RQ-170? Via David Cenciotti.
David Cenciotti has high-resolution photos of the apparent RQ-170 stealth recon drone captured by Iran. Is it real? An elaborate fake? The photos appear to show some crash damage, but not necessarily the kind of damage consistent with a tumble from high altitude. Questions, questions.
So they are hiding the thing in a high school gymnasium?
This is good for F-35 program, isnt it ?
wonder how Pakistani Generals are feeling about their Iranian cousins ability to guard their air-sovereignty something they themselves failed
GAAAAAAH!! I’m really tired of journalists saying “But it was at high altitude, therefore it couldn’t possibly survive the crash!” It doesn’t matter if the plane was at 50 ft. AGL or 50,000 ft. AGL, once it lost its engine it became a glider. It was likely flying at either it’s max endurance airspeed (which for many high-aspect-ratio planes happens to be just above it’s landing speed), so when the engine cut out the drone just gradually started a slow decent from altitude until it hit the ground. When a plane, any plane, looses its engine, they don’t just immediately “tumble out of the sky”. A higher altitude will only increase the plane’s glide range once the engine quits, and has nothing to do with its impact velocity.
Btw, those seems at the aircraft’s wingroot don’t really look like they should be there. It looks almost like the wing ripped off and the Iranians welded it back on for the photo/video op.
The engine intake looks like a Hijab
Is anyone else noticing that you cannot see any of the turbine stages of its jet engine? which gives us 3 options:
1. Is a well conceived fake but the Iranians dont have any jet engines that are the right size to fit.
2. its real, but its got sand filters that completely block the engines from the shot.
3. Its real and the Iranians have already removed the jet for study.
[...] Sea Ghost is apparently derived from Lockheed’s RQ-170 spy drone and the Polecat prototype. Recent imagery of a wing-shaped airframe at the company’s facility [...]