The Iranian government is crowing that they have shot down and
seized an American stealthy drone. It is, from the published
pictures, an RQ-170, a B-2 look-alike that was probably developed
in a “black” program and still highly classified. (Black programs
are so highly classified that no one admits they exist. Well, no
one who is not a Democratic senator, as Durbin, Rockefeller, and
Wyden did a few years ago on a black satellite program. (My
column from about Dec 04 on “Don’t Play ‘Misty’ for Me”
revealed what those three sluggos did.)
Was it shot down? What did we do about it, and why didn’t
we do more?
From the photos we’ve seen, it’s highly unlikely that the
Iranians brought it down with a kinetic weapon. If it had been shot
down, it’d be heavily damaged. What the Iranians are publishing
looks like a drone that is damaged very little, if at all. The
likelihood is that the guidance/control systems malfunctioned and
the aircraft landed softly on some Iranian runway. Otherwise, some
Iranian version of Spiderman caught it in his
webbing.
What was the drone doing over Iran? It was — as the Obama
administration bizarrely disclosed — on a CIA mission conducting
some of espionage and/or surveillance. (I say bizarrely
because no one in his right mind would say anything about the
mission. If we were to admit it’s ours, which seems pretty obvious,
we should have said that it was lost on a training mission over
someplace or other. Admitting it was CIA operated is more than
anyone needs to know).
So what happened? I can only guess. Systems such as RQ-170
are usually outfitted with several layers of redundant
protections. For example, if I had been the designer, any time
we lost contact or control, the RQ-170 should have — after a short
period — burned up or (by an embedded computer virus) destroyed
all of its sensors, controls, and communications systems. It
should have — automatically — left whoever would be the finder
with nothing more than a pile of plastic and metal junk from
which they could learn little. Same thing if the drone had
crashed or been shot down.
To do more should not have been necessary. However, if —
as it appears — the aircraft was recovered with its flight systems
intact, we should have been able, if we acted quickly, to nail it
with a Tomahawk missile. Sending people in to get it would be the
last resort, and unless we were prepared to back that mission with
a full-scale attack on anything that interfered, we’d just be
throwing away some lives that were a whole lot more valuable than
the aforementioned plastic and steel junk. I’m sure the Obama team
dithered until action was too late.
The whole incident illustrates the muddle our Iran policy
is under Obama. He’s against more sanctions, but willing to risk
strategic assets to do reconnaissance. He’s thrown Israel to the
wolves and claims Iran is more isolated than ever. But Iran is so
isolated, it may as well have a seat on the New York Stock
Exchange. There’s no sanity, far less strategy, in all
this.
I am reminded of a special report by Pete Hoekstra and his
staff in about 2006 when he was ranking Republican on the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Pete and his guys said,
bluntly, that we lacked sufficient information on what Iran was
doing to form the basis of any sensible policy. I know — from many
other sources in the intel community — that it isn’t any better
now than it was when that special report came out.
The loss of the drone — and the disclosure of the CIA’s
involvement — may give some people the impression that we are,
indeed, doing better. Frankly, given what we see in everything else
in the Obama approach to Islamic terrorist states and Iran
especially, I’d bet the ranch that this is all show and nothing
more.
Well, nothing more than another embarrassment to us that
makes the Iranians appear stronger than they really are.
