Political India: Engaging America

The unmanned aerial vehicle said to have been captured by Iranian forces last week was being operated by the CIA, United States officials have been quoted as saying.

Reports in major U.S. news outlets such as the Washington Post and CNN quoted several unnamed officials confirming that “the unmanned surveillance plane lost by the United States in Iran was a stealth aircraft being used for secret missions by the CIA”, and Iran's military appeared to be in possession of one of the more sensitive surveillance platforms in the CIA's fleet.

The CIA's use of armed drones in countries such as Pakistan and Yemen is not officially acknowledged and in this instance, too, CIA and Pentagon spokespersons declined to comment.

However, the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan issued a statement that the drone, possibly an unarmed RQ-170 surveillance model, “may be a U.S. unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week”.

“The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status,” said the statement. The Post noted the ISAF statement's suggestion that pilots lost control of the aircraft was accurate, according to U.S. officials who have disputed claims by Iran that its defence forces downed the aircraft, or that it had been felled by a sophisticated cyber-attack.