HOW A DRONE'S FLIGHT TOOK THE US AND IRAN TO THE BRINK OF WAR

The incident came close to sparking a war, with a planned retaliatory attack – but with Trump’s top advisers reportedly split, doubts seemed to set in
The incident that came close to sparking a new war in the Middle East began late on Wednesday night at the Al Dhafr air base in the United Arab Emirates, just over 30km south of Abu Dhabi.
The base is home to the UAE’s air force and a fluctuating number of US warplanes, including Global Hawk drones, used to fly high above the Persian Gulf looking down on the constant flow of oil tankers and northwards, sucking up huge quantities of data from Iran.


Trump says he stopped airstrike on Iran because 150 would have died
The Iranian government says that the Global Hawk which took off from Al Dhafr on Wednesday night was in “stealth mode”, meaning it had its transponder turned off.
The Pentagon has not commented on this, but the Global Hawk is not a stealthy plane. It is the size of a small commercial airliner and packed with electronic surveillance gadgetry costing $130m, considerably more than the new US F35 fighter. Its primary defence against being shot down is its speed and altitude. It can fly at 400mph at 55,000ft.
The Pentagon has not provided an account of the drone’s route in the early hours of Thursday morning. The version offered by Iran based on its radar tracking show it making a large loop over UAE territory before heading northwards into the Persian Gulf, hugging the Emirati coast until it threaded its way through the strait of Hormuz, which is just 35 miles wide at its narrowest point.
The Global Hawk flew south-east along the Iranian coast, keeping outside Iran’s declared 12 miles of territorial waters. Then it turned back on its tracks to patrol westwards.
This is where the Iranian and US accounts differ. The Iranian version, in a hand-drawn map with a cutout picture of a Global Hawk stuck on it, shows the aircraft cutting a corner on its return route so that it comes inside the Iranian territorial limit.


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