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Man Accused of Selling US Military Drones On EBay
garymortimer writes "47-year-old Henson Chua is in a bit of trouble for trying to sell a RQ-11B 'Raven' Unmanned Aerial Vehicle on eBay. From the article: 'A federal grand jury in Tampa returned an indictment charging Henson Chua, 47, of Manilla, Philippines, with violations of the Arms Export Control Act and smuggling, following an investigation by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations. If convicted on all counts, Chua faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison.'" I'm kicking myself for missing this auction.
By the way, anyone interested in buying a B2 bomber? Really cheap, got a few from an old friend of mine, I can't fly them all at once anyway so I might as well make someone else happy with them. Just drop me a line.
How did he acquire it in the first place, second How much did it sell for?
The US military should sell online drone control sessions on XBox live, they could easily ringfence the middle east and put a few thousand drones in the air. They could call the game "death from above", "warfare for all" or simply "foreign policy".
Seriously, war is not cheap so why not put the worlds gamers to good use and collect the revenue?
Yes. With a camera.
And a 6 mile range. And a ceiling of 15,000 feet. And speed up to 60 mph.
And autonomous GPS navigation.
Probably you didn't have a plane like that when you were a kid.
Anybody possessing one could reverse engineer the command and control system for the drone and come up with a way of jamming it, rendering all the other drones still in possession of the military useless. So yes, it IS a big fucking deal.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It's a remote control plane with a secure two-way communications channel. It's that communications channel that they don't want falling into the wrong hands.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"A single Raven costs about $35,000 and the total system costs $250,000. The RQ-11B Raven UAV weighs about 1.9 kg (4.2 lb), has a flight endurance of 60–90 minutes and an effective operational radius of approximately 10 km (6.2 miles)."
Either military contractors are doing what they do best, or this particular model airplane has some kind of fancy tech tricks up its sleeve...
... these UAVs are becoming more and more like amateur model aircraft. In this current climate (fear, terror, control), I believe the model aircraft crowd are therefore likely to be increasingly regulated. It has happened already to the high power rocketry crowd (they pushed back - with some limited success).
An anecdote: a few years ago, a group flew a model airplane across the Atlantic (link). I found this quite interesting and told a few friends. One reacted with horror, postulating that terrorists would be able to use such a thing to deliver all sorts of nasty. No counterargument convinced him of the absurdity of his fear.
Its only illegal arms import, export and smuggling.
Camera? Yeah, cameras in RC planes have been done since at least the 80s, complete with video transmission back (often, but not always, in the amateur UHF bands)
6 mile range? Yes, if left alone in stable flight most gas RC planes can cover 6 miles before running out of gas. Controlling it would be rather difficult since you couldn't see it unless you were doing something like driving along following it.
Ceiling of 15k ft? Probably possible, but not likely from a control standpoint - again, you can't see it.
Speed up to 60 mph? Easily surpassed, and has been for several decades.
Autonomous navigation is the only "new" feature these things have over RC planes people have been playing with since the 80s (and probably before, but my experience with RC planes only goes back to the mid 80s). None of the rest of your list is anything new, or unique.
One 19,000 tonne aircraft carrier for sale, one careful owner, only used to drive to church on sundays and launch fearsome aircraft into the skies to intimidate the enemy and drink their blood.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I might point out that there are hobbyists who have spent more on their R/C aircraft than the military spent on this UAV. It's not too unreasonable to compare them.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
I'd be pretty sure the gov't would have provisions in place in case a transceiver did fall into the wrong hands. Military aircraft, vehicles, and troops, can all be subject to capture by an enemy. At that point, there is a good chance that any specialized equipment would be captured (along with their weapons, MREs, and fuel in the vehicle).
It's probably not a question of who may see it, but how much it cost. The gov't (and therefore we) pay a small fortune for every one of these innovative new devices deployed. It's definitely worth while for the gov't to want to go collect a stolen unit, rather than just ordering a new one. According to the USAF, that item cost approximately $173,000.
I do wonder if it was a legitimate item, or a home made knockoff that looked close enough, and the title was of the item, that the gov't believed it was a legitimate item. That still counts as far as their case goes. If you have what you say is an illegal item, and you try to sell it as that illegal item, then it's an illegal item.
If I went on Craigslist, and offered up 10 kilos of heroin, and had photos of what looked like 10 kilos of heroin, I'd be going to jail for selling 10 kilos of heroin, and anything that may have been involved in my procurement of said item.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I don't understand what should be special in communications for a device like this. We have huge, light weight hard drives these days. You just have to fill a 100 gigabytes of hard drive space with random data and copy that data onto another hard drive. Xor your transmissions against the random data on one end and xor it again against the matching random data at the other end. Voila, one time pad. 100 gigabytes worth of theoretically perfect, unbreakable encryption. It's not secret in any way, everyone in cryptography knows the "secret".
Just in case, you'd want to combine it with another form of encryption. Once you ran through the 100 gigabytes, you'd want to refresh your 100 gigabytes of random data. But the drone has to return to some sort of base eventually, and you refresh it then.
you do realize that other than the amount of money they have managed to spend on UAV's in 10 years there is nothing really amazing about them?
sure your average RC plane can't carry a hellfire missle .. but it didn't need to .. and most of the UAV's can't.. only select ones.
given the opportunity the RC crowd could, in my mind, have done just as well if not better than what we have now for a lot less.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I used to work for the manufacturer of the RQ-11 Raven. It’s not just a remote controlled toy. It’s a real airplane with a sophisticated autopilot, a long-range radio link, and a video ground control system. I’m limited by a nondisclosure agreement to what I can say, but I can go over each point in some more detail:
1) It’s a real airplane: UAVs are controlled by the same FAA regulations as airplanes. They require a Certificate of Airworthiness (COA) in order to operate in US airspace, and cannot be operated within 30 miles of a commercial airport. The pilots also require training and licenses. You can’t just pick one up and operate it like it’s an RC plane, though if you were patient and careful, you could probably figure it out without destroying the air vehicle first.
2) Sophisticated Autopilot: RC planes require the operator to actively control the aircraft’s every movement, and to do so, one must remain in visual contact with the craft. UAVs have IMUs and autopilots and are typically controlled at a higher level: give it waypoints, set the target airspeed and altitude, and it finds its own way, reacting automatically to atmospheric conditions. When it reaches its waypoint, it will automatically ‘loiter’ by circling the waypoint until given another waypoint, or a command to proceed to the next waypoint. In typical use, the Raven quickly leaves the line of sight of the operator. (Really, it’s almost as easy as controlling a Protoss Observer.)
3) Long Range Radio Link: The link to the operator is via two way radio, operating on military frequency bands and at powers that require a special FCC license for operation in the US. This unit was very likely an older block A or block B Raven with an analog radio link. If someone got their hands on an operational unit, reverse engineering the protocol would just be a matter of time. The newest Ravens have encrypted, digital links, and would be harder to hack. But this is likely one of the older, analog ones.
4) Video Ground Control Systems: Enemy possession of these, even one of the older analog units, is probably the most threatening aspect to the US military, as it would allow enemies to decode the protocols between air and ground, and enable an attacker to take control of a plane and/or modify its flight operation, and, depending on how it was configured, may reveal details about other military systems. These are not Futaba hand controllers. These are sophisticated proprietary handheld computers with onboard video processing, and possibly loaded with mission planning and navigation software, terrain models, etc. Definitely not toys.
There’s an unanswered question, and that’s “where did this guy get a Raven system?” Tens of thousands of these have been sold, mostly to the US Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps, but also many to foreign governments. Someone failed to honor their agreement with the manufacturer and the US State Department by allowing this to fall into uncontrolled hands. The operators of these systems are obliged to keep them secure, so at the very least, they’re guilty of negligence. If it was US military personnel, then some serious arms trafficking charges are liable to come down on someone’s head, not just this fence's.
There's also the question of industrial espionage, as the Raven OEM is in active competition for the small UAV market with other companies in countries around the world, including Israel, China, Italy, and others.
I can see the fnords!
^^ The things people would do to kill that fucking dog!
I think murder laws are stupid. So come over here and let's discuss it like real anarchists.
In a civil society, people can't pick and choose what laws they follow. An essential element of living in a republic means you submit to laws, even when your side loses, not just when it wins.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Wouldn't the point of a stealth bomber be that the FAA couldn't actually tell where you were flying?