Let me tell you how this will go down.

[rlegro]

22. I think it's likely

...that this drone was operating like today's version of the U-2, a high-altitude, supposedly invulnerable craft that was mostly in international waters but performing a series of parries and thrusts into Iranian airspace to test that country's defenses. Which testing is what our military conduct in earnest when they are preparing for a possible war. The Russians do the same thing -- except we don't shoot them down when they crowd our territory or buzz or ships and planes. With respect to the U-2 comparison, note that when that spycraft regularly traversed USSR airspace, the Russians tried over and over to shoot down those planes. And succeeded in downing the one piloted by Francis Gary Powers. So a big difference is that while back in the '60s an isolated attack on our aircraft didn't provoke a military strike in return, today the destruction of an unmanned drone has the White House ready to do just that. Finally, I suppose that in becoming more tendentious in the gulf and along Iranian airspace, the Trump maladministration is actively trying to provoke conflict. Just as the US did in the Gulf of Tonkin and elsewhere decades ago.