"Beast of Kandahar" RQ-170 a coward, fails to commit suicide ?

A local Lockheed retiree can't even repair his own XP computer and has to get locals hams to help him. His supposed job at Lockheed was computer procurement for this government's agencies. For this he collected a hefty paycheck and now gets a big pension.

Is that competence after a full career somewhere ?

It was just on 17 December 2009 that the Wall Street Journal wrote

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights. Still, the intercepts could give America's enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under U.S. surveillance.

The drone intercepts mark the emergence of a shadow cyber war within the U.S.-led conflicts overseas. They also point to a potentially serious vulnerability in Washington's growing network of unmanned drones, which have become the American weapon of choice in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

and

Gen. Deptula, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said there were inherent risks to using drones since they are remotely controlled and need to send and receive video and other data over great distances. "Those kinds of things are subject to listening and exploitation," he said, adding the military was trying to solve the problems by better encrypting the drones' feeds.

The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control. The U.S. government has known about the flaw since the U.S. campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s, current and former officials said. But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn't know how to exploit it, the officials said.

It seems they failed. Iranian military "truthers" say

“After entering the country’s eastern space, the plane was caught in an electronic ambush by the armed forces, and it was brought down on the land with the minimum damage,” Hajizadeh was quoted as saying.

They are no doubt lying that the drone ran out of fuel or other nonsense that defies gravity. Surely the same people so worried about the drone falling into Iranian hands that they entertained an attack a few days ago to destroy it didn't build it so it lands itself safely in enemy territory when it fails ?

Pentagon and CIA officials have had little to say about the incident other than acknowledging that operators had lost control of a US drone. Privately, officials deny that Iran brought down the RQ-170, either by shooting it down or hacking its control software. More likely, they say, the drone simply lost its link to ground controllers, ran out of fuel, and crashed.

As usual, you get more truth from the people who are the "enemy" than the ones who steal their six figure public trough salary bumbling as they go, or else are simply handing over technology to countries like China through hijacking like this.

Clinton handed over missile technology.

Clinton's transfer allowed the Chinese army to acquire advanced U.S. technology for military purposes. Hughes satellites currently provide the Chinese army with secure communications that are invulnerable to earth combat and highly accurate all-weather navigation for strike bombers and missiles.

And there were the radiation hardened chips.

Newly declassified documents show that President Bill Clinton personally approved the transfer to China of advanced space technology that can be used for nuclear combat.

The documents show that in 1996 Clinton approved the export of radiation hardened chip sets to China. The specialized chips are necessary for fighting a nuclear war.

They lost the helicopter over Pakistan on 2 May 2011.

...Pakistan, which enjoys a close relationship with China, allowed Chinese intelligence officials to take pictures of the crashed aircraft as well as take samples of its special "skin" that allowed the American raid to evade Pakistani radar.

They lost the F-117A over Serbia on 27 March 1999.

The hit on the radar-evading plane on March 27, 1999, during the 78-day NATO campaign over Serbia, triggered doubts not only about the F-117s, but also about the entire concept of stealth technology on which the U.S. Air Force has based its newest generation of warplanes.

Military analysts debated how the planes would fare in a war against a militarily sophisticated opponent if an obsolescent air defense such as Serbia's could manage to track and destroy them.

In an interview this week with The Associated Press, Dani said the F-117 was detected and shot down during a moonless night — just three days into the war — by a Soviet-made SA-3 Goa surface-to-air missile.

Indeed, those easily led by corporate approved narratives may want to read the views of others like Col. L Fletcher Prouty's Gary Powers Flight Was Sabotaged To Fail!

"There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are !"

SPQR