Lost RQ-170 Sentinel Drone!!!!

[fightingquaker13]

Indeed. All this hand wringing and dismay is arrogance. Nothing can happen to OUR technology! Really? Ever own a micro-soft product?
Sh!t happens, stuff breaks, and things fall where they are. Its not a sign of a screw up or Iranian brilliance. Its a mechanical device failing. How many thousands of hours did that thing have on it? If you send something over hostile territory odds are good it will fail over hostile territory. Ask my good friend Mr. Murphy. My only suggestion, and its potentially a very expensive one, is to have an auto destruct that requires a "phone home" every x hours, and if it doesn't get it then "boom". That way even if our signals were being jamed it would still be destroyed. BUT, that phone home feature could be the only thing that was wrong with an otherwise good bird. You're screwed either way.
FQ13

[Tyler Durden]

I've been using a Mac since May.

Before that, I had the same IBM PC Windows XP machine for like 7 years.  It ran like a champ except for when it came time to edit movies in Windows Movie Maker.  It would lock up every time.

[AE3007H1]

Who says that we didn't tell it TO be over IRAN?  My thinking is that this drone was purposly flying over Iran to designate targets for a possible upcomming attack.  It has been rumored that this particular drone was equipped with equipment/sensors for detecting trace amounts of radiation and chemicals.  I have worked on the Global Hawk program and I assure you  Your cell phone has nothing on "some" of the technology.  I will say that some of the newer cell phones are pretty snappy now though!  

[Big Frank]

The news is reporting that Obama asked them to give our drone back. As if they really would.

[fightingquaker13]

The news is reporting that Obama asked them to give our drone back. As if they really would.

What else is he going to do? Besides, if they say no, at least whe can say "Well, we did ask nicely".
FQ13

[Sponsor]

[billt]

So, bad news, if it is real, then bho just gave it away. But then, that is his job, destroying this country any way he can.

I think this is the most plausible explanation. Although in order for it to happen, it had to have military support from people very high up. That is scary.

[billt]

Sh!t happens, stuff breaks, and things fall where they are. Its not a sign of a screw up or Iranian brilliance. Its a mechanical device failing. How many thousands of hours did that thing have on it?   FQ13

The thing is for that scenario to have happened, the thing would have simply crashed. Then yes, you can go with the whole "$h!t happens", reasoning. But for this you have to buy into that the Iranians have the technology to not only intercept this thing, but then to take over control with enough sophistication to actually navigate it and land it. That's hard to buy considering the long list of recent failures they've experienced with all of these explosions they've been blessed with.

If there was a failure on our part, why on Earth would we put coordinates to an Iranian airfield for it to make an unassisted emergency landing on it's own? That makes even less sense than the Iranians intercepting it.

[tombogan03884]

The thing is for that scenario to have happened, the thing would have simply crashed. Then yes, you can go with the whole "$h!t happens", reasoning. But for this you have to buy into that the Iranians have the technology to not only intercept this thing, but then to take over control with enough sophistication to actually navigate it and land it. That's hard to buy considering the long list of recent failures they've experienced with all of these explosions they've been blessed with.

If there was a failure on our part, why on Earth would we put coordinates to an Iranian airfield for it to make an unassisted emergency landing on it's own? That makes even less sense than the Iranians intercepting it.

As I posted before, my understanding is that the programmed "failsafe" default is a controlled landing, nearest airfield in its memory would be the obvious place to do that.
I suspect the input of lawyers over ruled the common sense of operators.
The people who actually work with it probably said "Lets rig it to blow itself to bits" and the lawyers screamed "But you can't do that !  A piece might hit a civilian !"
Completely overlooking the fact that if we gave a rats ass about those civilians we would not be considering bombing their sh!thole country.

[jnevis]

As I posted before, my understanding is that the programmed "failsafe" default is a controlled landing, nearest airfield in its memory would be the obvious place to do that.
I suspect the input of lawyers over ruled the common sense of operators.
The people who actually work with it probably said "Lets rig it to blow itself to bits" and the lawyers screamed "But you can't do that !  A piece might hit a civilian !"
Completely overlooking the fact that if we gave a rats ass about those civilians we would not be considering bombing their sh!thole country.

Basically correct.
Yes, RPAs typically go into an orbit for a pre-determined amount of time before determining a landing site if they can't get a control message.  A self destruct would be a great idea but like Tom noted it could be over a populated area, not just an unfriendly one.  Fire Scout was headed for DC last year.  Sure a well placed impact would be nice, but there was a lot of population between here and there.  They don't just fly over unfriendly territory.  RPAs spend a great deal of time over the top of our own troops too, doing convoy route clearance and personnel recovery observation.  Would really suck to find a lost aircrewman only to have him or her die when the drone watching his back crashes into them.

[tombogan03884]

Basically correct.
Yes, RPAs typically go into an orbit for a pre-determined amount of time before determining a landing site if they can't get a control message.  A self destruct would be a great idea but like Tom noted it could be over a populated area, not just an unfriendly one.  Fire Scout was headed for DC last year.  Sure a well placed impact would be nice, but there was a lot of population between here and there.  They don't just fly over unfriendly territory.  RPAs spend a great deal of time over the top of our own troops too, doing convoy route clearance and personnel recovery observation.  Would really suck to find a lost aircrewman only to have him or her die when the drone watching his back crashes into them.

I could be wrong, but my gut feeling is that if your luck is that bad you are pretty much SOL anyways.