“It carries a variety of systems that wouldn’t be much of a benefit to Iran, but to its allies such as China and Russia, it’s a potential gold mine.”-Peter W. Singer, author of Wired for War

Iran has put on public display the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel stealth UAV.  The vehicle in the Iranian video matches photos taken of a Sentinel possibly operated from Pakistan’s Shamis air base.  Could it be that the real reason for U.S. forces evacuating Shamis is because their precious stealth UAV, nicknamed The Beast of Kandahar, got shot down by Iranians?

Back in January of this year, the buzz on the internet, concerning the appearance of the Beast in Afghan skies, was what was it doing there, it’s just a high tech and highly expensive recon vehicle?  It was first spotted over Afghanistan back in 2009.  Now, Iranian media says Afghan officials told the Iranian government the Beast was being used to spy on Iran.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps was ordered to hunt down the Beast, and they did.  But instead of using real bullets or missiles, they used their Iranian designed electronic warfare computers.  This explains why U.S./NATO operators lost control of the UAV: “The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status.”-NATO statement

In fact, reports say that the possibility that the Beast was a victim of remote cyber hacking never crossed the minds of those operating the multi-million dollar UAV.

One reason they didn’t think it was hacked is that, according to John Bumgarner of research company U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, the UAV should have self destructed if it was hacked.

Another UAV ‘expert’ from the United States said “…what the Iranians have is a pile of wreckage, many small and damaged pieces from which they could glean little in the way of technological insights.”-Loren Thompson, Lexington Institute

That was before the Iranians released the video of a near intact aircraft, boy does that UAV ‘expert’ have egg on his face!

So since the ‘experts’ say the Beast should have self destructed if it sensed it was being hacked, and, even if it suffered a malfunction it should’ve crashed into a thousand tiny bits, yet, the Iranians have a nearly intact Beast to publicly display, it strongly suggests that they not only hacked it, but were able to disable any self destruct and land it!

Islamic Revolution Guards Corps say they will reverse engineer the UAV.

By the way, flying a military aircraft into another country’s airspace, without permission, constitutes an act of war under international law.  So officially the United States is at war with Iran.