DRONE DOWNING POINTS TO MILITARY STUPIDITY

The recent Iranian downing and capture of an unmanned Lockheed-Martin RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone along the Afghanistan border raises a lot of questions about the thought processes of the American military hierarchy.  Why did it take almost a week for the U.S. to confirm that it had lost such an aircraft and that Iran most likely had it?  Don’t we keep closer track of these things than that?  Didn’t the aircraft ground handler know it was gone and where it went? 

The initial report out of Iran was that it had managed to penetrate the plane’s electronics and to steer to to the ground intact.  The U.S. position, when it finally admitted the plane was missing, was that it must have been shot down and, if so, there was no way the Iranians could have it on the ground and in one piece.  That position has not changed, although we now know the plane is in fact in Iranian possession and indeed intact.   The possibility that Iranians are technologically savvy enough to pull this off is moot; they have a lot of former students who attended MIT, Princeton, Harvard and Stanford. 

Now, you have a spy plane that is packed full of top secret electronic gear.  Why wasn’t it also packed with self-destruct explosives that would destroy it in the event of such a capture?  And, if it was so armed, why didn’t it destroy itself before the Iranians got it? 

Was somebody asleep at the switch?

Of course, there is the possibility that we wanted the Iranians to capture the aircraft.  But, those things are expensive and I cannot imagine why we would do such a thing.  The only scenario that makes sense to me is that our military is not as intellectually sharp as they would have us believe.  In that case, we’re spending a lot of money on a bunch of ill-conceived equipment and plans.    

That’s MY AMERICAN OPINION, respectfully submitted.