Thursday's attack not the first time Iran took down US drone

Iran’s shootdown of a U.S. drone over international airspace early Thursday morning drastically increased tensions between the two countries, but it wasn’t the Islamic Republic’s first attack on American drones in recent years.

Iranian forces downed a CIA RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone over Kashmar, a city in the country’s northeast, on Dec. 5, 2011. Western media outlets initially reported the drone had been shot down, but it was later discovered to have been recovered relatively intact. The Iranian government, hailing the capabilities of its cyber forces, claimed the drone had fallen victim to a cyberattack, though exactly how it was taken down remains unclear.