Iran Reconstructs the US Global Hawk Drone It Shot Down Last Year
The drone Bolton wanted Trump to start a war over
Iran has reportedly recovered large sections of a U.S. Air Force RQ-4A Global Hawk drone it shot down last summer. The drone landed in the Persian Gulf where it was later salvaged. While Iran might learn some things about the drone’s design, construction, and onboard sensors it may not be able to build a good copy of the unmanned aircraft.
The RQ-4 Global Hawk drone was shot down on June 20, 2019, by an Iranian surface-to-air missile. The attack sent the Global Hawk plummeting towards the waters of the Persian Gulf below, an event observed by U.S. military forces. A brand-new Global Hawk costs approximately $123 million each.
Now, according to Forbes, Iran is piecing recovered remains of the drone together. Iranian state media has revealed images of the drone in a partially assembled configuration. Iran’s government claims the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy (IRGC-N) recovered the drone parts from the bottom of the Persian Gulf. The IRGC is a paramilitary organization under direct control of Iran’s mullahs and is responsible for Iranian military operations inside the Persian Gulf.
Analysts are doubtful that the drone was recovered from the sea floor, noting that the IRGC-N doesn’t maintain a deep water salvage capability. The parts on display, including parts of the fuselage and wings, likely floated after landing in the Gulf and were recovered by boat. Heavier parts, including sensors, avionics, and other items, may still be on the bottom of the ocean.
Forbes’ H.I. Sutton believes the shootdown, in addition to being used for propaganda value, may have been done to retrieve a RQ-4 for analysis. The wreck was recovered relatively quickly, suggesting Iran may have planned to do so in advance of the attack. Iran was showcasing parts of the drone as early as September 2019.
Tehran has made fanciful claims about what it discovered, including “codes and passwords” it says it can use to disable the drones from “thousands of kilometers away.” While that’s extremely unlikely, it points to the fact that Iran would try to learn everything it could about the downed drone.
Source: Popular Mechanics
Why would they need to shoot down what they hacked and crash landed?
“The wreck was recovered relatively quickly, suggesting Iran may have planned to do so in advance of the attack.”
How condescending OR it actually was in Iranian air space making it easy for them to recover. Zarif tweeted that Iranian fisherman recovered parts of the drone. I wish Putin wasn’t such a gentleman and he actually would help the Iranians recover the components in deep water with Russian equipment. It would serve us right for been such asses. They would even record the exact coordinates to show it was in Iranian waters.
Putin didn’t have to help Iran anymore than he did by selling them an S-300 missile system, which was reverse engineered by the Yemenis to get what they attacked the Saudi refinery with.
Popular Mechanics…. aren’t they the ones that gave us the nine/eleven “pancake theory” bull?
I wouldn’t trust them if they told me water was H2O. Like most publications in the world their married to the Deep State.
They aren’t as inventive as Judy Woods.
The pancake theory came from NIST.
PM is propaganda.. and not just recently.. Here’s a magazine spread attributed to them around 1960 promoting Nuclear Power. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a7c5f34a6847ad469829e0ce1de5c931c886da399ad85fb9baa259e759eed3b5.jpg
can Iran reverse engineer this? They produce their own drones as do many nations…apparently many can be hacked and disabled remotely
They’ve already reversed engineered an American stealth drone and manufactured an entire fleet. So, yes, they can do this.
Why would they bother reverse engineering an obsolete drone?