UAV drone crashes in Pakistan
- September 24th, 2008
- 4 Comments
I’m sure there are more of these scattered, undiscovered, throughout the Kush but it seems that Pakistan has found and captured an armed UAV during its reconnaissance of South Waziristan.
“A surveillance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), while flying over the Pak-Afghan border yesterday [Tuesday] night, crash-landed on this side of the border… apparently due to malfunctioning,” a Pakistani military spokesman said.
“The wreckage of the UAV has been recovered from the site by the security forces personnel and the matter is under detailed investigation,” the spokesman said in a statement.
The sheer fact that these things are whizzing around at altitude should be enough to make any tribal warlord think twice about hopping into the old Toyota but there is some suspicion - or at least innuendo - that the drone was shot down which could hearten certain folks who don’t want these in their airspace. One of the turning points in the Russian-Afghan war, if you remember, is when US-supplied grenade launchers stinger missiles started taking down Soviet helicopters. In a land rife with historical parallelism, the thought that a UAV can be taken down by gunfire is a compelling one.
SwissFreek (Who am I?)
2 months ago
Stinger missiles = grenade launchers? OK whatever, minor quibble.
Leave it to the AP to make mountains out of molehills. The Pakistani officials say the thing crashed, apparently because of malfunctions, but of course the press goes and digs up some peasant willing to testify that it was fired at (which I have no doubt that it was, at least, bullets were fired in the general direction the sound was coming from) and then it fell out of the sky, ergo, there’s the implication that it was shot down. Then throw in some random and completely unrelated stories about children dying in suicide bombings to get everyone worked up. Whatever.
Also, if it really was less than ten feet long, then 1) it wasn’t the Predator picture in this post, which is big (40-something feet and weighs a little over a ton) and expensive (in the millions of dollars) and it kind of sucks when you lose one, and 2) it could be something like the Dragon, which is supposed to fly around until it runs out of gas and then it crashes. Which could qualify as “engine failure”. Also, nowhere in the source article does it say anything about the UAV being armed, which makes sense, since UAV’s that small don’t carry weapons.
SwissFreek (Who am I?)
2 months ago
Oh, and my point was that this sounds like a big huge non-issue, even if it DID happen to auger in on the Pakistani side of the border. We’re not talking about losing something like a Global Hawk, or even a Predator, let alone a manned aircraft.
And I apologize for using “whatever” as a dismissive statement twice in one comment.
John Biggs (Who am I?)
2 months ago
Fair enough, SF. I agree with your points. This is a war of perception in many cases and there is a good chance this is a random failure.
Mick Williams (Who am I?)
2 months ago
You might find that the UAVs do not fly with their lights on at night, further, I would presume that they fly above the missile envelope, which is way above an AK-47, or similar. To shoot down a ‘top end’ UAV (read MQ-1/9 RQ-4) is quite a difficult task without an IADS.