My best guess is that the bird was spying on Iran’s nuclear program (or air defenses!) and it or its controllers malfunctioned and she went down. There’s a lot of other things that can’t be ruled out, but that scenario seems to be the most likely.

I’m seeing new ones this morning.

It gets even more complicated when you realize that the story the military wants our enemies to hear–or our allies–isn’t always the real story.

One said the aircraft might have simply run out of fuel, or hit by ground fire, then spun to earth in a “twirling leaf” spin, like a descending boomerang, hitting the ground at a low velocity, causing minimal damage. If it were out of fuel, it would be quite light for an object that size.

The other is that the drone crashed hard, and took severe damage, and the Iranians have been feverishly working on the parts to make a presentable trophy for the news cameras all week. You will note the bottom of the craft is concealed in the Iranian trophy display.

It’s always possible they hacked the link and flew it down, but I think that unlikely. Even if they had been able to defeat its security and hijack it, it’s unlikely that someone, even a skilled remote pilot, could have brought it in without extensive training and practice on that particular model.

If indeed the encryption was figured out, one would expect a few more to go unless they were grounded immediately. From the looks of that one it doesn’t seem to have crashed, at all. At a minimum one would expect a ground loop and damage to both wings.

In any event, both Iran and the US know exactly what happened. For some reason the US public will be kept ignorant.