Even if it gets returned, you can bet the PLA's already looked at it thoroughly.
Yup it is intelligence windfall I would delay as long as I can and analyze every part of it to design countermeasure or better still spoof it fed it fake images.
I doubt it is malfunction It was an spying mission for sure
Anyway here is Henri K take I don't agree with his assessment. He is believing too much in Indian press
After the recent confrontation between India and China in the border region of Doklam, which resulted in the withdrawal of the Indian army in August, a new local incident adds a grain of sand again in bilateral relations around this disputed region. Indeed, a
Heron reconnaissance drone acquired by the Indian army has crashed recently on the other side of the line of Active Control (LAC), within Chinese territory.
The crash was first revealed by the headquarters of the command of the Western theater of operations, the Chinese army, and
.
The statement said an "unmanned Indian machine made an intrusion into Chinese airspace before crashing," and "Chinese border guards proceeded to identify the aircraft."
It should be noted that the communication went through a lower channel, at the local level of the Chinese army, and not through a national channel such as the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Ministry of Defense for example. It is therefore assumed that the Chinese authorities voluntarily wanted to control the extent of this incident. Note also that the text mentioned neither the exact location nor the date nor is it known which model drone has entered the interior of China.
And it's on the Indian side that we finally find more details - the press office of the Indian Ministry of Defense quickly issued
the same day, "in response to the Xinhua article":
"An Indian UAV which was a regular training mission in the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control of the LAC in the Sikkim Sector. As per standard protocol, the Indian border security staff immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV. In response, the Chinese side reverted with the rental details of the UAV. The exact cause of the incident is under investigation. The matter is being dealt with by the India-China border areas. "
Col Aman Anand
The text admits that an Indian drone passed to the other side of the LAC, in the region of Sikkim, following a technical problem that made him lose contact with the ground station during a usual training mission . The Indian border guards immediately informed their Chinese colleagues, who gave details of the location of the drone in return.
Additional elements have also been unveiled by the Indian media - we learn for example that the crash took place a week ago near the disputed region of Doklam, and it is a drone Heron Israeli builder Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) acquired by the Indian Army in the 2000s'.
"The communication between the drone and the ground control station was interrupted and then restored before being lost again," said a senior Indian government official, "The drone could not be controlled and finished its shopping in the Chumbi Valley ".
The Heron drone in question was then flying 25 km from the effective control line on the Indian side when the "technical problems" arose after taking off from an airbase located in the Siliguri corridor.
The Chumbi Valley and the Siliguri Corridor
Another Heron-1S drone from the Indian Air Force crashed in 2014
, and that its digital analytics system (DAS) has already been shipped to Israel for investigation. Negotiations are currently under way to repatriate the wreckage of the craft.
As for the possibility of loss of sensitive data, sources close to the record seem to emphasize the fact that the drone does not have its own storage system, and the Indian army also claims that the machine "was not on mission monitoring ".
The Heron is a so-called High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) drone of the IAI which made its inaugural flight in 1994. With a maximum take-off weight of 1,150 kg, it can remain up to 52 hours in flight at a ceiling of 10,000 meters. Many countries are users of this MALE model including France with the modified version known as
EADS Harfang .
So here we find an LOS tactical reconnaissance drone used by the Indian army to monitor its mountainous borders with China, like the
for the RECON missions in the China Sea. and the South China Sea, except that the latter has a satellite communication link which allows it to go beyond a radius of 250 km.
In the center, the Chinese reconnaissance HALE drone BZK-005, designed by Beihang University, a Chinese equivalent of IAI Heron.
To be continued.
