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On 9th April a U.S. Navy MQ-4C Triton ($200M) reconnaissance drone on patrol in the Strait of Hormuz turned towards Iran, emitted an automated “code 7700” alert – a general signal used for any aircraft in distress -- and fell rapidly from 52,000 feet. When it dropped below 10,000 feet the signal from its transponder was lost.
The event was tracked on open-source flight tracker FlightRadar. There has not yet been official confirmation whether the drone crashed, was shot down by an Iranian missile, or whether it somehow recovered and made it back to base.
So I guess this is the source for the entire article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2026/04/10/a-crazy-expensive-us-drone-just-disappeared-over-strait-of-hormuz/
The article also says this:
“The incident was first highlighted by UK Defence Journal senior editor Jon, who monitors military aviation activity using open-source tracking tools.”
Maybe someone can follow this up?
I was tracking this UAV on FR24 just the other day in the middle of the strait.
https://preview.redd.it/033sk3zbffug1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=de071bebe870977a79b8e583baa68b27975dc9e4
I had to give up reading the article because of too many ads were blocking it, they have a special way of moving up and down the screen. That's not very credible.
This "story" has been all over social media for a day or two but has yet to be corroborated by a real source as far as ive seen. Iran has claimed nothing and neither has the US lol
No but it mounts up, just saying a lot of stuff is being shot down, no one noticed or cared, so why a drone that appeared on flight radar and vanished, like you see with a lot of military 7700, they vanish low
Didn't Iran bring down one of our military drones a few years ago by hacking into the GPS systems? Our government denied the incident until Iran had a press conference with the downed drone on a table.
52,000 feet is way up there, but not orders of magnitude above all aircraft. A Gulfstream 650 or Citation X can get up to 51,000 (certified limits). And Concorde cruised at 60,000.
Missiles are made to go pretty damn high. It’s literally rocket science. Surface to air missiles can get up to 100,000 feet. And of course can ICBMs go over 1000 miles into space.
Sounds like they wanted to be seen. The Triton is actually designed to rapidly descend unlike the Global Hawk. Or there's a ton of GPS spoofing in the area.
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