Is this the second crash of U.S plane or third?
Source: Tehran Times
KARACHI – An unmanned U.S. surveillance plane crashed in southern Pakistan on Wednesday just after it took off from a military air base, a police official said.
“The plane took off from Jacobabad Air Base at around midday on Wednesday, but crashed soon afterwards,” Rana Fathe Shar Joya, a senior police official, told Reuters from Jacobabad in the southern Sindh Province.
He cited technical problems as the cause of the incident and dismissed speculation it may have been shot down.
“It fell some seven km (4.5 miles) from the city near the airport. There were no casualties,” he said.
Police reported a similar accident near Jacobabad in October, but it was later denied by the Pentagon.
Pakistan allows the U.S. military to use Jacobabad Air Base for search and rescue operations in neighboring Afghanistan.
A conservative Islamic coalition, which is in power in the Northwest Frontier Province neighboring Afghanistan, has demanded the withdrawal of the U.S. military from Pakistani soil.
Technical fault
From DAWN:
US Drone Crashes Near Jacobabad
JACOBABAD, Jan 1: An unmanned surveillance plane of the United States crashed in the rice fields of the Juma Khan village, near Saddar police station, here on Wednesday.
**According to eyewitness, the plane was seen circling over the Shahbaz Air Base - Pakistan’s third largest airbase - before crashing into the rice fields.
Officials said the plane, which was on a routine surveillance mission, crashed because of a technical fault. **
Army and rangers personnel rushed to the scene of the crash after being informed by US officials based at the air base and collected the wreckage of the plane.
The debris of the plane were brought back to the air base in a tractor trolley.
One interesting point to note, from a military tech perspective, is the greater number of technical failures that the NATO equipment has suffered under Pakistani and Afghan climate conditions. Their equipment is clearly better suited to cooler, less equatorial climates, particularly given the much lower rate of technical failures in the Serbian and Kosovan interventions.
Hope someone in Pakistan is noticing this and being discouraged from acquiring as much techy stuff as possible without considering the operating conditions in Pakistan.
Another gone…
US spy plane crashes
ISLAMABAD: An unmanned US surveillance plane crashed on Monday at Jacobabad airbase, police said. The aircraft went down soon after taking off from the Sahahbaz airbase in Jaccobabad district shortly after sunset, the city’s police chief Rana Fateh Sher told AFP by telephone. “It was a small pilotless plane known as Desert Hawk,” he said, adding that the drone fell “inside” the airbase. No casualties have been reported, the officer said. —AFP