Ahmadinejad:
Iran has 'been able to control' U.S. drone
December 13, 2011|By the CNN Wire Staff
·
Ahmadinejad: Iran
can control U.S. drone
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that his
country has "been able to control" the U.S. drone that Iran claims it
recently brought down, Venezuelan state TV reported.
Can the world live with a near-nuclear
Iran?
By Mohammed Ayoob, Special to CNN
updated
12:44 PM EST, Wed December 14, 2011
Editor's note: Mohammed Ayoob is University Distinguished Professor of
International Relations at Michigan State University and Adjunct Scholar at the
Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.
(CNN) -- Some analysts have
attributed the recent downing of a U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel
high-altitude reconnaissance drone in Iran to that nation's increasingly
sophisticated capability to launch cyber attacks. Others have dismissed the
idea that Iran was capable of bringing down an RQ-170, arguing that Iranian air
defenses do not have the capability to track an aircraft with radar-evading
technology.
Either
way, the incident clearly demonstrates American concerns regarding Iran's
nuclear capacity, as the drone was likely sent over Iranian territory to spy on
its nuclear program.
I
find the argument that Iran is engaged in developing a nuclear weapons program
credible. I am also convinced that Iran will not test a device, but rather will
acquire the capability to produce a weapon quickly if its strategic environment
deteriorates to such an extent that it feels it must.
Captured Drone May Have Limited Benefit For Iran
Iranian officials have crowed they are mining "priceless
technological information" from a CIA spy drone that went down days ago
inside Iran's borders, broadcasting triumphant images of what they said was the
craft on state TV.
But many experts say the loss of the RQ-170 Sentinel
drone — like the U-2 spy plane shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960 — may
have more value as propaganda than as a treasure trove of technological
secrets.
"Even if the Iranians have possession of a drone,
that doesn't mean they will be able to exploit its technology," says Loren
Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based military and security
think tank.
Iran says its technicians will use "reverse
engineering" to produce an Iranian version, and that Russia and China are
both vying to inspect the so-called unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV. The U.S.
says the drone went down because of a malfunction and has urged Iran to return it, which Iran has
refused to do.
Thompson says countries such as Russia and China already have a
fair understanding of the basic principles of stealth technology: the use of
radar-absorbing materials and of computers to fly the inherently unstable
craft. It's learning how to track stealth aircraft that remains the hardest
part of the equation, he says.
"It's not clear that they or any other
adversaries we might face in the future will be materially advantaged in terms
of being able to counter the stealth," Thompson says. "It's just
intrinsically hard to track using radar."
The Sentinel also might not necessarily represent the most
cutting-edge technology because such systems can take years from inception
until they are operationally viable, says Thomas Donnelly, director of the
Center for Defense Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
In addition, defense planners likely took into
account that the Sentinel would be operating in hostile territory and might
fall into enemy hands, Donnelly says.
He says that's the same reason why U.S. military
planners are careful about using more sophisticated military hardware, such as
the F-22 Raptor, which also has stealth capabilities, for combat patrols over
Afghanistan.
"It's a capability that is excessive for the
mission," Donnelly says. "You save the crown jewels for when you
really need them. The RQ-170 probably falls someplace in the middle of our
technological capabilities."
When an F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter was shot
down over Serbia in 1999, it was feared to be an "unmitigated
disaster," says Jonathan Reed Winkler, a professor at Wright State
University who specializes in foreign relations and military history.
But Winkler points out that the U.S. military had
already been flying the craft for nearly two decades.
"These particular military technologies are not
the most cutting edge. They are simply the ones that are operationally useful,
and so are out in the field," he says.
Even so, suspicion persists that Beijing either
temporarily acquired or at least got to study the F-117 wreckage and then used
the information to help build a prototype stealth fighter, the Chengdu J-20.
More recently, pieces of a U.S. stealth helicopter used in the May raid that
killed Osama bin Laden were left behind in Pakistan despite attempts to blow up
the wreckage. China has denied reports that Pakistan allowed it to examine the wreckage
Cassi Creek:
We’ve all
become familiar with the RQ-170 UAV. The
old nomenclature for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle was “drone.” They were remotely controlled obsolescent air
frames used for target practice by the men and women who fly the manned aerial
vehicles. They were big fat targets,
essentially boring to fly remotely. Now
our UAVs are armed with more than flashing lights. They are used for combat missions in high-risk
areas. They can and do strike fear and
terror into the enemy camps. But their
long-dwell times and the resultant long missions can still render them boring
in use on real-time missions. Drones can
be boring.
Enter the Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. Long a practitioner of bombast
and braggadocio, he seems to believe that his boasts and brags somehow become
truth when he utters them. While he may
think that his political capabilities will somehow rebuild the ancient Persian
empire with Teheran as the Caliphate’s seat of power, the truth is that he is a
small man in way over his head and slaved to the religious dictators that control
life in Iran. Ahmadinejad is the mouthpiece
for the mullahs and the religious shock troops of the “Islamic Republic.” They trot him out to make endless boring,
speeches that numb the minds of those unable to walk away from the drone of his
voice. And it seems appropriate to
update yet another function of the word, “drone” at this point. “Drone – male bee used only for breeding
purposes and then discarded as useless.”
The President of Iran is slated for discard by the mullahs who run the
hive mentality central government of Iran.
He has no power beyond the power to drone endlessly and bore terminally.
The state of relations between the
U.S. and Iran is at best akin to the behavior of adolescent males in a locker
room, posturing and showing off to establish a following of the less powerful. Iran brags about “capturing and bringing down
the RQ-170 they have on display. In
doing so it hopes to shift the balance of power in the Middle East and in South
Asia. The mullahs want the Saudi holy
cities under their control. They want their
search for nuclear weapons to be supported by their neighbors and by more
remote Islamic nations. They want to be feared,
as was the ancient Persian empire.
Iran is going to achieve nuclear
weapons control. It will engineer and
construct or it will buy them quietly from other nuclear states with greedy men
in control of fission warheads. They
most likely will manage to deliver one or more of their warheads onto U.S. soil
and detonate it in such a manner that the trail will lead away from Iran. There are sufficient anti-American terrorists
still active that finding a pool of martyrs will be easy. If they succeed in detonating two or more
nuclear devices against the U.S., then most likely the mullahs will be
sufficiently emboldened to implant a device in Tel Aviv. The world will do nothing beyond
commiseration and condemnation of attack Iran will admit carrying out.
The likelihood of that scenario is
higher than I care to calculate. We
spent the better part of a decade in Iraq, initially hunting non-existent
nuclear weapons while failing to block Iran’s acquisition of warheads. We spent years trying to construct an Arab
army in Iraq while Iraqis blatantly used Iranian-manufactured weaponry against
our troops. We’re doing much the same
in Afghanistan while Pakistan cooperates with Iran’s hunt for nukes and attacks
our troops.
The war-mongering, oil-grubbing
Bush-Cheney theocrats did next to nothing about Iranian nuclear development
when it was possible. Now, the Obama
crew worries about offending everyone and does little to end the growing
threat.
Still, there is some petty action that
even the Obama people can undertake. If
Iran actually downed the RQ-170, then it should be able to power it up and fly
it around Iranian airspace. If they won’t
and don’t, they can’t. They can be
caught in a major lie and exposed on the public stage in such a manner that it
will decrease their status compared to the Saudis. All it takes is a schoolyard boast and
challenge issued loudly and publically.
Let’s see that drone fly, boys, or
admit that you didn’t bring it down. And
I’d be very careful plugging into any com or data port. Stuxnet sound familiar?
Drone on!
