The Iranian drone shot down in Israeli airspace was based on ours. And that's not the only example.
America simply can’t afford to allow our adversaries access to our military’s weapons of war. Anything less than a full commitment from the U.S. government not only puts our uniformed members at risk but also our country’s standing in the world.
"In a very troubling development over the weekend, a purported Iranian drone was found to have entered sovereign Israeli airspace for approximately a minute and a half before being shot down by an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) helicopter.
"In addition to destroying the drone, Israeli jets later struck Iranian control system targets located in Syria, as well as air defense assets operating under the control of Bashar al-Assad. Following the military actions, rumors began to circulate about what type of UAV was being utilized by the Iranian-backed forces in Syria. Upon further investigation, various news sources confirmed that the Iranian drone was in fact a copy of a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 “Sentinel,” which Iran intercepted in December 2011. Unfortunately, such warnings were prescient.
"The fact that the Iranian government was able to reverse engineer a drone is not half as troubling as the fact that it represents the latest incident of a foreign government using American technology to enhance their own capabilities. The facts speak for themselves. Since the American government made the decision to purchase commercial off-the-shelf equipment (both software and hardware), our adversaries have had an easier time in gaining access to a myriad of secrets." . . .