Five days ago the United States lost a $220 million drone over the Strait of Hormuz. And nobody told you.
On February 22, an MQ-4C Triton, registration 169660, transmitted emergency code 7700 at 32,900 feet over the strait and vanished from Flightradar24. Gone. No wreckage announcement. No CENTCOM statement. No Pentagon briefing. The most advanced maritime surveillance drone in the American arsenal disappeared over the most contested waterway on earth during the largest military buildup since 2003, and the silence is deafening.
This is the same location, the exact same coordinates over the strait, where Iran shot down an RQ-4A Global Hawk in June 2019 using a Khordad-3 surface-to-air missile. That incident nearly triggered a war. Trump approved strikes, then recalled them with planes already in the air. Seven years later, another high-altitude surveillance drone vanishes in the same spot, and the Pentagon says nothing.
Defense Security Asia and Defense-UA report Iranian electronic warfare is suspected. Not a missile. Electronic warfare.
If confirmed, this means Iran did not destroy the Triton. Iran hijacked it. Seized its control link, overwhelmed its GPS navigation, and either crashed it into the Gulf or worse, landed it intact the way Iran captured the RQ-170 Sentinel in 2011 by spoofing its GPS and guiding it down like a lost bird.
Now connect this to what China has been delivering.
X accounts with intelligence community sourcing report China has transferred advanced electronic warfare systems to Iran capable of jamming carrier-based F-35s. EADaily reports the US “blames Russia and China” for the loss. If Iranian EW systems, built with Chinese technology, can seize control of an MQ-4C Triton flying at 33,000 feet, those same systems can disrupt the communications and targeting links that the entire strike architecture depends on.
The F-22s suppress radar. The B-2s carry bunker busters. The carriers launch strike packages. All of it relies on data links, GPS targeting, and command signals traveling through electromagnetic spectrum that Iran, with Chinese hardware, just demonstrated it can dominate over the strait.
You do not spend $67 billion on stealth and then lose your surveillance drone to electronic warfare five days before a potential strike. That is not a setback. That is a capability demonstration by the other side, proving they can blind you over the waterway you need to control.
The Pentagon’s silence is the loudest signal. When you lose a $220 million asset to a technical malfunction, you say so immediately because the alternative narrative is worse. When you say nothing for five days, it is because confirming what happened reveals a vulnerability you cannot afford to acknowledge while 500 aircraft and two carriers sail into the same electromagnetic environment.
Iran just showed it can turn the lights off over Hormuz. And Washington is pretending nobody noticed.
BY: Shanaka Anslem Perera
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