Drone shootdown highlights history of U.S. incursions into Iran's airspace by SeanDNaylor
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military drone Iran shot down near the Persian Gulf on June 20 likely didn’t stray into Iranian airspace, as the Iranians claimed it had, according to several former senior officials. But had it done so, it would not have been the first U.S. drone to fly into Iran, according to two of those officials.
A former U.S. Central Command official said he was aware of accidental drone incursions into Iranian airspace between 2013 and 2016. “Those one or two instances were by error,” the official said. “Those were innocent circumstances.” In addition to the occasional mistaken flight into Iranian airspace, there are strong indications that the United States also deliberately flies stealth drones over Iran to collect intelligence. The clearest evidence of this is a December 2011 incident in which Iran brought down and then displayed a RQ-170 drone that had been flying a secret mission for the CIA through its airspace.
Asked whether the Defense Department had any of its own stealth drones that it could fly into denied territory, the former senior Central Command official demurred. “I can’t really talk about that,” he said. “I would say that there are segments within the [Defense Department] community that have higher capabilities that aren’t traditionally understood by everybody. So there are other capabilities out there that [the military] could reach into.
Iran claimed it brought down the RQ-170 in December 2011 by using cyber techniques to take control of it. Retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, a former Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, called that claim “pure speculation.
Unlike the RQ-170, the BAMS-D is not a stealth aircraft designed to penetrate denied airspace. “It is a big, slow collector,” said the former senior Central Command official. “It buys you nothing to creep in two miles.”
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