Afghanistan war in 2014. If ANY of the war mongers from the Right were/are elected this doesn't happen.

I've posted a thread with Obama's promises, kept and broken (with all sources linked). If you can dispute ANY of them, do so with your sources and that can be debated.

[ant1999e]

1st... Us "peons" are not privy to actual military/intelligence covert operations and never should be in most cases (for security reasons). There is speculation that Pakistan Intelligence assisted the U.S. in the OBL raid. If they did, the U.S. could never divulge that for obvious reasons.

2nd... Obama stated in 2007 that he would end the Iraq war. Obama is ending the Iraq war now and ending the Afghanistan war in 2014. If ANY of the war mongers from the Right were/are elected this doesn't happen.

I've posted a thread with Obama's promises, kept and broken (with all sources linked). If you can dispute ANY of them, do so with your sources and that can be debated.

I agree with most of your first point but really doubt Pakistan Intelligence was involved. If we let them in on our plan, OBL is gone.
As for your second point,

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-10-15/news/30303724_1_train-security-forces-troops-iranian-influence

Obama adminisration abandons plans to keep troops in Iraq past year-end withdrawal deadline
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, October 15, 2011
The Associated Press has learned that the Obama administration is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline.

A senior administration official in Washington confirmed Saturday that all American troops will leave except for about 160 troops attached to the U.S. Embassy. The Pentagon had considered leaving up to 5,000 troops to train security forces and hinder Iranian influence.

A senior U.S. military official said the withdrawal could allow future, limited U.S. military training missions if requested.



Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Iraqi political leaders have rejected giving legal immunity to U.S. troops -- a deal-breaker to Washington.

[ant1999e]

And there's this article...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/world/middleeast/united-states-and-iraq-had-not-expected-troops-would-have-to-leave.html

Despite Difficult Talks, U.S. and Iraq Had Expected Some American Troops to Stay

BAGHDAD — President Obama’s announcement on Friday that all American troops would leave Iraq by the end of the year was an occasion for celebration for many, but some top American military officials were dismayed by the announcement, seeing it as the president’s putting the best face on a breakdown in tortured negotiations with the Iraqis.
And for the negotiators who labored all year to avoid that outcome, it represented the triumph of politics over the reality of Iraq’s fragile security’s requiring some troops to stay, a fact everyone had assumed would prevail. But officials also held out hope that after the withdrawal, the two countries could restart negotiations more productively, as two sovereign nations.

This year, American military officials had said they wanted a “residual” force of as many as tens of thousands of American troops to remain in Iraq past 2011 as an insurance policy against any violence. Those numbers were scaled back, but the expectation was that at least about 3,000 to 5,000 American troops would remain.

At the end of the Bush administration, when the Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, was negotiated, setting 2011 as the end of the United States’ military role, officials had said the deadline was set for political reasons, to put a symbolic end to the occupation and establish Iraq’s sovereignty. But there was an understanding, a senior official here said, that a sizable American force would stay in Iraq beyond that date.

Over the last year, in late-night meetings at the fortified compound of the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, and in videoconferences between Baghdad and Washington, American and Iraqi negotiators had struggled to reach an agreement. All the while, both Mr. Obama and the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, gave the world a wink and nod, always saying that Iraq was ready to stand on its own but never fully closing the door on the possibility of American troops’ staying on.

Through the summer, American officials continued to assume that the agreement would be amended, and Mr. Obama was willing to support a continued military presence. In June, diplomats and Iraqi officials said that Mr. Obama had told Mr. Maliki that he was prepared to leave up to 10,000 soldiers to continue training and equipping the Iraqi security forces. Mr. Maliki agreed, but said he needed time to line up political allies.

Mr. Maliki was afraid that if he came out publicly in favor of keeping troops without gaining the support of other parties in Parliament, his rivals — particularly the former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi — would exploit the issue to weaken his shaky coalition government. Eventually, he got authorization from the group to begin talks with the Americans on keeping troops in Iraq.

In August, after debates between the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House, the Americans settled on the 3,000 to 5,000 number, which was reported in August. According to two people briefed on the matter, one inside the administration and one outside, the arguments of two White House officials, Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, and his deputy, Denis McDonough, prevailed over those of the military.

Intelligence assessments that Iraq was not at great risk of slipping into chaos in the absence of American forces were a factor in the decision, an American official said.

This month, American officials pressed the Iraqi leadership to meet again at President Talabani’s compound to discuss the issue. This time the Americans asked them to take a stand on the question of immunity for troops, hoping to remove what had always been the most difficult hurdle. But they misread Iraqi politics and the Iraqi public. Still burdened by the traumas of this and previous wars, and having watched the revolutions sweeping their region, the Iraqis were unwilling to accept anything that infringed on their sovereignty.

Acutely aware of that sentiment, the Iraqi leadership quickly said publicly that they would not support legal protections for any American troops. Some American officials have privately said that pushing for that meeting — in essence forcing the Iraqis to take a public stand on such a controversial matter before working out the politics of presenting it to their constituents and to Parliament — was a severe tactical mistake that ended any possibility of keeping American troops here past December.

But the repeated lesson of Iraqi politics is that putatively final agreements are always subject to revision. Even now, with a definitive sounding statement from the president, the two sides are continuing to discuss a continuing military relationship.

Shortly after Mr. Obama’s remarks, which were carried on Iraqi television, Gen. Babakir Zebari, the chief of staff of the Iraqi Army, who has said previously that Iraq’s security forces would need American help until 2020, said in a statement that the country still needed military trainers.

Sami al-Askari, a member of Parliament and close adviser to Mr. Maliki, said in an interview that, Mr. Obama’s statement notwithstanding, not much had really changed. “As we said before, the SOFA is totally different from the trainers issue, which is still under negotiation, because we have said that there is a necessity for trainers,” he said.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta held out the possibility of keeping a small force of American military trainers in Iraq in the future, although there are no negotiations under way on numbers or a mission.

“We’re prepared to meet their training needs, we’re prepared to engage in exercises with them, we’re prepared to provide guidance and training with regard to their pilots, we’re prepared to continue to develop an ongoing relationship with them in the future,” Mr. Panetta told reporters on his plane on Friday en route to Indonesia.

On Friday evening, an American official in Iraq, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations are confidential, said that negotiations would now center on arrangements that would begin next year, after all United States troops leave.

Possibilities being discussed are for some troops to return in 2012, an option preferred by some Iraqi politicians who want to claim credit for ending what many here still call an occupation, even though legally it ended years ago. Other scenarios being discussed include offering training in the United States, in a nearby country such as Kuwait, or having some troops here under NATO auspices.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

I agree with most of your first point but really doubt Pakistan Intelligence was involved. If we let them in on our plan, OBL is gone.
As for your second point,

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-10-15/news/30303724_1_train-security-forces-troops-iranian-influence

Yep, I know about the desire to keep training troops in Iraq and I didn't agree with it. Fortunately, we don't have to worry about that now as Obama is fulfilling his promise.

On Pakistan/U.S. Intelligence working together, they have been for years.


A senior Pakistani intelligence source (http://www.npr.org/2011/09/05/140195729/pakistan-says-it-has-captured-senior-al-qaida-leader) said the Americans had provided technical leads in the capture of the three operatives, but declined to specify the nature of those leads or the circumstances in which they were detained. The official said the U.S. assistance demonstrates that the two sides "continue to exchange information ... [and] work together."

The cooperation between the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency suggest that ties have improved since Pakistan limited the U.S. spy agency's activities following the May 2 raid that killed Osama bin Laden in the town of Abbottabad.

"This is an example of the longstanding partnership between the U.S. and Pakistan in fighting terrorism, which has taken many terrorists off the battlefield over the past decade," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. "We applaud the actions of Pakistan's intelligence and security services that led to the capture of a senior al-Qaida operative who was involved in planning attacks against the interests of the United States and many other countries."

Al-Qaida has seen its senior ranks thinned since the death of bin Laden as well as that of Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the group's No.2, in a CIA missile strike last month.

[ant1999e]

Yep, I know about the desire to keep training troops in Iraq and I didn't agree with it. Fortunately, we don't have to worry about that now as Obama is fulfilling his promise.

On Pakistan/U.S. Intelligence working together, they have been for years.

I'll meet you in the middle on this. But Obama is only fulfilling his promise because we couldn't agree on a SOFA with Iraq.

As far as the Stan, I think we need to get out soon. That place is a shythole and no good will come out of us being there.

[ant1999e]

http://news.yahoo.com/iran-mocks-us-toy-drone-174851478--abc-news.html

The Iranian government, which captured a U.S. stealth drone in December, has agreed to give the top-secret spy craft back, but with a catch.
Instead of the original RQ-170 Sentinel drone, the Islamic Republic said Tuesday that it will send President Obama a tiny toy replica of the plane.
Iranian state radio said that the toy model will be 1/80th the size of the real thing. Iranian citizens can also buy their own toy copies of the drone, which will be available in stores for the equivalent of $4.
The White House formally requested return of the drone after the Iranians displayed it on state television. The U.S. says that the craft was operating over Eastern Afghanistan.
PICTURES: Covert War: Iran's Nuclear Program Attacked
The Iranians claim they detected the drone well inside Iran's border and then took control of the craft electronically and brought it down safely. The U.S. has denied that the craft came down for any reason other than technical malfunction.
On Dec. 11, after President Obama said he had requested the return of the drone, an Iranian general said that it was not going to happen. The general also warned on Iranian television of a "bigger response" to the "hostile act" of crossing into Iranian airspace.
"No one returns the symbol of aggression to the party that sought secret and vital intelligence related to the national security of a country," Iranian Islamic Revolution Guards Corps [IRGC] Lt. Commander Gen. Hossein Salami said, according to Iran's Fars News Agency.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that "given Iran's behavior to date, we do not expect them to comply" with Obama's request. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also said he didn't expect Iran to hand over the drone, but told reporters, "I think it's important to make that request."

[mhgaffney]

So Slug, is the hijacking and theft of an American aircraft by the Iranians an act of war or you gonna let that one slide?

Moron. You defy words.

The US drone was over Iranian airspace. The US committed the act of war -- not Iran.

[ant1999e]

Moron. You defy words.

The US drone was over Iranian airspace. The US committed the act of war -- not Iran.

LOL Coming from you that don't mean much. Aren't we suppose to already be at war with them? According to you, either the US or Israel should have already attacked Iran. And you're calling me a moron. ROFL!