Please, please, please forgive the intrusion into a possible political discussion but this statement was also in the Fox News article: "With early knowledge that the aircraft had likely remained intact, the senior U.S. official also told Fox News that President Obama was presented with three separate options for retrieving or destroying the drone. The president ultimately decided not to proceed with any of the plans because it could have been seen as an act of war, the official told Fox News."

I present this as food for thought, not as a request for a political discussion.  I don't know of any situation where the US lost an intelligence carrying platform and did not summarilly bomb the crap out of it.  Yes they sometimes don't get it all but to leave something like this intact?  No way.