Originally Posted by
ATC Watcher
Interesting discussion , regardless of the real cause of this accident ( and I also personally doubt the UAV theory ) :
Hotel Tango :
definitively , however the vast majority of the UAvs accidents is when the operator contact is lost with the UAV a or if the UAV looses GPS contact and start doing things on its own , like descending for instance. And nobody likes to acknowledge they lost a UAV.
Chucks :
Both the US and The Russians have small High Altitude UAVs weighting less that 100K Kgs with a ceiling of 50-60.000ft . I've seen photos but not sure if they were prototypes or operational crafts. So technically possible : yes ,likely in our case , I would say no.
Finally for the conspirationists, this occurred at an FIR boundary, always a nice place to run classified missions. especially a NATO border.
There is no flying Russian UAV that can fly that high... usually service ceiling of known Russian UAVs is about 3000m-5000m / 10000-15000 ft (roughly). There is one that can presumably fly at 15000m (SKAT), but there is only one full scale version made out of wood for presentations and it was presented in 2007 . I am sure that when the time comes for actually flying it, the real service ceiling will be a lot more realistic.