What Can Iran Do With America's Drone?

By Greg Scoblete
December 15, 2011

What can Iran do with America's spy drone?

Seeing as they won't give it back, the BBC investigates what Iran can actually do with America's spy drone:

'So how easy is it to extract information from a drone?

It all depends what state the aircraft was in when they recovered it, says Nick Brown, editor-in-chief of Jane's International Defence Review.

"It could have crashed and come apart. The version seen on the video clips could be a reconstruction. But if the aircraft is relatively intact, you could take a fair bit from it."

One thing the Iranians might be doing is testing it with radar in an anechoic chamber, he says, to find its "radar cross-section", which is a measure of how detectable it is. They could also learn from some of the more exotic radar-defeating shaping and materials.

'

Even if the Iranians aren't up to the challenge of reverse-engineering the drone, the BBC notes that there are reports of Russian and Chinese scientists in Iran interested in taking a peak.

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