"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Friday, December 16, 2011

THE END OF DRONE WARFARE?

CSM Exclusive: Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer

In an exclusive interview, an engineer working to unlock the secrets of the captured RQ-170 Sentinel says they exploited a known vulnerability and tricked the US drone into landing in Iran.Iran guided the CIA's "lost" stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according to an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone's systems inside Iran.

Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone’s stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety.

Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan.
IF THIS IS TRUE, THEN THE DRONES ARE FINISHED.

AND IT MEANS THAT - IF THE WEST INTENDS ON A PREEMPTIVE ATTACK ON IRAN TO PREVENT IT FROM ACQUIRING NUKES - THAT DRONES CANNOT BE USED TO SOFTEN UP THE BATTLE SPACE.

THIS MEANS THE WAR WILL BE BIGGER AND MESSIER. SIGH.

RTWT.

11 comments:

Pastorius said...

There's a huge story within this story, because this is the future of the human psyche as well.

Silverfiddle said...

No. It's not the end. There are countermeasures. Battlefield technology, like combat tactics, is a game of leapfrog. You do something neat, the bad guys learn from it and adapt, causing you to have to come up with new and different tactics.

Regardless, this was stupid, either by design or by operations, and people should be fired for it.

Reliapundit said...

drones depend on remote control and this is via radio-transmissions which can be hacked and/or jammed.

what the iranians did was effectively create a CHEAP I.E.D. that can take out our SUPER-EXPENSIVE drones and this should NOT be minimized:

the IED's they deployed in IRAQ were the major source of our casualties and nearly defeated us - and they would have if a democrat had been in the WH.

the cheap IED's took out expensive HUMVEE's and killed and maimed our troops.

they made our mission NEARLY untenable.

this is worse.

Reliapundit said...

Pastorius said...

"There's a huge story within this story, because this is the future of the human psyche as well."


reliapundit: wtf does this mean?

Pastorius said...

It means, all people will be hooked into the internet via satellite in the future, unless they actively choose to function at about 1/1,000,000th of the speed of their fellow human beings. In other words, those who do not choose to be on the grid will be fucking retards compared to those who are. They will be apes.

And those who are on the grid will constantly be under threat of constant surveillance of their innermost thoughts and feelings. Privacy will be the primary battleground of Humanity in the future. The zone of privacy which is required to function as a true spiritual/physical human being will be violated, and that will deplete humanities ability to remain fully human.

Pastorius said...

I think Silverfiddle is right by the way. We will develop ever more sophisticated methods to conceal information within shells, even as it travels through "open airwaves".

I think your brain is working slowly today.

Reliapundit said...

pasto - what does that have ti do with drones?

Unknown said...

Seems i was right a couple of days ago when i said...
"Of course there's also the possibility that the US is loosing the cyberwar with Iran and that they're obtaining the knowhow to down drones , but nobody will print this for sure.".:)

Unknown said...

Pasto.
It seems to me that those Amish don't have such a bad life when considering all the rest.:)

Juniper in the Desert said...

On the other hand, it may be a double bluff by the US, in that this drone's purpose was to be landed by the Iranians and to spy on them from the ground and send back images and info before it is totally dismantled!

northern seer said...

As I understand it the enemy can jam the GPS signals in an area and substitute a signal that can redirect the vehicle to a subsitute landing site. One countermeasure would be to build in a primitive gyro nav system that would take over if the error of the GPS exceeds a certain threshold. The capability to jam the GPS is problematic in espionage situation...but in all out warfare the US airforce would have suppression of enemy electronic warfare as number one on their to-do list.

What's most disconcerting about this situation is not what the Iranian's are capable of now, but what they will glean from this capture in the future...