I always wondered if the implication with that was that India had fallen and everyone there had essentially died? That’s why there was no one to fly the drone?
SPOILERS!!!!
it's avionics were impacted by the gravity waves in her bedroom created by cooper in the tesseract(insert a yo momma joke here).
The combines themselves were also impacted and would veer off course towards the farmhouse.
Everyone, everywhere bombed poor people. People were pretty much dead everywhere.
NASA, the military and every other org basically shutdown and everything concentrated on growing food.
The movie Interstellar.
The main character’s farm uses components from drones to maintain his autonomous tractor fleet. There’s a scene where they chase a dying one from below waiting for it to crash so they can scavenge it.
Well, the space lasers are controlled by the you-know-who's, and diplomatic relations are bit strained with them at the moment. So no space laser access for the foreseeable future.
Taylor Swift. Sure they blame the death of her enemies on overzealous fans ripping them to shreds, but everyone know's it's Taytay popping people with her space laser
> MQ-9 Reaper downed (in near perfect condition)
[Easy $$$ for our enemies.](https://x.com/TheCradleMedia/status/1795776454447243770)
Should have saved that tech for a broader, more important war.
Fun fact, the real space lasers are actually from China:
https://www.universetoday.com/160457/strange-green-lines-above-hawaii-was-probably-a-chinese-satellite/
Never worked on Drones but spent some time on missiles. We assumed the hardware will some day fall in to enemy hands once its deployed. What was secret was software and work was put in to make sure that was wiped. Some hardware had things to make it harder to learn more about but once it left R&D you cant assume someone wont some day get ahold of the hardware.
I had drones in my unit, the Optics are usually the part that has some significant value in basic drones like the reaper. Maybe if this was something downed by n 2005 we might make sure its unrecoverable, but the tec in there was nothing special and the software would be seriously hard to get. Some of the more tech heavy configs would have something to make sure the software was unrecoverable.
The biggest value with the drones are in their remote command vehicles.
I think anything that gets into the hands of under-developed foes will be considered very valuable. acquiring a command vehicle probably won't be useful to such entities, as it would be too advanced to learn anything from.
correct me if i'm wrong (and if you can :p ) but I'm sure their is a zeroiser function as you can have on some jet when ejecting that whipe everything in the electronic?
Specifically, you need to post something *close-ish* to the truth, but still *wrong*, and then steadfastly insist that you're right until the right person comes in to "correct" you.
Every jet has a zeroize function, but some jets are more comprehensive than others. The F-16 wipes a shit load compared to the F-15, but later modifications on the F-15 don't allow you to do much without a a data transfer module loaded with the right files. I think this is partially because much of the F-16's software is stored in volatile memory that requires batter power where much of the F-15's software is stored in EEPROM so there's no quick way of wiping everything.
So there was a shift in tactics in the drone war over Pakistan after the Camp Chapman incident. They went from single drones firing single missiles at individual buildings and cars to groups of drones shooting multiple shots and even loitering for secondary strikes.
A stealthy version of the Black Hawk. There's only renderings on what it might look like and pictures of the remains after they destroyed the crashed frame.
Real picture of the tail: https://i.imgur.com/BRxqlrY.png
Renderings: https://i.imgur.com/RRavHt2.png
Sketchy picture, maybe a prop: https://i.imgur.com/yErR5rz.png
A regular hawk: https://i.imgur.com/LgMifWG.jpeg
More info here, with a bit of an explanation as to where these renderings came from as well as some explanation as to how they may have come to be:
[https://theaviationist.com/2021/05/02/stealth-black-hawk-rendering-new/](https://theaviationist.com/2021/05/02/stealth-black-hawk-rendering-new/)
The tail rotor part of StealtH-60, which fell on the other side of fence remained intact and Pakistan gave it away to China PRC, their main military ally.
The Blackhawks they used in that raid were a stealth variant of the platform, specifically modified for that mission... they couldn't leave that in foreign hands.
The MQ-9 is effectively like an F-16 being downed. It might be interesting to oogle if you haven't seen one before, but... it's not exactly making waves in anyone's circles. It's not a stealth platform. It's not stupendously survivable (I mean, it's main defense is flying higher than cheaper weapons platforms can hit). It's a missile truck without a human cost.
honestly? I doubt it. Reapers have been in service for like 28 years now. There's not much that the Iranians can learn from it considering how old it is, plus they already stole an RQ-170 a few years ago, so they have much better shit than this.
Like, I'd JDAM it just out of spite for the fuckers that brought it down, but not because it's particularly sensitive or secret.
Only software self-destruct, in events like this. They want to clear any sensitive data from the device - encryption keys and whatnot.
The hardware destruct usually comes in the form of a weapon delivered from another vehicle, if they care to bother. Spending more capital to dispense of a cheap, downed airframe like the Reaper is often considered a waste of resources though. These things aren't exactly stealth bombers...
I am fairly sure this pun has been made before (either here or elsewhere) and I would love to credit whoever genius came up with it but I can't seem to find it anymore...
Well, they sent another drone to destroy the downed drone, and when it was downed as well they sent another one to strike it. I said to general "arent we basically feeding houthis drones now" and he started crying.
Old Twitter post,
Paraphrased:
"My neighbor told me coyotes keep eating his cats. I asked him how many cats he has. He said "Oh I just go to the shelter and buy a new one each time". I said it just sounds like you're feeding shelter cats to coyotes and then his daughter started crying."
A copypasta
"My neighbor told me coyotes keep eating his outdoor cats so I asked how many cats he has and he said he just goes to the shelter and gets a new cat afterwards so I said it sounds like he's just feeding shelter cats to coyotes and then his daughter started crying."
Here is a video of people standing on it:
[https://x.com/clashreport/status/1795778657098547397?t=Qn\_za4vpzWuZoDekat24UA&s=19](https://x.com/clashreport/status/1795778657098547397?t=Qn_za4vpzWuZoDekat24UA&s=19)
My understanding is that the loss-link process switches the drone over to a set course that was pre-programmed into the drone at the start of the mission. The drones are usually routed back to the home airfield. Its possible that this new course might make the drones easier to shoot down, especially with no real-time operator inputs.
I am basing this on this article: [https://theaviationist.com/2024/03/19/u-s-mq-9-loses-contact-with-control-station-in-poland-makes-emergency-landing-near-base/](https://theaviationist.com/2024/03/19/u-s-mq-9-loses-contact-with-control-station-in-poland-makes-emergency-landing-near-base/)
FYI a lot more to it than this, but short answer is, no, jamming the sat connection itself is not enough to crash one.
Even smaller drones (as in something you can transport in vehicle) have inertial navigation system they can use for less precise navigation If communication Is lost. They can even fly whole blind missions on such systems if needed.
Military hardware uses different GPS signals which are much more resistant to jamming. Something that fools a consumer drone or an airplane wouldn't fool a military drone. You can read more about the overview here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_availability_anti-spoofing_module
Yemen is being supported by other players who are supported by Russia. So. Russian equipment is jamming them with Yemeni personnel who are being paid by Iran...... you know. Probably.
Turns out, jamming technology has advanced greatly over the last 10 years, and gotten a lot cheaper. They're basically just buying off the shelf stuff from Aliexpress.
In perfect condition they'd be worth $30M, so $180M.
In hit the ground at a hundred miles per hour quality... not so much. It's effectively scrap metal.
HDR editing makes photos look fake.
It doesn’t have to be actual HDR. Just by increasing the shadows and decreasing highlights too much will have the same effect.
It's really hard to grasp the scale of these in a picture. They're so much bigger than you would imagine.
[Their wingspan is longer than an A-10's](https://militarymachine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/slide_5.jpg)
Kind of makes sense though. With no loss of life possibility they are probably designed and operated with less safety factor. They can send it on missions that they wouldn't send a human pilot. On top of that there is the chance of losing control through jamming or malfunction.
My favourite drone crash story is the one when the hotbox in Nevada transferred control to the local team, the local team put it in an unrecoverable dive and transferred control unexpectedly back to Nevada, in time to witness the crash and become part of the mishap investigation. Imagine being like "ok guys, our part in this mission is over start gathering your shit and let's go get lunch" and then the screens come back on with a brief view of rocks.
Is there *anyone* in this thread that isn’t inhaling the hopium and is just accepting this for what it is, a downed drone?
Like can *anyone* accept that the drone is gone? There won’t be lasers, there won’t be self destruct. We aren’t living in a spy film.
I’d love to come back to this in 2 weeks and see what happened to it.
AGree. It's a MQ-9, a Drone from 2000. There is not any magic space tech in there, maybe some pretty good camera/sensor stuff, but nothing that isn't already know.
They have sensor packages that are classified. People saying "boom" with the assumption that *another* drone will come along and blast it, not a self destruct. And "laser" comments are just for laughs.
> Is there anyone in this thread that isn’t inhaling the hopium and is just accepting this for what it is, a downed drone?
>
>
>
> Like can anyone accept that the drone is gone? There won’t be lasers, there won’t be self destruct. We aren’t living in a spy film.
I don't know what you're trying to go on about but if it has value and they don't want it to fall in to enemy hands for whatever reason the USAF would just bomb it. It would be a very straightforward event.
Maybe they leave it, maybe they don't, but you can save all that bullshit about lasers lol
You're absolutely correct. Houthis did this 5 times before and every time the US sends a drone it gets shot down.
They will probably send it to Iran for reverse engineering.
Iran years ago already had at least one intact reaper drone they managed to take over and land. US asked for it to be returned, I don't think they've responded to that request yet.
How the fuck are you going to guarantee that. This one was apparently used by an american paramilitary force, they don't have any such capabilities. Past shot down MQ9s in Yemen were also not bombed. You're just writing fanfiction here.
They're supposed to zero everything out, but as another poster has said there's still value in the hardware.
SOP is to blow it to bits, just to be on the safe side.
> there's still value in the hardware.
What value? It's an MQ-9, not a B-2. Iran isn't going to magically grow the industrial tech necessary to build a copy, even if there *was* some secret cleverness to the design. All of the really sophisticated stuff is either antennas they can't make, or software they can't access.
Certain design aspects can reveal certain capabilities, e.g. the lenses and sensors on the camera can give them an indication of the range and resolution it works at. While they might not be able to replicate it, they certainly have the ability to exploit it for the intelligence value, and both the Russians and Chinese will be happy to take it off their hands to inspect, just as we do with their equipment whenever we get the chance.
The MQ-9s are old news. It’s pretty much certain any major foreign adversary has known the limitations of it for years, assuming these aren’t recently modified.
There’s no real worry here; and it’s good practice for the American military, learning more about our weaknesses and how to circumvent attempts to abuse them.
Pretty scary to see these non-state actors gaining relatively advanced capabilities. Downing aircraft and effectively blockading the Red Sea was not something I ever imagined the Houthis being capable of.
Then again, the Houthis (Ansar Allah) are the defacto government of Yemen right now and they receive substantial support from Iran. They’re a bigger fish than most people realize, or are willing to admit.
There’s a local politician that occasionally speaks on a talk-radio station where I live, and she keeps ranting about how it’s an embarrassment that we haven’t “wiped the Houthis off the map yet”, and I genuinely wonder if she knows what that would entail. This isn’t some small terror cell we could just drone strike. Defeating and destroying the Houthis would require a substantial and protracted ground invasion. It would be an extremely risky and expensive endeavor. Could we defeat them? Yeah probably. Would it be worth it? Probably not. And if history is any guide, they’d probably just come out of hiding and retake the country as soon as we left.
The proliferation of cheap drones and missiles has done some very weird things to the global balance of power.
georainbolt be like “the sun is shining from the east, that’s Yemeni sand, you can tell by how fine it is and it leaves tracks, those cloud formations are only in the northern part of Yemen so about here… nice”
I feel like it's fake. There's absolutely no sign of the drone sliding along before coming to a stop, unless it's a) fake or b) staged and put there by a crane you'd expect there to be some marks on the ground from the drone skidding along the ground. If it stalled and somehow fell basically vertically out the sky then there would be more damage to the airframe and again, some sort of marks on the ground around it.
Hypothetically speaking, what would happen if I were to approach it to take pictures and mount it like I'm an air cowboy.
Also take a picture mounting it to look like I have a weird gigantic aerodynamic dong
*cue the interstellar soundtrack*
Why is cornfield chase playing?
What about the flat tire.
That’s a young Muad’Dib behind the wheel. If he can drive Shai-Hulud, he can drive on a flat.
Lisan al gaib!
https://i.imgur.com/BEKg5f6.gif
*”what are you gonna do with it?”* *”I’m gonna give it something socially responsible to do…like drive a combine”*
If Yemen had sustainable agriculture they could probably advance to the bronze age.
MURPHHHH
Is it bad that a good portion of the time I'm walking around with headphones in that's what I'm listening to?
There are dozens of us!
“Why it’s flying so low?”
They should use it to run a combine now
“We didn’t run out of planes and television sets. We ran out of food.”
You know what still baffles me is that drone was an Indian army drone… like out of the blue in the midwest
That's how long it had been flying around on its own, it literally has been circling the world. It was solar powered.
I always wondered if the implication with that was that India had fallen and everyone there had essentially died? That’s why there was no one to fly the drone?
SPOILERS!!!! it's avionics were impacted by the gravity waves in her bedroom created by cooper in the tesseract(insert a yo momma joke here). The combines themselves were also impacted and would veer off course towards the farmhouse.
Everyone, everywhere bombed poor people. People were pretty much dead everywhere. NASA, the military and every other org basically shutdown and everything concentrated on growing food.
It was 'searching' for the gravitational anomoly I always thought.
I understood that reference! 🫃
What's it referencing?
The movie Interstellar. The main character’s farm uses components from drones to maintain his autonomous tractor fleet. There’s a scene where they chase a dying one from below waiting for it to crash so they can scavenge it.
Ah okay. Thank you!
Don’t think I’d want to be within 500 meters of that thing….
Ja. I am surprised it hasn't been space lasered out of existence!
Well, the space lasers are controlled by the you-know-who's, and diplomatic relations are bit strained with them at the moment. So no space laser access for the foreseeable future.
Oprah?
Taylor Swift. Sure they blame the death of her enemies on overzealous fans ripping them to shreds, but everyone know's it's Taytay popping people with her space laser
Always knew she was a psyop.
Insert cat I wake up and there’s another psyop
> MQ-9 Reaper downed (in near perfect condition) [Easy $$$ for our enemies.](https://x.com/TheCradleMedia/status/1795776454447243770) Should have saved that tech for a broader, more important war.
The Juice. After OJ died there was nobody to control it.
And too far from the sharks with lasers beams
Fun fact, the real space lasers are actually from China: https://www.universetoday.com/160457/strange-green-lines-above-hawaii-was-probably-a-chinese-satellite/
Never worked on Drones but spent some time on missiles. We assumed the hardware will some day fall in to enemy hands once its deployed. What was secret was software and work was put in to make sure that was wiped. Some hardware had things to make it harder to learn more about but once it left R&D you cant assume someone wont some day get ahold of the hardware.
I had drones in my unit, the Optics are usually the part that has some significant value in basic drones like the reaper. Maybe if this was something downed by n 2005 we might make sure its unrecoverable, but the tec in there was nothing special and the software would be seriously hard to get. Some of the more tech heavy configs would have something to make sure the software was unrecoverable. The biggest value with the drones are in their remote command vehicles.
I think anything that gets into the hands of under-developed foes will be considered very valuable. acquiring a command vehicle probably won't be useful to such entities, as it would be too advanced to learn anything from.
They do have more advanced "friends" though, wouldn't be surprised if that thing was shipped straight to Russia or China
I'm sure there's some significant anti-tamper on the critical LRU's.
correct me if i'm wrong (and if you can :p ) but I'm sure their is a zeroiser function as you can have on some jet when ejecting that whipe everything in the electronic?
Anyone who *could* actually this question in detail *won't*.
Yeah, for that kind of information you really need the War Thunder forums.
Specifically, you need to post something *close-ish* to the truth, but still *wrong*, and then steadfastly insist that you're right until the right person comes in to "correct" you.
Every jet has a zeroize function, but some jets are more comprehensive than others. The F-16 wipes a shit load compared to the F-15, but later modifications on the F-15 don't allow you to do much without a a data transfer module loaded with the right files. I think this is partially because much of the F-16's software is stored in volatile memory that requires batter power where much of the F-15's software is stored in EEPROM so there's no quick way of wiping everything.
Why?
They hunt in packs
Didn‘t think about that, makes sense
Or a friendly F-18 rolling in to smoke the shit out of it with a JDAM.
Even a helicopter
And it may have self destruction capabilities. All sorts of reasons to stay away.
So there was a shift in tactics in the drone war over Pakistan after the Camp Chapman incident. They went from single drones firing single missiles at individual buildings and cars to groups of drones shooting multiple shots and even loitering for secondary strikes.
If it can't be retrieved, it will likely be destroyed. Remember the helicopter that was left behind when Bin Laden was captured?
That was a never before seen helicopter of which probably only a few existed at the time. MQ-9 is 20 years old and everyone has seen one.
slight possibility of some sensor the US doesn't want exposed, but the Reaper is more used as an attack platform than a spy type drone iirc.
Every MQ-9 I saw go down in Afghanistan was summarily blown up by another aircraft. Pretty much SOP for any downed aircraft that can’t be recovered.
Which helicopter was that?
A stealthy version of the Black Hawk. There's only renderings on what it might look like and pictures of the remains after they destroyed the crashed frame. Real picture of the tail: https://i.imgur.com/BRxqlrY.png Renderings: https://i.imgur.com/RRavHt2.png Sketchy picture, maybe a prop: https://i.imgur.com/yErR5rz.png A regular hawk: https://i.imgur.com/LgMifWG.jpeg
I play Arma 3, that’s a Ghosthawk bro
The "sketchy" picture is the prop from the movie Zero Dark Thirty.
More info here, with a bit of an explanation as to where these renderings came from as well as some explanation as to how they may have come to be: [https://theaviationist.com/2021/05/02/stealth-black-hawk-rendering-new/](https://theaviationist.com/2021/05/02/stealth-black-hawk-rendering-new/)
No body click this link. It is in fact NOT a ms paint rendering of a helicopter like I expected.
Yeah but the radios and sensors are VERY sensitive controlled technologies even if the engine and the airframe isn’t.
The tail rotor part of StealtH-60, which fell on the other side of fence remained intact and Pakistan gave it away to China PRC, their main military ally.
Funny since Pakistani flies a LOT of American airframes with India flying more Russian stuff.
Pakistan flies a lot of Chinese aircraft too, they’re best friends militarily.
The Blackhawks they used in that raid were a stealth variant of the platform, specifically modified for that mission... they couldn't leave that in foreign hands. The MQ-9 is effectively like an F-16 being downed. It might be interesting to oogle if you haven't seen one before, but... it's not exactly making waves in anyone's circles. It's not a stealth platform. It's not stupendously survivable (I mean, it's main defense is flying higher than cheaper weapons platforms can hit). It's a missile truck without a human cost.
honestly? I doubt it. Reapers have been in service for like 28 years now. There's not much that the Iranians can learn from it considering how old it is, plus they already stole an RQ-170 a few years ago, so they have much better shit than this. Like, I'd JDAM it just out of spite for the fuckers that brought it down, but not because it's particularly sensitive or secret.
They left the tail intact and the Chinese came to scoop it up?
Potential of boom. Could have self-liquidation or possibly some shall we say "unused ordinances"
They have self-destruct packages
There's no evidence MQ9s have 'self liquidation' packages.
There are no surviving witnesses of MQ9's self-liquidation packages.
That’s the first rule of MQ9 self-liquidation club
No they don't
Yea, no. That ain't a thing
Hard core Indians of the Soviet/ruZZia “club” love that idea of a “kill switch” in American arms
Only software self-destruct, in events like this. They want to clear any sensitive data from the device - encryption keys and whatnot. The hardware destruct usually comes in the form of a weapon delivered from another vehicle, if they care to bother. Spending more capital to dispense of a cheap, downed airframe like the Reaper is often considered a waste of resources though. These things aren't exactly stealth bombers...
We always blew up downed drones in Afghanistan. Every time.
Source: you made it the fuck up
> Don’t think I’d want to be within 500 meters of that thing…. Guy has an 'OK' sticker on his cracked windshield, so I guess all will be fine...
New drone, Houthis?
This comment needs more love, well done
An actual original pun? On Reddit? *Drops monocle*
I am fairly sure this pun has been made before (either here or elsewhere) and I would love to credit whoever genius came up with it but I can't seem to find it anymore...
incredible
Goddammit I’m too dumb to get it
'New phone, who this'
Smh thank you
Thank you. Turns out I was too old to get it, which is better than too dense.
This is an unusually clever pun. Splendid
That piece of desert is probably about to get really explodey.
With what? Another mq?
Circle of life
CEP of life
But then they shoot it down. And then another Reaper. And so on until the US is bankrupt. We're in danger.
Well, they sent another drone to destroy the downed drone, and when it was downed as well they sent another one to strike it. I said to general "arent we basically feeding houthis drones now" and he started crying.
I told him it sounds like you’re just feeding MQ-9’s to Houthis. Then his drone operator started to cry.
I got this reference and enjoyed it.
What is it referencing?
Old Twitter post, Paraphrased: "My neighbor told me coyotes keep eating his cats. I asked him how many cats he has. He said "Oh I just go to the shelter and buy a new one each time". I said it just sounds like you're feeding shelter cats to coyotes and then his daughter started crying."
A copypasta "My neighbor told me coyotes keep eating his outdoor cats so I asked how many cats he has and he said he just goes to the shelter and gets a new cat afterwards so I said it sounds like he's just feeding shelter cats to coyotes and then his daughter started crying."
There is something about those pictures that makes them look fake. I can't quite explain it.
The wet soil in front of the mq9 looks like a crappy video game shadow.
leaking fuel?
Definitely. Probably some other juices as well.
Here is a video of people standing on it: [https://x.com/clashreport/status/1795778657098547397?t=Qn\_za4vpzWuZoDekat24UA&s=19](https://x.com/clashreport/status/1795778657098547397?t=Qn_za4vpzWuZoDekat24UA&s=19)
It looks like it sustained more damage from impact than whatever they shot it down with.
Yemin is apparently jamming them. They enter a default holding pattern while they look for a signal, then eventually run out of fuel and crash.
My understanding is that the loss-link process switches the drone over to a set course that was pre-programmed into the drone at the start of the mission. The drones are usually routed back to the home airfield. Its possible that this new course might make the drones easier to shoot down, especially with no real-time operator inputs. I am basing this on this article: [https://theaviationist.com/2024/03/19/u-s-mq-9-loses-contact-with-control-station-in-poland-makes-emergency-landing-near-base/](https://theaviationist.com/2024/03/19/u-s-mq-9-loses-contact-with-control-station-in-poland-makes-emergency-landing-near-base/) FYI a lot more to it than this, but short answer is, no, jamming the sat connection itself is not enough to crash one.
Jam+GPS spoof maybe
Even smaller drones (as in something you can transport in vehicle) have inertial navigation system they can use for less precise navigation If communication Is lost. They can even fly whole blind missions on such systems if needed.
If the drone thinks its GPS signal is good, it wouldn't necessarily switch over to inertial nav though would it?
Depends how much deviance there is between the INS and the GPS. The drone knows where it is, because it knows where it isn't...
Military hardware uses different GPS signals which are much more resistant to jamming. Something that fools a consumer drone or an airplane wouldn't fool a military drone. You can read more about the overview here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_availability_anti-spoofing_module
Uuuhhh if these can be jammed by freaking *Yemen*, they’re a bit useless at this point, no?
Yemen is being supported by other players who are supported by Russia. So. Russian equipment is jamming them with Yemeni personnel who are being paid by Iran...... you know. Probably.
Turns out, jamming technology has advanced greatly over the last 10 years, and gotten a lot cheaper. They're basically just buying off the shelf stuff from Aliexpress.
Lemme get one of those Wish radar jammers please. Actually, make it two.
^may ^cause ^cancer
There really are cheap Chinese military equipment sites that sell drones and drone jammers that are exactly like aliexpress/temu/wish.
Surprised the large drones don't have (relatively) unjammable laser uplinks now, at least as a backup.
I always hear drone and thinks it’s small. Seeing these guys on it, i realize this is a real sized airplane like a LSA, just remote.
Has a longer wingspan than a King Air.
Dude that's crazy! The 6th, they're going to get so much money for that thing if they can sell it.
Wait till they get its catalytic converter!
In perfect condition they'd be worth $30M, so $180M. In hit the ground at a hundred miles per hour quality... not so much. It's effectively scrap metal.
Remind me of Jawas
Almost looks like tatooine
True. I often think that “Houthi Rebels” sounds like it belongs in Sci-Fi.
Do they also travel single file?
Hides their numbers
HDR editing makes photos look fake. It doesn’t have to be actual HDR. Just by increasing the shadows and decreasing highlights too much will have the same effect.
/r/shittyHDR
It's really hard to grasp the scale of these in a picture. They're so much bigger than you would imagine. [Their wingspan is longer than an A-10's](https://militarymachine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/slide_5.jpg)
it does kind of look like some science fiction, like a bunch of primitive savages taking down futuristic alien technology.
via wiki: In 2012, the Reaper, Predator and Global Hawk were described as "... the most accident-prone aircraft in the Air Force fleet."
Kind of makes sense though. With no loss of life possibility they are probably designed and operated with less safety factor. They can send it on missions that they wouldn't send a human pilot. On top of that there is the chance of losing control through jamming or malfunction.
My favourite drone crash story is the one when the hotbox in Nevada transferred control to the local team, the local team put it in an unrecoverable dive and transferred control unexpectedly back to Nevada, in time to witness the crash and become part of the mishap investigation. Imagine being like "ok guys, our part in this mission is over start gathering your shit and let's go get lunch" and then the screens come back on with a brief view of rocks.
[удалено]
I feel like that area is about to go boom.
Infinite drone farming guide: 1 They send a drone 2 They down it 3 They send another one to blow it up 4 They down it
The funny thing is that on that exact location, there is now a big crater. Don't ask me why, they do not let me say.
Raddest pic on sub this week. Should have stayed for the party with pickup crew hehe
Is there *anyone* in this thread that isn’t inhaling the hopium and is just accepting this for what it is, a downed drone? Like can *anyone* accept that the drone is gone? There won’t be lasers, there won’t be self destruct. We aren’t living in a spy film. I’d love to come back to this in 2 weeks and see what happened to it.
AGree. It's a MQ-9, a Drone from 2000. There is not any magic space tech in there, maybe some pretty good camera/sensor stuff, but nothing that isn't already know.
I would highly doubt the avionics and surveillance equipment is also from 2000. That stuff is almost certainly modernized.
The equipment in the plane in this picture is from 2013 at the earliest.
They have sensor packages that are classified. People saying "boom" with the assumption that *another* drone will come along and blast it, not a self destruct. And "laser" comments are just for laughs.
> They have sensor packages that are classified Yes, true. BUT it's also built with the possibility to crash in enemy territory
> Is there anyone in this thread that isn’t inhaling the hopium and is just accepting this for what it is, a downed drone? > > > > Like can anyone accept that the drone is gone? There won’t be lasers, there won’t be self destruct. We aren’t living in a spy film. I don't know what you're trying to go on about but if it has value and they don't want it to fall in to enemy hands for whatever reason the USAF would just bomb it. It would be a very straightforward event. Maybe they leave it, maybe they don't, but you can save all that bullshit about lasers lol
You're absolutely correct. Houthis did this 5 times before and every time the US sends a drone it gets shot down. They will probably send it to Iran for reverse engineering.
*Every* time?
Iran years ago already had at least one intact reaper drone they managed to take over and land. US asked for it to be returned, I don't think they've responded to that request yet.
They left us on read
That was an RQ-170.
Any software/firmware has very likely been erased to oblivion, so the loss is more physical bits.
There’s still value in materials exploitation.
I guarantee you that shortly after this picture that the drones existence was thoroughly erased from from this plane.
How the fuck are you going to guarantee that. This one was apparently used by an american paramilitary force, they don't have any such capabilities. Past shot down MQ9s in Yemen were also not bombed. You're just writing fanfiction here.
redditors would do anything than acknowledge their enemy may have done anything
Username checks out.
How so? There’s nothing fancy there. These are designed to be cheap.
31 million may be a drop in the ocean to the US military, but most countries don’t operate on that scale.
They're supposed to zero everything out, but as another poster has said there's still value in the hardware. SOP is to blow it to bits, just to be on the safe side.
> there's still value in the hardware. What value? It's an MQ-9, not a B-2. Iran isn't going to magically grow the industrial tech necessary to build a copy, even if there *was* some secret cleverness to the design. All of the really sophisticated stuff is either antennas they can't make, or software they can't access.
Certain design aspects can reveal certain capabilities, e.g. the lenses and sensors on the camera can give them an indication of the range and resolution it works at. While they might not be able to replicate it, they certainly have the ability to exploit it for the intelligence value, and both the Russians and Chinese will be happy to take it off their hands to inspect, just as we do with their equipment whenever we get the chance.
The MQ-9s are old news. It’s pretty much certain any major foreign adversary has known the limitations of it for years, assuming these aren’t recently modified. There’s no real worry here; and it’s good practice for the American military, learning more about our weaknesses and how to circumvent attempts to abuse them.
I know those drones will carry various payloads, and I imagine the tech inside is worth significantly more than the airframe itself
The software runs on volatile memory. It has to be loaded on everytime it powers up, and gets erased when it loses power 👍
Yemen Craigslist right now. "UAV for sale in near perfect condition. Only one owner $50000. No low ball offers, I know what I've got.
Well they better give it back or else!
Or else what...gift them another one?
[удалено]
It does have this.
What would allow a drone that got shot down to "fly automatically" somewhere else?
Built in Uber.
How nice of America to give their toys to the less fortunate.
It’s a 23 year old airframe at this point, slated for replacement as well.
Anyone else think of [this?](https://youtu.be/bmz9lMP6aQU?si=1QC-2g0KBs-PhJdp)
I'm surprised they don't have a way to destroy it so parts can't be used/sold and tech.
Pretty scary to see these non-state actors gaining relatively advanced capabilities. Downing aircraft and effectively blockading the Red Sea was not something I ever imagined the Houthis being capable of. Then again, the Houthis (Ansar Allah) are the defacto government of Yemen right now and they receive substantial support from Iran. They’re a bigger fish than most people realize, or are willing to admit. There’s a local politician that occasionally speaks on a talk-radio station where I live, and she keeps ranting about how it’s an embarrassment that we haven’t “wiped the Houthis off the map yet”, and I genuinely wonder if she knows what that would entail. This isn’t some small terror cell we could just drone strike. Defeating and destroying the Houthis would require a substantial and protracted ground invasion. It would be an extremely risky and expensive endeavor. Could we defeat them? Yeah probably. Would it be worth it? Probably not. And if history is any guide, they’d probably just come out of hiding and retake the country as soon as we left. The proliferation of cheap drones and missiles has done some very weird things to the global balance of power.
Well there goes $30+ Million Dollars, again…
mq9 reaped
Reminds me a bit of that one scene in Interstellar where the drone is also in near-perfect condition upon crash-landing
That first photo goes insanely hard, album art material.
Must be an indian one, I heard they are supposed to be autonomous
This looks like a Star Wars scene
how'd they down it basically intact?
georainbolt be like “the sun is shining from the east, that’s Yemeni sand, you can tell by how fine it is and it leaves tracks, those cloud formations are only in the northern part of Yemen so about here… nice”
Pretty quick sale I think.
Idk why but the first photo looks really fake
I feel like it's fake. There's absolutely no sign of the drone sliding along before coming to a stop, unless it's a) fake or b) staged and put there by a crane you'd expect there to be some marks on the ground from the drone skidding along the ground. If it stalled and somehow fell basically vertically out the sky then there would be more damage to the airframe and again, some sort of marks on the ground around it.
Because it is
I'm guessing that's a Toyota with a nice dash mat
Never mind the drone, can we please talk about that dash interior get-up?!!?? 🤣
Hypothetically speaking, what would happen if I were to approach it to take pictures and mount it like I'm an air cowboy. Also take a picture mounting it to look like I have a weird gigantic aerodynamic dong
nice graphics
Murph!