MQ-1 Predator
A Predator came down on Sunday in Zangarha village in South Waziristan, near the Taliban and al-Qaeda hideouts in the rocky region bordering Afghanistan. A military intelligence official based in the nearest city, Wana, said that the aircraft suffered a mechanical failure. The Pakistani Taliban, a domestic offshoot of the Afghan insurgent organization, said that 25 fighters used an antiaircraft gun to shoot down the aircraft.
According to Pakistani security officials, the aircraft crashed Sunday near a military base and Taliban militants quickly attempted to seize the debris. But the officials said Pakistani troops confronted the fighters and were able to collect the remnants after a clash lasting nearly four hours. Three militants were killed and two soldiers were injured in the fighting, an official from the paramilitary Frontier Corps said.
The crash could risk exposing extremely sensitive technology, including cameras and other sensors used to monitor insurgents. Although the Taliban might have little tactical use for the debris, some of Pakistan’s allies — including Iran and China — might be interested in it.
John Pike, a weapons expert at Globalsecurity.org, said that the crash Sunday could have exposed sensitive systems but that it would be difficult for adversaries to use the wreckage to replicate technology or adopt surveillance countermeasures. While the Chinese, for example, have sought to develop UAS platforms and might gain insight from the downed US aircraft, they already have a general understanding of UAS capabilities. “I don’t think the Chinese can do much more with it than the Taliban,” Pike said.
UAS crashes are very rare in Pakistan, but an unmanned surveillance aircraft equipped with a camera crashed in southwestern Pakistan on August 25. In September 2008, tribesmen in South Waziristan claimed to have shot down another surveillance aircraft in Jalal village, near the Afghan border.
The Pakistani army said at the time that it was investigating that incident but did not make the results of the probe public.
Source: The Washington Post, AFP
So was it a Predator or a Reaper that crashed? The article says Predator; the photo is of a Reaper. It would help avoid confusion if UAS Vision used the MQ-1 or MQ-9 designators.
Point well taken. Unfortunately the sources for this story just mentioned a “Predator” – so we took a Predator B (Reaper) photo guessing that it was more likely to be a Reaper… I understand however that both aircraft are flying out there, so you’re quite right – we should be consistent so we’ve replaced the photo with an MQ-1.