AFAIK, When the operator looses control, it glides to the earth...thats why it wasn't damaged. We should treat the drone just like a human and demand it's release.
Pentagon claims they lost contact with the drone. ( take that for what you will )
It sure as heck didn't get shot down. It's so darn clean it looks fake to me.
I propose we offer a 10 million dollar reward for anyone who blows it up. Preferably with as many as possible in Iran's govt. nearby. Go big. Make a mess. What could it hurt? ( no that's not a call for a nuclear strike. But if you gotta to make the millions, who am I to stop you? )
It does look amazingly intact. Planes are engendered to deal with flight stresses, not so much crash stresses, even an "uncontrolled landing".
Why was it even over Iran? It would make sense over an active war zone, but this is just violation of their airspace. Why? Makes me wonder what the connection is between this and the "explosions" at their nuke plant. I'm sure the administration will be transparent with the information about this.
FYI: I own a "drone". When I lose control of it, or if it determines an system/sensor failure it will land itself. It lands on its own way better that I can manually land it. Sooooooo, it can't be that hard for Lockhead to program that thing to land by itself unharmed.
I wonder if the military programs it to land or destroy itself in the event of a loss of HQ control.
maybe... it is a plant... and there is a small nuclear device on board ... or something else.... or.. maybe it is a test just to see what they do with it.... or not.
This technology isn't really that new so I wouldn't think it's beyond the Iranians to deal with. Everybody's worried about them going nuclear so they can't be that dumb.
They don't bother with the high tech stuff much as they don't need to, brainwashed "martyrs" are so much cheaper.
It's a philosophical thing rather than a technological thing, we (the more or less civilised countries) prize human life, whereas the fundamentalist muslims consider it a good thing to give their lives for the Jihad.
One man with a smart-phone & a video camera is far cheaper than that drone & replaced far quicker.
The other thought is that maybe it's a red herring, the thing is loaded up with disinformation, who knows.
I fail to see the Obama connection, I presume he wasn't flying the thing & he'd look pretty stupid sending in the marines to recover a piece of hardware that's built to be expendable to save military lives.
Remember when the Clinton Commerce Dept. looked the other way and the Chinese secured their new state-of-the-art nav system?
Maybe Obama and company handed the Muslim Brotherhood an active guidance set for the drones!
Surely this drone is nav'ed by GPS. Surely we can find it if WE WANTED TO! Maybe that is the point, our gov't gave it to the Iranians so they protect their borders, much like we gave $200+ million to the Mexicans to secure/protect their southern border.
It sure is curious that after all these years of using drones, that at the height of tensions in the Middle East about "the bomb", all the sudden Iran now has one of ours. For copying and securing their borders?
:" Lets see if the Iranians have the capability to launch a nuclear steal weapon - sell them the technology and follow the lead" we have been down this rabbit hole before.