I heard it mentioned that it had been brought down electronically by overriding it's guidance system so no doubt minds are concentrated on resolving this problem. I also concur that a triggered self destruct system is a serious omission. TC.

Picking up on something FE touched on "Of course you would have to be able to communicate with the aircraft to initiate a self-destruct,".

I am neither electrical engineer nor techie but I would have thought it could have been 'booby trapped' so, unless it was opened a certain way, it would blow itself up? In that case there would be no need for communication between sender and drone. Wasn't this the case with many un-exploded WWII bombs?

I think booby trapping would not really be cost effective for one in how many thousand chances that this event would occur, and you would never know, until it was too late, whether it worked or not.

I also think, as an explosives and weapons engineer (who has fitted so-called booby traps, or to give them their proper name, anti-tampering devices, to bombs), that it would be too risky.

It would just want one engineer out of thousands, on just one returned device out of thousands, to get just one item in a sequence of several hundred wrong, and there goes the farm.

Let's face it, these devices use perfectly normal, but sophisticated, radio control techniques, and perfectly normal, but sophisticated, surveillance and/or weapon delivery techniques.

There is almost certainly no very secret equipment on them, and no real security risk.

Remember, the very fact that they are drones means they are expendable and may be sent to high risk areas without risk to aircrew.

I think the loss of a single drone is in itself not important. However, Iranian technology has succeeded in working out the various frequencies and coding, so that they can now override the home transmissions and that will be expensive to correct.