Iran Shoots Down US Drone Plane

"We were just...flying around spying... you caught us...you took our plane...and now you won't give it back whaaa whaaa"
 
another drone is reportedly down -

Reuters is reporting that yet another US drone has crashed, this time while it was vacationing in the Seychelles. The Seychelles Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA) confirmed the incident and said that the plane was on a "routine patrol" and had crashed because of mechanical failure.

Dec 13 (Reuters) - A U.S. drone aircraft crashed at Seychelles International Airport on Tuesday, the U.S. embassy in Mauritius said.
"A U.S. Air Force remote-piloted MQ-9 crashed at the Seychelles International Airport in Mahe. The MQ-9 was not armed and no injuries were reported," the embassy said in a statement.
The Seychelles Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA) confirmed the incident and said that the plane was on a "routine patrol" and had crashed because of mechanical failure.

The U.S. embassy did not comment on the plane's mission and said that the cause of the crash was unknown. Iran announced on Dec. 4 it had downed a U.S. drone in the eastern part of the country, near Afghanistan. It has since shown the plane on television and said it is close to cracking its technological secrets.
 
Iran Reporting It Hacked The Drone And Landed It Safely

Earlier this month, NATO lost a spy drone in Iran. Initially NATO admitted that its pilots lost control of the craft, but new reports claim that the Iranian military hacked its GPS systems.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Iranians hijacked the drone by using software that spoofed GPS coordinates, forcing it to land wherever they chose. An unnamed Iranian engineer is reported to have said that they reconfigured the GPS system of the RQ-170 Sentinel, forcing it to "land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications."

"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," he continued. "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain."
It may pay to be at least partially skeptical about the claims though — after all, it's in Iran's best interest for us to believe they hacked the craft. And the way the engineer claims it was done raises some questions. How did they know where and when to find the drone? And doesn't the drone have other navigational systems to fall back on if its GPS systems are hacked? We're not sure.
 
I'd love to see the defense contract costs for this type of drone that can be hacked, brought down intact, and has no self destruct mechanism.

Maybe this is an intentional ploy, and the next one they capture will have an unpleasant surprise for them?
 
The program costs to make a RQ-170 spy drone is around US $ 1,635.4 million
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According to one site
 
Looks like they're quoting pricing on another drone rq-4 from what I see. It has that figure, and individual planes at roughly 200 million a piece. I'm not seeing prices on this drone, but it's probably similar?
 
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