An American drone that crashed deep in Iranian territory last week has turned up on Iranian television. Iranian officials claimed they brought down the unmanned stealth CIA aircraft after detecting it over the eastern town of Kashmar. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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American officials have acknowledged losing the drone, but have not said if it was shot down or malfunctioned and crashed on its own.
The Iranian government used the drone as a giant public relations tool.
In its appearance on Iran’s state TV, the plane seems intact, and the semi-official Fars News Agency reported that the drone had not destroyed data as it was programmed to do.
There was no way to verify that claim.
Fars also bragged that the “blow has been so heavy that the U.S. officials do not still want to accept that Iran brought down the plane by a cyberattack.”
Iranian officials said the aircraft was controlled in two stations – one in Afghanistan and one in the U.S. — via satellite, according to The Associated Press.
While many of the Iranian claims are dubious, The New York Times reported that the drone was part of a surveillance program that sends the unmanned aircraft to hard-to-reach suspected nuclear sites.
American officials had considered going to Iran to get the drone back, but that was quickly nixed as too risky, The Times said.
Some officials are nervous that Iran could sell the drone to the Chinese, according to the report.
“Maybe Iran figured out a way to interfere with the guidance system,” former American ambassador John Bolton said on Fox News. “That would be even more troubling, but here is no doubt they now have access to very sensitive American technology. That means the Chinese and the Russians will probably have access to it, so it’s bad news.”
Others played down the incident, saying the drone was too damaged to do much harm.
“The cat’s already out of the bag with stealth technology,” John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a website for military policy research, told the Los Angeles Times last week.
“The materials have already been widely disseminated. One little drone isn’t going to make a difference either way.”
