I have been following with interest the developing story of how Iran has reportedly managed to capture some of the U.S.’s most sensitive surveillance technology, and I still have to shake my head at what a waste it was.
In 2009, the aviation world was abuzz over grainy pictures of a new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) spotted on the runway at a U.S. airbase in Afghanistan. Dubbed “The Beast of Kandahar,” the mysterious aircraft—which looked like a miniature B-2 stealth bomber—spurred speculation as to its purpose and capabilities. As more information slowly leaked out, the Air Force confirmed that the shadowy drone was actually the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, and among its alleged achievements was the conducting of aerial observations on Osama bin Laden’s lair in Abbottabad, Pakistan before the Seal team operation that killed him. Now it seems that all that secrecy was in vain as the jet-powered RQ-170 is poised to be rendered bare as a plucked chicken. Iran, which seems to have bagged one, is gleefully displaying its trophy to the world. As it continues to investigate and perhaps dissect the RQ-170 it somehow seemingly disabled and forced down during a reconnaissance flight over its territory, propaganda photos and video released from Iran show the bat-winged robotic craft looking intact but quite forlorn lying on what looks like a banquet table surrounded by anti-American posters (apparently they haven’t figured out how to deploy the landing gear yet).
A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined AIN in 2007, Curt came to the publication from the broadcast industry where he was a national science and technology television reporter and producer. He writes on the FBO field, aviation finance, and sustainable aviation and occasionally contributes to AIN sister publication Business Jet Traveler. Curt was a member of the AINtv reporting staff that won the 2008 Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for Best Airshow Daily. That same year, he was a finalist for another AJOYA award. He earned an AJOYA for Best Business Aviation Submission in 2018 and was a finalist in that category in 2021. He received the National Air Transportation Association’s Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.
Before joining AIN, Curt worked with Consumer Reports’ television division, CRTV, and for several local television news staffs. An honors graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University in 1995. Curt lives in New York State with his wife and two young sons.
