Al-Qaeda makes off with drone wreckage
An American predator drone crashed in Yemen on Tuesday. But you won't believe what happened next.... A suspected US spy drone crashed near the south Yemen town of Loder on Tuesday before Al-Qaeda gunmen made off with the wreckage, a police official and witnesses said.Awesome. Soon we'll have al-Qaeda drones flying around.
The drone crashed in Jahayn village near Loder, in Yemen's Abyan province where Al-Qaeda has a strong presence, and was found by local residents, the official told AFP.
Witnesses said residents called in police, who collected the debris.
But as they headed to a police station about 30 kilometres (18 miles) away, Al-Qaeda gunmen in cars intercepted the police and hijacked the wreckage. There were no reports of casualties.
The police official said the drone was a Predator, which is used for reconnaissance but can also be armed with missiles. The US military has widely used Predator drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he believed the drone was "monitoring the movements of Al-Qaeda partisans, who have a strong presence" in Loder.
Don't these things have self-destruct mechanisms?
Labels: al-Qaeda, Predator drones, Yemen
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:07 AM
3 Comments:
Nope, they don't self destruct, and sometimes they have to be shot down when they go off course.
AQ and the Taliban got one back in 2001 that went down near Kabul.
A reminder in Iraq they found Al Queda watching drone video feeds (because the manufacturers failed to encrypt the data feed and Al Queda hacked the frequency).
So drone wreckage provides valuable technical data for the enemy.
My hope is that the drone has some type of a tracking system [like LoJack] in it that will lead us to a nest full of terrorists to bomb.
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