Is the U.S. Flying Fighter Aircraft and UAVs Over Iranian Airspace Already?

This is seriously interesting -- and just demonstrates how rich the blogosphere can be.

A reader of The Washington Note who is in the UAV business was watching a YouTube video of an F16 flying with the "Hunter UAV payload." I recommend you turn your volume down when you watch the clip.

But this reader understands telemetry and was interested in the telemetry overlay in one of the segments. The lat/lon reading on the video is N35.077 by E57.99.

He then looked up the coordinates on Google Maps. And lo and behold, the spot is over a portion of Iran.

As this clever analyst suggests: "Unless they have falsified the coordinates as part of a training exercise, does this mean that we're flying fighter aircraft and UAVs over Iranian airspace?"

I know my limits, and I don't know the answer to this question, but I am asking some friends of mine in the "intelligence community" to check this out and give me a read on whether America is war-gaming in Iran already.

I suspect that this may somehow have telemetry for a war game with virtual rather than real coordinates, but let's hear from the experts.

-- Steve Clemons is Senior Fellow and Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note.