4 ms·

Just throwing this out there, maybe the drone was intended to be caught as part of another kind of intelligence gathering operation. It's easy to blame this on

by daenz 15y ago

Just throwing this out there, maybe the drone was intended to be caught as part of another kind of intelligence gathering operation. It's easy to blame this on incompetence, but the other angle is that the drone being caught was made to look like an accident in order to collect intelligence (gps, audio, etc) from wherever the Iranians took it, and this data could be offloaded to someone that could gain access to the drone. Just a possibility.

thematt 15y ago
I've heard that suggested before, but it's probably in a warehouse on some military base being examined. It's unlikely we'd gain any valuable intelligence from the environment they bring it to. It's not like they're going to park it in their nuclear facility to do the dissection.
- daenz 15y ago
  Yeah I guess you're right. Just with everything I'm reading about "how it was done", I'm finding it really hard to believe that these subsystems weren't audited for flaws before they deployed.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  The location of their research facilities is itself valuable.
alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
That does not seem plausible. But there is the possibility that this is a clever ploy to give erroneous technology to Russian and China...
marshray 15y ago
Or they could have its storage seeded with misinformation, or information that tricks those who obtain it into leaking information of their own. For example: http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/4/2537647/darpa-fake-documents-security-wikileaks http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/4/2537647/darpa-fake-documen... But it seems more likely that they really didn't intend to lose the thing in one piece like that.
nosequel 15y ago
+100 The Iranians have obviously never seen Troy or Holy Grail. Horse, rabbit, stealth plane, all the same really.
lostlogin 15y ago
Given that the NYT is reporting that top secret documents were just left in a trailor in Iraq by the ton, I suspect that it's more likely the drone was landed in Iran by accident.

by daenz 15y ago

thematt 15y ago

I've heard that suggested before, but it's probably in a warehouse on some military base being examined. It's unlikely we'd gain any valuable intelligence from the environment they bring it to. It's not like they're going to park it in their nuclear facility to do the dissection.

daenz 15y ago
Yeah I guess you're right. Just with everything I'm reading about "how it was done", I'm finding it really hard to believe that these subsystems weren't audited for flaws before they deployed.
anigbrowl 15y ago
The location of their research facilities is itself valuable.

alphaBetaGamma 15y ago

That does not seem plausible. But there is the possibility that this is a clever ploy to give erroneous technology to Russian and China...

marshray 15y ago

Or they could have its storage seeded with misinformation, or information that tricks those who obtain it into leaking information of their own. For example: http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/4/2537647/darpa-fake-documents-security-wikileaks http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/4/2537647/darpa-fake-documen... But it seems more likely that they really didn't intend to lose the thing in one piece like that.

nosequel 15y ago

+100 The Iranians have obviously never seen Troy or Holy Grail. Horse, rabbit, stealth plane, all the same really.

lostlogin 15y ago

Given that the NYT is reporting that top secret documents were just left in a trailor in Iraq by the ton, I suspect that it's more likely the drone was landed in Iran by accident.