Iran fires on US drone

[The Comrade]

how do you know what the iranians knew?

maybe it was the only airfract in the vicinity? maybe nothing else would work? their airforce is in terrible shape.



i'm already smelling signs of "IT'S A CONSPIRACY!!!" here.

[Stratego]

[Aaron]

Impressive. Shooting down a drone from the back of a biplane is not an easy thing to do.

[Boris Johnson]

As has been pointed out, its entirely possible that iran has derped here on two counts

1) Tasking two early 80'ies CAS jets to do an intercept.
2) Trying to look all 'ooh look at our force projection abilities' and making an unconvincing hash of it.

My explanation. They (they being some overzealous paramillitary or political folk, with more zeal than experience) thought this was a good time to show the world how they could hit the great Satan where and when they wanted. Resulting in a fairly massive derp. With elements of herp. Irans regular forces are large, but bar a few notable exceptions (i.e. stuff they recentlyish bought from France or Russia) there designed to fight the West Germans of the early to late 1980'ies. Giving them Persian names and a few tweaks in many cases has no changed that. Its their asymmetric capabilities people should be worried about, as that. They do well.

For those saying 'well this is a test'. The capabilities of the SU-25 are fairly well known at this point, the most recent combat tests being in the rapidly forgotten 'Hey everyone is watching the Olympics' war of 2008 between Russia and Georgia.. Its not something you want to be on the ground facing, however you don't want to be in one if you don't have descent fighter/interceptor cover. Its not something you would be tasking to taking down drones, as you be tasking every one and every bit of CAS you had to desperately support the front lines and interdict U.S + Israel + whomevers rear MSR's if shit got le hot.

[dontworrybehappy]

[eric]

[dontworrybehappy]

Of course we can all speculate as to what happened and Eric, there is a definite chance that's what happened, but here is the deal with that. Your scenario raises more questions.

1. If they were just "flying around" how come they were fully armed? And if they fly around this much, why aren't they better trained? Most planes, on training missions, are not armed.
2. How were they able to find the drone on their own, when a ground pounding plane's radar would just about not be able to see it?
3. Why didn't they keep trying? Why did they "follow it for a while" before breaking off?
4. Why were planes designed to pound sand flying around 20 miles offshore over international waters fully armed?

[Spider]

[dontworrybehappy]

[eric]