U.S. Spy Drone RQ-170 Sentinel Chaptured by Iran

RQ-170 Sentinel (Image Credit : Defense-Update.com)

Thursday (8/12/2011) government and the United States espionage agent was startled by a press release from Iran which shown one of the spy plane that the U.S. unmanned RQ-170 Sentinel on TV. Iranian officials claimed to have shot down the aircraft which was only slightly damaged on the day last week. And now they prove it visually through television broadcasts.

Earlier U.S. officials did admit that the plane had lost contact with one of their scouts, but they still deny that there is no evidence that plane they were shot down by Iran. Further he said that the plane crashed because of the possibility of malfunction, implicitly saying that the possibility reconnaissance aircraft crashed at the highest point of its flight. RQ-170 Sentinel can fly as high as 50,000 feet and it's definitely not a good shape.

But, a military analyst from Lexington university RQ-170 and consultant for it is aircraft maker Locked Martin, Loren Tompsons said that he had been doing for 30 years, and indeed it looks very similar. He also said that  "we (United States) should think Iran has had an intact version of one of our most important intelligence gathering tools"

Still, Thompson went on, the intelligence "windfall" to Iran from obtaining the advanced U.S. stealthy drone may be mitigated.

"I don't think the Iranians get as much out of it as they might hope," he said. "It probably came into their hands as a result of a technical malfunction. What that means is they still don't have a real defense against the U.S. flying other vehicles that have similar capabilities, without much fear of interception.

One of the interesting things in the video is that Iran does not fully show the plane, but the bottom of the plane covered. 

Rumored that the RQ-170 Sentinel aircraft made ​​by Locked Martin, was first flown in airspace of Kandahar Afghanistan in 2009 to assist the effectiveness of the attack and the plane is also believed to be involved in missions that successfully killed al Qaeda leader in Pakistan recently.

Meanwhile, on the part of Iran said that the mission of the U.S. spy plane was "hostile act", adding that he would complain to the UN for violations of air sovereignty by the plane intelligence Iranian Foreign Ministry has summoned the Swiss ambassador to Tehran to protest the violation of airspace of the Republic Iranian by U.S. spy planes are.