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MIRANSHAH: Two US drone strikes struck suspected militants in Pakistan’s tribal badlands on Thursday, killing at least 13 fighters in North Waziristan near the Afghan border, officials said. The aircraft fired missiles hours apart on separate targets in what is considered the premier bastion of Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan as the government in Islamabad welcomed the Afghan and Iranian leaders for a summit. Five militants were killed in the first attack that destroyed a compound in Spalga town near Miranshah and at least eight died in the second attack on a vehicle near the town of Mir Ali,...

The 10-week investigation into the downing of a CIA drone in Iran is raising questions as to whether the malfunctions inadvertently may have handed the Iranians not only the aircraft but its data. Based on the review, a former intelligence official told Fox News that investigators think one of the drone's three major "data streams" began sending back bad information to its U.S.-based operator. A leading question is whether the bad data caused the drone's operator to inadvertently land the aircraft. But it also raises the possibility that the faulty data stream could have prevented the drone from dumping the...

Iran is sending a US drone it captured in December home - with a small makeover. Mocking requests to return the drone, a local toy company plans to send a miniature pink model of the RQ-170 Sentinel to US President Barack Obama. Seyyed Saeed Hassan-pour, head of the cultural department of the Aaye Company, which is making the toy , says, "We wanted for Mr. Obama himself to have these toys and know that Iranians don't leave anyone's requests unanswered. We made the 'RQ' in pink as it is Mr. Obama's favourite colour and we will send it to him...

MIRAMSHAH: A US drone attack targeting a militant compound killed 10 insurgents in a troubled Pakistani tribal region on Wednesday, security officials said. Moreover, a BBC Urdu report quoted local authorities as saying that those killed in the strike were militants from the Haqqani network. Two missiles hit the compound located in Tappi, 10 kilometres southeast of Miramshah, the main town in volatile North Waziristan near the Afghan border, a military official in Peshawar said. “The attack triggered fire in the compound and 10 militants were killed,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised...

-excerpt- It has a wingspan of 86 feet (26 meters), making it the size of a Boeing 737 passenger jet.

Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- An Iranian non-profit company says it will honor U.S. President Barack Obama's request that Iran return a drone that crashed there last year. But instead of the actual drone, the company says it will send miniature toy versions. A lot of them. "We plan to send a full squadron of 12 to the White House for President Obama as a present," said Reza Kioumarsi, a spokesman for the Aaye Art Group, a Tehran-based non-profit, non-governmental company that makes novelty items. The company is trying to determine what Obama's favorite color is before sending the drones, which...

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian state radio says Tehran will give the United States a model of the American surveillance drone captured by the Islamic Republic. The report Tuesday said the toy model of the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone will be sent to the White House in response to a formal request from Washington last month asking Iran to return the aircraft that went down over Iran in December.

ISLAMABAD – Intercepted militant radio communications indicate the leader of the Pakistani Taliban may have been killed in a recent U.S. drone strike, Pakistani intelligence officials said Sunday. A Taliban official denied that. The report coincided with sectarian violence — a bomb blast in eastern Pakistan that killed 14 people in a Shiite religious procession. The claim that the Pakistani Taliban chief was killed came from officials who said they intercepted a number of Taliban radio conversations. In about a half a dozen intercepts, the militants discussed whether their chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed on Jan. 12 in the North...

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani intelligence officials say they have intercepted militant radio communications indicating Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan chief Hakimullah Mehsud may have been killed in a recent US drone strike. The officials said Thursday they overheard Taliban militants in around a half a dozen intercepts discussing whether their chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed on Jan. 12 in the North Waziristan tribal area. Some militants confirmed Mehsud was dead, and one criticised others for talking about the issue over the radio. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters. Pakistani Taliban spokesman Asimullah Mehsud denied the...

In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force­ ­cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents. The rapid expansion of the drone program has blurred long-standing boundaries between the CIA and the military. Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House...

The US Air Force has ordered the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Predator C Avenger for deployment to Afghanistan. A single aircraft is being procured, marking what may be the type's first order. Although termed a test aircraft, the order fulfils an urgent request by secretary of defense Leon Panetta for reconnaissance and strike assets. Several untested aircraft and systems have been purchased or deployed under urgent operational requirements, including the Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Fire Scout currently operating in Afghanistan. "This aircraft will be used as a test asset and will provide a significantly increased weapons and sensors payload capacity on...

Afghan officials say an American reconnaissance drone has crashed in Afghanistan's southeastern province of Paktia, Press TV reports. A Tuesday statement released by NATO confirmed the incident but claimed that the unmanned aircraft made an emergency landing “due to technical malfunction.” According to locals, US-led forces have cordoned off the site of the incident. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid also claimed that members of the militant group shot down the drone in the Ahmadabad district of the province. The Taliban say they have shot down several aircraft and NATO choppers in different parts of Afghanistan over the past few months. Activities...

WASHINGTON – A U.S. official says Iran will find it hard to exploit any data and technology aboard the captured CIA stealth drone because of measures taken to limit the intelligence value of drones operating over hostile territory. The official also said Saturday that despite Iran's latest claims to have hijacked the RQ-170 Sentinel and brought it down near the eastern Iranian city of Kashmar, the U.S. is convinced that the drone malfunctioned. "The Iranians had nothing to do with it," the official said. The official, who could speak about classified matters only on condition of anonymity, did not provide...

The CIA and the U.S. military may have a serious security flaw to deal with if an Iranian engineer's story proves to be true. Speaking to Christian Science Monitor (CSM), he detailed how a team of specialists from his country hacked into a U.S. spy drone's GPS navigator in order to capture it. That's the same one the U.S. government claimed has landed in Iran's territory in early December due to a malfunction. The Iranian specialists reportedly figured out that the RQ-170 Sentinel's weakest point is its GPS by examining previously downed American drones back in September. Using this...

WASHINGTON—U.S. officials believe the downed spy drone on display in Iran crashed and broke into several pieces, and the Iranians reassembled it to make it appear as though it landed intact. Officials also believe the Iranians repainted the drone, perhaps to conceal damage done to the body of the plane. In an Iranian video, the drone appears to be white, whereas the actual one is charcoal gray, they said. Iranian officials last week showed video footage of what they said was the downed drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel. They have variously claimed that they shot it down or remotely skyjacked it...

Iran rebuffs skepticism with a detailed description of attack, which experts call "certainly possible" "You are going to tell me what I want to know, it's just a matter of how much you want it to hurt." — Jack Bauer, 24 It sounds like a scene out of a spy movie -- highly trained national paramilitary operatives harshly testing a foreign agent until they break and do their bidding. But that's exactly what Iran is claiming it did to a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency spy drone. In an unconfirmed, yet fascinating report in The Christian Science Monitor, an unnamed "Iranian engineer"...

"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian military official told the Monitor, calling the downing an "electronic ambush" of secret drone. "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain," he added. The engineer added that the Iranians were able to make the drone land "on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center."

That’s a good question — and according to former VP Dick Cheney’s contacts, Barack Obama didn’t lack for options to keep the highly-classified drone from falling into the Iranian military’s hands. In an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Cheney wonders why Obama didn’t order an air strike on the downed aircraft while he still had the chance: (VIDEO AT LINK) “The right response to that would have been to go in immediately after it had gone down and destroy it,” he said on CNN’s “Out Front with Erin Burnett.” Instead, Cheney said, “he asked nicely for them to return it....

Iran is having a field day over the latest downed Drone, saying that President Barack Obama “begs to give him back his toy plane.” “Obama is hoping that the Iranian government is in a Christmas mood because he has asked Tehran to send him his Christmas present. Iran mocks Obama who ‘begged' for [his] Drone back,” chided the semi-official Fars News Agency. "We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said following a meeting at the White House with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

One of the Air Force’s premier drones crashed Tuesday morning in the Seychelles, the Indian Ocean archipelago that serves as a base for anti-piracy operations, as well as U.S. surveillance missions over Somalia. The crash of the MQ-9 Reaper comes roughly two weeks after a U.S. drone went down in Iran.

Report: Iran says it can control the droneBy the CNN Wire Staff updated 5:29 AM EST, Tue December 13, 2011 (CNN) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday his country can "control" the U.S. drone aircraft that Iran claims it recently brought down, Venezuelan state TV reported. "There are people here who can control this spy plane, surely we can analyze this plane too," Ahmadinejad told VTV. "The systems of Iran are as advanced as this system." President Barack Obama said Monday that the United States has asked Iran to return the drone aircraft that Iran claims it recently brought...

Most of us have long understood that Obama is a traitor to our country and a mole whose not so covert mission is to destroy America. Update : We were right Obama gave Iran the drone There is simply no explanation that makes any kind of sense to explain this individual’s actions other than that. If you cringed at the cavalier attitude with which Obama treated the murder of protesting students at the hands of Iran’s dictatorial regime, if you watched, dumbfounded, pictures of Iranian war ships passing trough the Suez canal at Obama’s request, if you listened in disbelief...

TEHRAN, IRAN –  Iranian experts are in the final stages of recovering data from the U.S. surveillance drone captured by the country's armed forces, state TV reported Monday. Tehran has flaunted the drone's capture as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States in a complicated intelligence and technological battle. Lawmaker Parviz Sorouri, who is on the parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, said Monday the extracted information will be used to file a lawsuit against the United States for the "invasion" by the unmanned aircraft.

A rather obscure aviation contraption is making headlines this week by cracking secure wireless Internet (WiFi) and a cell phone networks (GSM), and along with it, a host of personal information and sensitive data. The Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform (otherwise known as the WASP) is an unmanned vehicle converted to run on batteries instead of gasoline. It has a 6-foot wingspan, a 6-foot length and weighs in at 14 pounds. WASP stores global positioning system (GPS) information that allows it to fly a predetermined course without the assistance of an operator, only requiring human intervention for taking off and landing....

Iran will reverse-engineer the US drone it captured on December 4, Iran's Press TV quoted a senior Iranian official as saying Sunday. Parviz Sorouri, member of the Majlis Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy, said that his country will "mass produce" the drones in the near future. He also said that the Iranian version would be "of higher quality" than the original RQ-170 Sentinel, according to the Press TV report.

Gov. Rick Perry's entire statement about the "loss" of our drone [1:20] Bonus: Perry: Washington DC is the problem [1:16]

-excerpt- The covert operations in play are “much bigger than people appreciate,” said Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser under President George W. Bush. “But the U.S. needs to be using everything it can.”

Jennifer Griffin of Fox News exposes evidence that Barack Obama wimped-out when faced with a decision to either protect American intelligence and national security or upset the Iranians. “With early knowledge that the aircraft had likely remained intact, the senior U.S. official also told Fox News that President Obama was presented with three separate options for retrieving or destroying the drone. The president ultimately decided not to proceed with any of the plans because it could have been seen as an act of war, the official told Fox News.” “Among the options the U.S. considered were sending in a special-ops...

The X-37B Mystery Spacecraft Just Had Its Nine Month Mission Extended Indefinitely Robert Johnson Dec. 3, 2011, 9:15 AM Image: US Air Force The pilotless X-37B Orbital Vehicle has been silently circling the planet for the past nine months and the Air Force has announced it will continue its classified mission indefinitely. W.J. Hennigan of the Los Angeles Times reports the X-37B resembles a smaller version of the space shuttle and is said to test various new technologies in space. Via CSM: "We initially planned for a nine-month mission, which we are roughly at now, but we will continue to...

A couple of days ago Conunderground.com was the first to point out that the circumstances surrounding the “crash” of the top secret RQ170 Sentinel drone simply didn’t add up. And we were tight! The story continues to develop and it doesn’t look good! To recap, first we were told that Iran might’ve shot it down and then the story changed to “the drone crashed on Iranian soil ” After realizing that the Iranians were about to parade a perfectly functional drone with nary a scratch on it, the official story changed to “the drone landed because it wants to live”...

<p>U.S. officials have confirmed to Fox News that images aired by Iranian state television do in fact show the secret U.S. drone that went down last week in eastern Iran.</p>

Mystery surrounds how American's most sophisticated spy plane was captured by Iran after it was paraded on Iranian state television earlier today in mint condition. Iran claims the lost RQ-170 Sentinel was on a surveillance mission last week when it was detected by Iranians over Kashmar and was downed by their armed forces. But the fact the drone is in such good shape contradicts Iran's claim it was shot down - and backs up U.S. claims that Tehran did not bring it down through electronic, cyber or any other means. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2071741/Is-downed-U-S-stealth-drone-Iranian-TV-airs-footage-military-officials-inspecting-craft.html#ixzz1g0LLMLpg

WATCH: Revolutionary Guard top officer tells Fars news agency that military experts are 'well aware how precious the technological information of this drone is.' Published 18:28 08.12.11Latest update 18:28 08.12.11 Iran state television displays 'downed U.S. surveillance drone' WATCH: Revolutionary Guard top officer tells Fars news agency that military experts are 'well aware how precious the technological information of this drone is.' By Haaretz Tags: Iran threat Iran Iraninan state television displayed what it said was a downed U.S. surveillance drone on Thursday, days after U.S. officials expressed concern that Tehran would be able to glean information about a classified...

A U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that images aired by Iranian state television do in fact show the secret U.S. drone that went down last week in eastern Iran. "Yep, that's it," the official told Fox News. "And it's intact." U.S. officials had been expecting the video to appear. The footage comes after Iran claimed to have shot down the RQ-170 drone after it wandered into its airspace. SNIP One official told Fox News on Thursday that the incident is a huge loss and makes the top-secret helicopter tail lost during the Usama bin Laden raid in Pakistan "look...

Could this be the smoking electron in the alleged unmanned air vehicle (UAV) incident over Iran? The original reports that Iran "shot down" a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel appear to be misleading. Iranian news agency reports credited the army's electronic warfare unit with bringing down the UAV, but apparently in a way that limited the amount of damage on landing or impact. Only six weeks ago, Russia announced delivering the Avtobaza ground-based electronic intelligence and jamming system (shown above) to Iran. Most Russian weapons exports to Iran are blocked, including the proposed transfer of the S-300 surface to air missile...

The U.S. drone that apparently fell into Iran's hands was part of a joint CIA-military reconnaissance operation, Fox News has learned. A senior U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that the spy plane was being used for the CIA-military operation along the Afghan-Iranian border when it lost connectivity and disappeared. Officials had earlier confirmed the Iranians have the RQ-170 drone, but it was previously unclear what the drone was doing or which agency was operating it. After Iran's military made the questionable claim Sunday that it had shot down the drone, the CIA at first referred questions to the Pentagon....

What do you know about drones? You know drones — those robotic, unmanned planes that fire missiles for the American military across Afghanistan, Pakistan and anywhere else the United States needs to get away with murder. Well if you don’t know too much, don’t worry, that’ll change soon. The Federal Aviation Administration is looking into rules that will bring the controversial aircraft into the country, creating an United States airspace buzzing with tiny, robot planes to look over every inch of American soil — and maybe more. An article published Tuesday in the Los Angeles Times reveals that new drone...

U.S. officials considered conducting a covert mission inside Iran to retrieve or destroy a stealth drone that crashed late last week, but ultimately concluded such a secret operation wasn't worth the risk of provoking a more explosive clash with Tehran, a U.S. official said. See entire article for further detail.

Iran appears to be in possession of one of America's most sophisticated weapons, a super-secret spy plane whose stealth technology is the same as the drone used to monitor the compound during the raid that killed Usama bin Laden, U.S. military sources told Fox News on Monday. Military sources confirmed that the Iranians have the RQ-170 drone, which is so advanced that the U.S. Air Force has not distributed even a photo of it. However, they did not say that the Iranians shot down the spy plane, as was reported by Iran's official IRNA news agency. IRNA quoted an unidentified...

The US military lost an RQ-170 Sentinel drone over Iran -- the same type of stealth craft the Islamic Republic claims to have shot down near its eastern border, sources confirmed to FOX News Channel Monday. After Iran claimed Sunday that it downed a US drone -- with some reports saying the vehicle was a RQ-170 Sentinel -- US and NATO officials suggested that the Iranians could be referring to an unmanned craft that veered off course and crashed.

Tehran claims to have brought down with "little damage" an RQ-170 surveillance drone, considered one of the most secret aircraft in the world, flying inside eastern Iran. The seizure of the unarmed surveillance drone intact would give access to a treasure trove of classified information including the designs of the aircraft and its payload of sensors. However it was unlikely the drone had escaped a crash or being shot down without significant damage and its sensitive technology was probably rigged with self-destruct mechanisms, experts added. Suspicion surrounds the claims because Iran has yet to release any footage of the captured...

Chinese Province Starts Drone Patrol of Waters Near N.Korea Marine authorities in the northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning near the North Korea-China border are using an unmanned aerial vehicle to watch illegal activities in waters off North Korea. Since not many countries use UAVs for coastal patrols, there is speculation that China wants to monitor North Korean defectors who escape by sea. Hong Kong's South China Morning Post on Wednesday reported Liaoning marine authorities "began drone patrols for the first time over water and islands close to North Korea last week." Liaoning is the first province to use a drone...

Argus One airship, U.S. military drone Drones and satellites dominate the U.S. military's surveillance arsenal, but fleets of unmanned airships could soon join in keeping an eye on battlefields. One robotic airship contender, the modular Argus One, has upcoming flight demonstrations scheduled at a U.S. Department of Energy Nevada Test Site that hosted nuclear bomb tests during the Cold War. The Argus One's design resembles a segmented sky worm made of connecting modules, and has the flexibility to quickly change its flight path as it slinks through the sky. It can also carry 30 pounds of surveillance sensors or...

In a New York Times Op-Ed, international human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith describes a meeting he had in Pakistan with residents from the Afghan-Pakistani border region that has been relentlessly bombed by American drones; if I had one political wish this week, it would be that everyone who supports (or acquiesces to) President Obama’s wildly accelerated drone attacks would read this:

PESHAWAR: A US drone strike on a vehicle on Thursday killed five commanders of one of Pakistan’s most influential Taliban leaders, Maulvi Nazir, one of the faction’s senior commanders told Reuters. He identified four of the commanders as Hazrat Omar, Nazir’s younger brother, Khan Mohammad, Miraj Wazir and Ashfaq Wazir. According to initial details, five missiles were fired on a vehicle carrying several passengers. The vehicle was traveling from Tora Gola village to the nearby area of Azam Warsak when it was hit. “Nazir’s younger brother Omar Wazir has been killed, it has been confirmed,” a Pakistani security official told...

Switchblade is a Non Line of Sight (NLOS) munition enabling engagement of time-sensitive fleeting, high value targets with an armed, tactical miniature aerial system (MAV), operated with 'man-in-the-loop' control for identification, targeting, and attack. Allowing engagement of stationary or maneuvering targets ensuring high kill probability. To perform what special operations snipers are doing today - but offer operators more opportunities to strike, perform more complex missions at longer range and ensure maximum safety for the shooter. AeroVironment describes the Switchblade as the warfighter's “magic bullet”. It can rapidly provide a powerful, but expendable miniature flying Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR)...

A Marine and a Navy medic killed by a U.S. drone airstrike were targeted when Marine commanders in Afghanistan mistook them for Taliban fighters, even though analysts watching the Predator's video feed were uncertain whether the men were part of an enemy force. Those are the findings of a Pentagon investigation of the first known case of friendly fire deaths involving an unmanned aircraft, the April 6 attack that killed Marine Staff Sgt. Jeremy Smith, 26, and Navy Hospitalman Benjamin D. Rast, 23. The 381-page report, which has not been released, concludes that the Marine officers on the scene and...

DERA ISMAIL KHAN: A US missile strike killed at least six suspected militants in northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border Saturday, two Pakistani intelligence officials said, in the third such American missile attack in as many days. The officials said four missiles slammed into a compound near the border town of Angore Adda in the South Waziristan tribal region. The strike was targeting fighters of Maulvi Nazir, a militant commander who is accused of working with the Taliban and al-Qaeda to direct cross-border attacks, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Nazir is believed to have an agreement with...

1 The Long War Journal: US Predators kill 6 'militants' in North and South Waziristan Written by Bill Roggio on October 13, 2011 12:09 AM to 1 The Long War Journal Available online at: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2011/10/us_predators_kill_4_10.php US Predators struck today in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan, killing six "militants" in the first recorded strikes in nearly two weeks. In the first strike, the unmanned, CIA-operated Predators, or the more deadly Reapers, fired a pair of missiles in the village of Danda Darpa Khel just outside Miramshah, the main town in North Waziristan, according to AFP. Pakistani...