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To: Tonytitan
Here's another possibility: LockMart built this as a Trojan Horse intending it to be landed in hostile territory and captured/analyzed by foreign intel.

It would be highly unwise to deliver any sort of a flying machine to Iranians. It may be not exactly the right thing, but if it flies it's a threat already. In any case Iran loses nothing, and the USA gains nothing.

It's also trivial to check the effective reflecting surface of this stealth drone. Just mount it on a tower and try to see it with a couple of radars, ground- and air-based. If they see it, it's a fake. If they don't you know that you got the real thing.

When they try to apply what they reverse engineer out of it into home grown copies and they start feeding intel to the US

That simply won't happen. Besides, what intel would you get if an Iranian drone flies over Israel? Compare to the level of intel Iranians get out of the same imagery, out of the same mission.

Who knows what little malware goodies have been planted into the thing

The code will be reverse engineered and sanitized. More likely it will be rewritten using the reverse engineered code as a loose guidance. If they are smart they will use two teams to prevent inadvertent copying of malware into the final product. Besides, the algorithms of control are not that complicated; it's largely a well developed math that you solve in real time. An autopilot is a common thing today. If Iran can launch rockets they know what it is because a rocket is unstable by definition and must be actively controlled all the time. An airplane is generally stable (outside of a few stealth models, perhaps like this one.)

If the drone is real, though, if I were Iran I would build it as a manned airplane, somewhat larger. As long as the reflectivity remains low (which is super-easy to check) Iran immediately gets a new line of stealth airplanes using Iranian engines and controls. They don't really need a stealthy robot plane. They'd be happy with a manned stealthy plane. Drones often require complex communications, satellites, ground-based relays, air-based relays, whatever. The USA has them; Iran doesn't. A drone of this type would be of limited use to Iran anyway. But they could find plenty of pilots.

52 posted on 12/09/2011 8:39:06 PM PST by Greysard
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To: Greysard
Its not just the code...its the entire aerodynamic package...starting with the airfoil cross sections.

Easy to scale up the drone to full size.

54 posted on 12/10/2011 3:48:38 AM PST by spokeshave
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