I’m sure there are more of these scattered, undiscovered, throughout the Kush but it seems that Pakistan has found and captured an armed UAV during its reconnaissance of South Waziristan.
“A surveillance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), while flying over the Pak-Afghan border yesterday [Tuesday] night, crash-landed on this side of the border… apparently due to malfunctioning,” a Pakistani military spokesman said.
“The wreckage of the UAV has been recovered from the site by the security forces personnel and the matter is under detailed investigation,” the spokesman said in a statement.
The sheer fact that these things are whizzing around at altitude should be enough to make any tribal warlord think twice about hopping into the old Toyota but there is some suspicion – or at least innuendo – that the drone was shot down which could hearten certain folks who don’t want these in their airspace. One of the turning points in the Russian-Afghan war, if you remember, is when US-supplied grenade launchers stinger missiles started taking down Soviet helicopters. In a land rife with historical parallelism, the thought that a UAV can be taken down by gunfire is a compelling one.