A video clip from Kalam TV has come to light of the ‘capture’ of the mystery drone in Pakistan. It would seem a little more sophisticated than a simple home made job.
http://www.kalam.tv/ur/video/87696/index.html can’t find how to embed it.
This particular bit caught our eye.
Lots more markings that seem to point to this not being the only system of its sort around. We think that used to sit inside the airframe in the large hole that is pretty obvious in the video. Could it be a blown military LiPo?
Feel free to email us if you know what it is.
Many forums and websites, even this news report are putting pictures of the Festo Smartbird up, its certainly not one of those.
It was dated on August 10, and only Americans write dates like that.
It could be dated October 8 2011, which would indicate it is not American, and also it is from the future.
Come on Kevo, that logic only works with dates >12. It was a hardy boys moment that fell sort of flat.
My thoughts exactly, no great rush to come forward with what it might be from anyone….
Could it be a blue landing airbag you see in the picture.
The online world is amazing, crazy_albatros over at Reddit tells us that
FMC = Fully Mission Capable
so this thing was inspected and is FMC as of 10 Aug 2011
Obvious really I suppose.
Obvious except that it would most likely say “10 Aug 2011″ or “10 Aug 11″ if it were military, not “08/10/11″.
I agree, just about everyone in the military I know writes dates in the form of 10 Aug 11 not 08/10/11. Unless it was inspected by a civilian who hadn’t ever served in the military.
Reminds me of a vid from Ted
Sorry, forgot the URL
http://www.ted.com/talks/a_robot_that_flies_like_a_bird.html
May be the uav was meant to be found by pakistanis. May be the US has equipment in the salvaged UAV to track and get intel to who all gets the access to see the plane(read chinese). When the stealth black hawk went down during project osama, the remain of the heli was shown to chinese military.
FMC is Fnord Motor Company. Also the initials of the guy who wrote that date.
yup.
http://www.theissaviation.com/AFRL%20Bird.html
“FMC” are the initials of the individual who ispected the unit, and that is a civilian date. us military standard would have read “10AUG2011″.
Obvious, or meant to be obvious…
Too blurry to read, but the box above the masking tape with the date on it looks like a sort of serial number plate. For example: http://www.330gt.com/images/SNPlate.jpg. Not only does that indicate something that’s being mass produced, but the “serial number,” if that’s what it is, appears to be three digits.
And wookies live on kysshek.
It’s a Theiss Aviation UAV. There’s a few pictures of the earlier prototype on the internet.
The date isn’t in the correct format to be US military.
That is a army short range drone, there are videos of these being used on training ops in the United States. Forget the company who makes them but they talk about it in the videos.
These videos are on the net, most likely youtube but could be one of the other video sites as well. Been a while since I watched the video.
They are real short range, line of sight control only.
The idea of this drone is scouting ahead of a larger unit to ensure they don’t come into contact with a larger force or what they aren’t looking to engage. Looks like it did its job well.
But if it’s a short site drone, then it means they are not that far away…
Lots of cool stuff going on in Afghanistan/Pakistan that barely no one knows about but only a select few. It’s pretty awesome…
You mean cool stuff like a bunch of US soldiers getting killed?
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/01/world/la-fg-afghan-deaths-20110902