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This is a pretty big provocation. The Global Hawk/Triton is major piece of machinery.
The Triton is optimized for maritime surveillance, not terrestrial imaging, so whatever the Iranians wanted hidden was probably operating at sea.
One of the things the Triton can do, in contrast to Global Hawk, is descend to lower altitudes to do a close look at who and what is on a vessel. That would make it more vulnerable than at high altitude.
By implication the Triton succeeded in identifying what it was looking at by the fact of its destruction.
The most natural analog to this situation was the mining of the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts in 1988 which led to Operation Preying Mantis, which was a countervalue response by the US.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation…
What's different this time is that Iran must be presumed to accept, even welcome, a hard response by the US. They probably have a number of attack options ready, from Syria to Venezuela to the US homeland.
If the Trump administration's past is any guide it will respond by maximizing the economic damage it can inflict on Iran and in particular, on the leading members of its regime.
