Air Force Says Iran Didn't Down Drone

First time accepted submitter QQBoss writes "The Air Force is not saying what caused the RQ-170 UAV to crash in Iran, but that Iran's claim to have forced it down is erroneous. The drone didn't come down and land gently as Iran had suggested it did. At least Iran got a good photo op, though the more interesting question is what technology will they be able to glean from what they did capture."

Comments

Forget PR

[oldhack]

Did USAF figured out how/why the drone got captured?

Re:Forget PR

[cold fjord]

If they did, I very much doubt they will say anything about it.

Re:Forget PR

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Hi. We're the US Airforce.

We run a secret intelligence agency, and have an acknowledged PsyOp division, aimed at the general US population.

Please believe us. We are not lying to you, about this. Really.

Re:Forget PR

[Kinky Bass Junk]

If they did, I very much doubt they will say anything about it.

Even if they did say anything, would anyone believe them?

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

For all we know, they deliberately set it down in order to give the Iranians a distraction.

What was the animal which all the knights wasted their lives to chase? The White Stag?

Re:Forget PR

[cold fjord]

We run a secret intelligence agency, and have an acknowledged PsyOp division, aimed at the general US population.

Please believe us. We are not lying to you, about this. Really.

Yes, because obviously what the American public believes has a direct effect on the technical capabilities of the Iranian government in a sort of "mind over matter" fashion. Most people don't make that connection.

Re:Forget PR

[Ethanol-fueled]

Yeah, I also laughed out loud when I saw the page in the link.

I do find it credible that Iran didn't use technical wizardry to down the drone. As a former Air Force electronic warfare technician, I'm guessing that Iran just flooded the area with high-amplitude noise jamming to trigger an automatic landing routine. My knowledge is not current, but much military technology nowadays uses 2 other (3-letter-acronym) types of satellite-based navigation technology with better precision than that of GPS.

There's a reason for classifying technology, and it's not to hide super-secret features. It's to prevent the enemy from knowing what a piece of shit the technology is.

But then again, seeing how the Joint Strike fighter and the F-22 both turned out to be flimsy, overpriced pieces of shit, It would not surprise me to see hurried Tijuana design practices in the systems integration. The last good American aircraft was the ultra-versatile, ultra-reliable F-15 airframe, which is still being adapted for use. I know because I worked on 'em, back in the days when their main antenna array was mechanically scanned :)

Re:Forget PR

[rtb61]

Who can forget how this all started out.
It not ours we didn't lose one.
We lost one but that's not it.

We want it back.
Now it's, 'er' yeah, it's our's but they didn't bring it down, we lost it all on our own (somehow that's meant to be better.

Of course the web site source is going wildly counter Republican dogma about the dangerous Iranians "the Iranians are constantly lying about their military exploits, especially when it comes to developing new weapons and technology. This is apparently done mainly for domestic propaganda as satellite photos never show more than a few prototypes of these wonder-weapons". So no great threat after all.

The real battle at the moment is between the US and Israel. The US administration is sick of Israel forcing into losing situations, losing billions and losing soldiers and knows Israel is actively trying to goad Iran into attacking Israel.

Likely Russia and China will not be too impressed in Israel launches an airstrike even a series of airstrikes on Iran in an attempt to precipitate a conflict and draw in the US at the US's expense.

Likely this will result in both China and Russia supply Iran with the latest weapons to test them against US hardware.

Re:Forget PR

[Billlagr]

For all we know, they deliberately set it down in order to give the Iranians a distraction

"...so I took their plutonium and, in turn, gave them a shoddy bomb casing full of old used pinball machine parts!"

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

The US administration is sick of Israel forcing into losing situations

Holy shit, it's November?! When I went to sleep last night, it was still January.

What the fuck. And Ron Paul was elected, to boot? God damn, the Mayans were right. So long, decrepit old society. Liberty's all up in this bitch now.

Oh, wait, I see. It's still January; Ron Paul has not been elected; and you merely have no clue whatsoever about how the US government feels about Israel.

Here's a tip: The President and Congress often fight over who gets to eat Israel's poop, because how can they say they love Israel if they can't even eat Israel's poop?

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

The government today announced that it is changing its emblem from an Eagle to a CONDOM because it more accurately reflects the government's political stance. A condom allows for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while you're actually being screwed.

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

Iran: Got you!
USAF: No you didn't!
Iran: Yes we did!
USAF: No no no! I don't like this game and I'm taking my ball home too!

Re:Forget PR

[mug funky]

older than ARPAnet

Re:Forget PR

[dkleinsc]

We run a secret intelligence agency, and have an acknowledged PsyOp division, aimed at the general US population.

Incidentally, that would be admitting to breaking the law, because the US military is bound by law to aim psyops solely at foreign populations.

Re:Forget PR

[Ethanol-fueled]

Meh. When AIPAC was confronted about their seemingly disproportionate influence on congress, they simply said, "Yeah, we lobby, but we're no different than any other big corporation that lobbies."

The disproportionate influence of Hollywood on the future of America's internet freedom is a good example.

But Ethanol-fueled, the Jews run both AIPAC and Hollywood!

Well, that may or may not be true, but you must admit that the 'States, Israel, and other nations all have common interests in the Middle-east. Nobody likes the Muslims. And the Islamic nations happen to be sitting on tremendous deposits of natural resources. You can hate Israel all you want, and they are dicks, but they still have (with loud minority exceptions) the most gender-neutral society in the entire world.

As for the Islamic nations, well, they as a whole don't garner a whole lot of worldwide sympathy for their child brides, honor killings and maimings of women(woman was raped - KILL HER!), worship of an ominous black cube, suicide bombings, and the list goes on and on.

And things are gonna stay that way as long as people can point to the Muslim nations and say, "well, at least we're not like that!.

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the gp, but original speculation was that they somehow took over the drone.

Sounds to me like he is saying precisely that flooding the area with noise is kind of like the caveman bat, not high-tech wizardry.

Re:Forget PR

[Ethanol-fueled]

Why are you contradicting yourself?

Noise jamming is not "technical wizardry." It is the crudest form of electronic jamming known to man. It's the "hail mary" of the jamming world. If Iran used it, they did so because their technology is primitive, not because they had inside information.

Yeah that's called "security through obscurity" and no self-respecting security relies on it.

Tell that to the Serbians who shot down an American stealth fighter using primitive sixties-era Russian technology.

Re:Forget PR

[Jesse_vd]

The last I heard, the Iranians claimed to have hijacked the GPS and told it to land within their borders, and the U.S. claimed it veered off-course and crashed

Re:Forget PR

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Do you remember when laws used to be enforced? That seemed to work OK. I wonder why they stopped?

Re:Forget PR

[tp1024]

As a former Air Force electronic warfare technician, I'm guessing that Iran just flooded the area with high-amplitude noise jamming to trigger an automatic landing routine.

Why are you contradicting yourself?

Knowing what countermeasure to use and how to exploit an automatic routine isn't technical wizardry?

Erm, that's not a contradiction at all. It's like lockpicking vs. smashing the door. There isn't a lot of subtlety involved (or required) to jam such a signal. Drones require shitloads of bandwidth to operate (i read something like 500mbit/s) and if he was still alive, I would suggest asking Claude Shannon about difficulty of jamming high-bandwidth signals (almost none). A bit of noise and the whole thing breaks down.

Re:Forget PR

[swb]

It was damaging our ability to innovate.

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice doubles, bro. But check mine.

Re:Forget PR

[countertrolling]

Do you remember when laws used to be enforced?

No

Re:Forget PR

[hairyfeet]

Well don't forget it was only a couple of years ago (late 09 i believe) that Intel quit making the 386 because the military was still buying and that thing is so old they haven't been found even in goodwill stores in nearly a decade, hell I throw away machines a dozen times more powerful than that old POS chip.

Despite all the talk of the "high tech military' by the time the gear gets through committees and sub-committees and 14 levels of bureaucratic BS the stuff is pretty damned ancient. I don't know what is sadder, how much really old crap our soldiers are dealing with or how the really old crap is better than the new stuff, like the F35 which is up to what? A billion plus just to fix the bugs they've found so far? Frankly i think we'd be better off having some more F-15s and F-18s cranked out even though those are old designs.

but if this program is anything like what we've seen with the fighters the only thing the program is really good at is cost overruns and the thing probably has so many bugs you could knock it down with a hacked iPhone. How much you wanna bet the Chinese will end up with it like they did the stealth chopper we lost going after Bin Laden and the F 117 they had dug up in Kosovo? Maybe they can figure out how to make it at a decent price and have it actually functional.

Re:Forget PR

[countertrolling]

Now stand aside, worthy adversary.
'Tis but a scratch.
A scratch? Your arm's off!
No, it isn't.
Well, what's that then?
I've had worse.
You liar!
Come on you pansy!

Re:Forget PR

[A nonymous Coward]

Do you remember when laws used to be enforced?

You must be joking. The only time laws are enforced against the fat cats is when the fatter cats throw a baby to the wolves. If a fat cat breaks an inconvenient law, the transgression is ignored unless it's a handy sop to the peasants. If a peasant needs to be punished and there is no convenient law, charges are made up or the law creatively re-interpreted.

Anyone who reads even a little on the history of law will come to the same conclusion. Try Slaughterhouse or Dred Scott for particularly egregious examples in the fairly recent US.

Your .sig isn't much better. Anyone who thinks capitalism has ever existed probably also thinks Marxism / communism ever existed. All we have ever had is fat cats running the world. They have rough spots once in a while when the peasants surprise them (see SOPA and PIPA for the most recent example), but they get over it.

Re:Forget PR

[Raindog]

IIRC there was a version of the 386 that was hardened against high levels of radiation...hence their being used quite a bit in space (and presumably nuclear) applications, which would go along way towards explaining such a thing.

Re:Forget PR

[peragrin]

ah but that is the trick, if you want new designs you need to invest in the R&D.

for computers the R&D is done by companies looking to make money by selling the "Best", for military they have to foot their own R&D costs on top of procurement costs.

You can't have the "latest" without someone spending the R&D to build the damn thing to begin with.

Also as things age it gets harder to get replacement parts. look at the A-10. The Air Force has tried to discontinue it several times, however it keeps proving itself reliable in combat. Now they have to go so far as to reverse engineer new parts out of old parts in order to keep the planes flying.

If the Air Force would put up with a slow plane or simply let the Marines build the damn things then everything wouldn't be bad.

The F-117 over Kosovo was quite literally the product of bad generals and bad "theratre" management. it flew the same route every night. all they had to do was wait until late at night and throw up a couple of rockets. They knew when and where it will be and so failed not do to tech but bad field managers.

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

You can hate Israel all you want, and they are dicks, but they still have (with loud minority exceptions) the most gender-neutral society in the entire world.

Right, so as long as a you have a gender neutral, pretend western-liberal democracy* you or your buddy state can kill (literally) millions of your neighbours, assassinate with impunity around the world, bribe and bully sovereign nations and develop nuclear weapons while giving the rest of the world the finger. Gotcha.

Won't be that way for long once the ultra-Orthodox, almost 15% of Israel now, seize power. They are as fundie as they come.

Re:Forget PR

[Ethanol-fueled]

The F-117 over Kosovo was quite literally the product of bad generals and bad "theratre" management. it flew the same route every night. all they had to do was wait until late at night and throw up a couple of rockets. They knew when and where it will be and so failed not do to tech but bad field managers.

I also read that explanation. But the point is that aircraft should be self-contained and should not rely on other aircraft to perform jamming for them. I can't say much more than that other than that the later upgrades to the F-15's ECM system addressed the low-frequency problem. The C-models came first, and the E-models came with a more advanced and elegant solution. Self-containment is why the F-15 is the Cadillac of all the air-superiority fighters.

Re:Forget PR

[__aaltlg1547]

Nobody would use a highly vulnerable communication system to fly an airplane, let alone in a war zone.

Re:Forget PR

[timeOday]

I think you and the GP are missing an important, falsifiable statement from the story: "The air force did say that, because they had figured out what brought the RQ-170 down, they were continuing to fly RQ-170s on reconnaissance missions."

.

I have a hard time believing they would do this if your theory - simple jamming - were correct.

I also have a hard time believing the GP that US propagandists would use such a simple, falsifiable lie.

So, I think the most likely scenario is that this new high-tech drone simply broke down over Iran and crash-landed.

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you like to do the body count, does it matter why people are killed?, is it just because a lady got raped you think it is honor to kiil her, or kill thousand of people to bring Jesus back or for oil, or to protect our corporates. Let us find out how many people have been killed by Muslims (all of them combined) and how many by others. Let us not hide behind the fact that we killed the most people in last century, nut Muslims. Rest of the world actually points at us and says "well, at least we're not like that!"

Don't be a shill

Re:Forget PR

[InspectorGadget1964]

Guess what? They do

Re:Forget PR

[BenJCarter]

Yet still apt. The more things change, the more they stay the same :D

Re:Forget PR

[Ksevio]

Laws aren't like the game hearts - they don't all become invalid after some aren't enforced.

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

i386 processors in space? Where? You do realize the article that reported upgrades of the Space Shuttles' AP-101s to 386 processors was an April Fools joke, right?

Re:Forget PR

[Rennt]

It wasn't so much hardened, as much as it was just made on such a crude process (over 1 micrometer) it was largely unaffected by radiation.

Re:Forget PR

[BenJCarter]

The last I heard, the Iranians claimed to have hijacked the GPS and told it to land within their borders, and the U.S. claimed it veered off-course and crashed

I heard that also.

Something close to that explanation seems feasible, based on what I've read. Perhaps they managed to jam the control signal, but had a hard time calculating GPS interference to correctly guide the aircraft. (Maybe they learned what channels to jam using intel based on a nuisance virus?) I don't have access to the protocols that govern autonomous drone control in the event of communication failure, so I don't know. There may be some poor Iranian geek explaining to the head chopper in charge why he shot off his mouth to the press, or maybe press reports are innacurate.

I think, based on the Iranian propaganda the BBC reported, which hid the landing gear behind bunting, the drone landed hard at best, and most likely crashed. Iran has falsified images previously.

Either way, we need to get better at this stuff or terrorists win.

Re:Forget PR

[Talderas]

While an interesting theory about the virus, it's only affecting the site that handles the Predator and another class of drones. The site that handles the drone that was downed in Iran has not been affected by that virus.

And yes, the underside of the drone was hidden and is probably very badly damaged. At the very least you can see in the pictures of the drone that tape is covering the where the wings attach to the central part of the drone. It's very likely the wings cracked or came off at some point.

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the Communists probably killed the most - about 100,000,000.

Re:Forget PR

[cold fjord]

Do you remember when laws used to be enforced? That seemed to work OK. I wonder why they stopped?

It didn't. People simply ask rhetorical questions implying it did and get freebie +5s. My hat is off to you sir, but your post is nonsense.

Re:Forget PR

[stanlyb]

They already said: The drone was not "forced" to land, but was asked politely "...dear drone, would you care to join us for a brief photo session?", and the drone, as you know it, could not resist the urge to be seen in the latest playboy... i mean playdrone magazine.

Re:Forget PR

[Sun]

hell I throw away machines a dozen times more powerful than that old POS chip.

There are more important aspects to a chip that is supposed to be used in an aircraft than processing speed. Radiation resistance, temperature sensitivity, having a frame that can withstand 9G over time and twice that at emergencies, etc. count for more than having more processing power, even if the result is that you are using a less powerful chip.

The reason the 386 took so long to be replaced wasn't because of some slow working committee. It is because the economical pressures at ground levels are different, causing chip makers to produce chips that are indeed faster, but less suited to the operating conditions inside a fighter aircraft.

I didn't know they actually found an alternative. Maybe they didn't, and are just so swell stocked up on 386s that they feel there is no need to pay the cost to Intel of keeping the old production line open.

Shachar

Re:Forget PR

[JWSmythe]

    Right. They upgraded to IBM AP-101S. 32bit, 1.2Mhz, 1MB RAM.

    From what I understand, there were Intel 80386 processors used for other functions.

    They are used in all kinds of embedded systems, both gov't and commercial. There isn't much need to upgrade the CPU on some embedded device that's always worked that way. Well, not til the next generation needs more power.

    The shuttle didn't generally change very much, so if they were using 386's to run some device, there wasn't much need to upgrade.

Re:Forget PR

[ArcherB]

Of course the web site source is going wildly counter Republican dogma about the dangerous Iranians "the Iranians are constantly lying about their military exploits, especially when it comes to developing new weapons and technology.

Nope! I don't know if you notice, but the President is not a Republican any more. A Republican hasn't held that office in almost exactly three years.

When will Democrats stop blaming Republicans for fuck ups that are all their own?

Re:Forget PR

[MichaelSmith]

It seems strange that a UAV would be designed to perform a soft landing when its communications are degrading. Wouldn't it be more secure to spear in under those circumstances? And maybe blow itself up in the process.

Re:Forget PR

[JWSmythe]

    I see you have an excellent grasp of international relations. It's a big game of he-said she-said in a world theater.

Re:Forget PR

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Ironic commentary, not naive rumination.

Re:Forget PR

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I'm afraid that Law operates on precedent. The preceent now established? Might makes right.

Re:Forget PR

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

You believe all the distortions, half truths and misrepresentations sold to you by the CNNBCFox?

It is impossible to retort to those who play in imaginary sandboxes. I'm glad that - at least - you didn't pay for that brainwashing.

Re:Forget PR

[h5inz]

Wasn't it a X-45 of some kind(maybe X-45c?). It is supposed to be fully autonomous. Just because somobody might want to try to jam it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-45

Re:Forget PR

[zdzichu]

There's a great quote I saw recently:

General: "So, how do we get Stuxnet 2 in Iran? USB sticks won't do it any more"
Sergeant: "What if we crash land an infected drone there?"

Re:Forget PR

[l00sr]

I think you and the GP are missing an important, falsifiable statement from the story: "The air force did say that, because they had figured out what brought the RQ-170 down, they were continuing to fly RQ-170s on reconnaissance missions."

Exactly. I'd love to see the US call Iran on their bluff and have them demonstrate their ninja hacking skills on a test drone.

Re:Forget PR

[GodfatherofSoul]

Well, the stealth fighter was 70s era technology sold to the public as next generation after it was nearing obsolescence.

Re:Forget PR

[r45d15]

I can understand why JSF is crap, but why would you call the F-22 that way?

Re:Forget PR

[Grishnakh]

You obviously haven't met the geniuses at the DoD.

Re:Forget PR

[Grishnakh]

Nope! I don't know if you notice, but the President is not a Republican any more. A Republican hasn't held that office in almost exactly three years.

What are you talking about? Obama's been one of the best Republican Presidents ever; he's a far better Republican than Bush was.

Re:Forget PR

[Patch86]

Noise jamming is not "technical wizardry." It is the crudest form of electronic jamming known to man. It's the "hail mary" of the jamming world. If Iran used it, they did so because their technology is primitive, not because they had inside information.

Well, it did work. Seeing as they successfully netted themselves a USAF unmanne drone with simple noise jamming (if that is indeed what happened), anything "more sophisticated" would have been wasted effort. Like picking the lock on a door when the window is wide open.

Re:Forget PR

[Patch86]

Great when you're flying over enemy-infested desert mountain ranges, but not so great when flying over a city or key piece of infrastructure. The military is (generally) not in the business of "let's just blow everything up regardless!".

Re:Forget PR

[MichaelSmith]

Sure so thats why it should have a setting. In home airspace it has one behaviour. In other places, different behaviour.

Re:Forget PR

[donscarletti]

Slaughterhouse was the right decision. The 14th amendment merely means that all US citizens within a state have equal rights under state law, it does not mean that the states have no power to control what happens within their boundaries.

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

We run a secret intelligence agency, and have an acknowledged PsyOp division, aimed at the general US population.

Incidentally, that would be admitting to breaking the law, because the US military is bound by law to aim psyops solely at foreign populations.

Well, today, us foreign populationz we r in ur intehwebz and we can haz ur psyops?

Sorry guys, with Internet I guess the borders are down, at least regarding information. It is all global village nowadays. They couldn't limit their scope solely to foreign populations even if they wanted to.

Re:Forget PR

[nutshell42]

No but it has a direct effect on the financial capabilities of the DoD.

If a half assed regime could down a multi-billion dollar super high tech weapon with shit bought at Home Depot, people might question if all those juicy contracts are really necessary.

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

The same rules apply to other places. I think the residents of a non US city would be just as upset as the residents of a US one if a US spy plane malfunctioned and killed people by deliberately nose diving into their homes just to protect it's secrets.

Also you need to bear in mind that these things aren't always meant to be where they are. For example over Iran. Nose diving it into the ground could trigger a war.

UAV is flying around enemy territory photographing sensitive military stuff. UAV loses comms. UAV nose dives. UAV hits some of the sensitive military stuff. Foreign govt. freaks out that a missile has hit their sensitive military stuff and launches a counter attack.

Alternatively it malfunctions, tries for a softish landing, is a bit of embarrassing propaganda you give to the foreign govt. But at least it's not a war.

Re:Forget PR

[Eunuchswear]

Tell that to the Serbians who shot down [wikipedia.org] an American stealth fighter using primitive sixties-era Russian technology.

The usual claim is that it was Polish technology (radar system using an Polish military version of an ICL 1900 series computer).

Re:Forget PR

[Eunuchswear]

Also as things age it gets harder to get replacement parts. look at the A-10. The Air Force has tried to discontinue it several times, however it keeps proving itself reliable in combat. Now they have to go so far as to reverse engineer new parts out of old parts in order to keep the planes flying.

The A10? What about the B52!

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems unlikely that you'd ditch inertial guidance, or other similar, cheap, internal navigational systems. Sure, use GPS if it's available, as it provides high accuracy and an external point of reference, but if radionav is down or suspect not you can get pretty close with inertial guidance and/or astrological navigation. I mean, I wouldn't land the thing on inertial guidance but when you're in the air you have plenty of tolerance for the sort of errors that accumulate over a few hours of flying, and it's all but impossible to "jam" or otherwise disable such a system without completely disabling the aviation control systems of the drone.

Re:Forget PR

[nojayuk]

The Space Shuttle's avionics were upgraded regularly during their time in service -- for example they got a "glass cockpit" quite early on in the program using CRTs and that was later replaced with flatscreens and more configurability to match mission requirements.

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

Acceptable "collateral damage".

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

You heard Panetta, we're going to defend our country with innovation, not a military. I guess we hurl our "innovation" at them.

Re:Forget PR

[tp1024]

Yes, absolutely. But it's not an airplane, it's a drone.

Re:Forget PR

[shiftless]

If Iran used it, they did so because their technology is primitive, not because they had inside information.

Which technology is more primitive? The Iranians with their crude jamming, or the multi-million dollar drone which is clearly easily defeated by said crude jamming?

Re:Forget PR

[JaredOfEuropa]

I'd think it would be better (and a lot easier) to just head for home when navigation / communication breaks down, using a simple compass and dead reckoning to navigate, and hope that the comms will come back up after flying out of hostile territory. Use a soft landing or crash as a last resort when fuel gets low.

Re:Forget PR

[AJH16]

Or better yet, simply use the inertial guidance to steer to a pre-programmed safe landing area and look for communication to link back up. High precision navigation systems aren't the only navigation system most of these things have. I don't know about the drone in question, but most of them have automatic RTB (return to base) functionality even if they lose all communication and GPS navigation. Simply jamming shouldn't do much other than prevent it being operated quite as reliably. I believe some of them use highly directional satellite links as well which would be difficult to jam, though I don't know if this model would have been using that or not (given that it was stealth, I would expect it would to avoid detection from emissions though.)

Re:Forget PR

[garyebickford]

But the point is that aircraft should be self-contained and should not rely on other aircraft to perform jamming for them.

Actually, no. The jamming aircraft is a huge source of radio signals - the opposite of stealth. The jamming aircraft needs to be well out of range, because it's like a huge light bulb at radio frequencies.

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

> Do you remember when laws used to be enforced?

No. When was that?

Re:Forget PR

[radtea]

I have a hard time believing they would do this if your theory - simple jamming - were correct.

Debugging this kind of issue is hard enough when you have the hardware that failed in-hand. I'm betting the AF came up with a plausible and psychologically satisfying explanation and ran with it. That explanation may be true, but unless they have logging information that can show the loss was NOT caused by Iranian jamming it's very hard to raise its plausibility to anything like the level of "proof".

Our knowledge is never certain (certainty is faith, not knowledge) so it's quite possible the Iranians legitimately believe they downed the drone deliberately (Islamic nutjobs have egos too) while the AF legitimately believes it was a rare technical fault.

Re:Forget PR

[stewbacca]

Half-assed is hyphenated, you insensitive clod!

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be hilarious if it was true. I doubt very much that it is but still...

Re:Forget PR

[dave420]

The drone in question is both, actually. The two terms are not mutually exclusive.

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to the Serbians who shot down [wikipedia.org] an American stealth fighter using primitive sixties-era Russian technology.

That was only possible because a general insisted they constantly fly the EXACT SAME ROUTES day after day. If you know the exact time and place where an enemy will be, defeating them becomes many orders of magnitude easier. Even more so when your sole defense is to make sure the enemy NEVER knows where and you'll be.

This was not a technological failure in any way. It was 100% a fucktard general (as in rank) failure in every way.

Re:Forget PR

[cold fjord]

If a half assed regime could down a multi-billion dollar super high tech weapon with shit bought at Home Depot, people might question if all those juicy contracts are really necessary.

That is ridiculous. Drones are pretty clearly necessary, so finding an actual vulnerability would generate more contracts to fix the problem, not fewer from the elimination of drones.

Re:Forget PR

[schlachter]

The plane was $6 million.

Re:Forget PR

[schlachter]

back then we had laws that made sense?

Re:Forget PR

[tokul]

Likely Russia and China will not be too impressed in Israel launches an airstrike even a series of airstrikes on Iran in an attempt to precipitate a conflict and draw in the US at the US's expense.

Not sure about Russia or China, but I would be impressed if Israelis do that. Iran is not Egypt, Lebanon or Syria. It is even further than Osiraq. Last Israel military actions were responses to attacks on their territory. So far I am aware only about three cases when they attacked first. One is from 1960s, other two were against nuclear targets. One of them was on the limit of Israelis strike fighter capabilities. Other refused to admit that it was nuclear object.

Re:Forget PR

[rtb61]

Legislative, executive, judiciary, perhaps maybe you might have heard of it. Obama represents the 'executive', he administers the Federal laws and regulations given to him. Perhaps, maybe just perhaps, you might remember at least some of the example of Republican members of the legislative, time and time again trying to get the US to go to war with Iran (some of the crazy wankers even have Israeli flags in their office along side the US one). Do you not recognise most of the impetus for war comes not from intelligence gathered in the field by agents but from lobbyists (they get paid to do it), arms industries(the want to sell arms and ammunition), US oil companies (cut off Iranian oil and the price of oil will rise by as much as 50%, major profit increase) and via treason of US politicians Israel (Israel want's to dominate the region and is working to destroy country after country that threatens that dominance, eventually Saudi Arabia will come under fire).

As it turns out those driving war prefer to target Republican Party at the primaries and supply huge amounts of money to ensure their puppets get in. Don't think so, just look at the way Ron Paul is targeted by right wing institutions (mass media likes to pretend he doesn't exist) for being anti-war.

Re:Forget PR

[JWSmythe]

    Ya, I remember when that happened. :) They didn't continue to make serious progressions with the design though. It's not like STS Orbiter 2.0 and 3.0 ever existed. If we continue to improve the design over the 39 years the shuttle program existed (from first design to last flight), they were still the same orbiters.

    If we had continually improved the design, STS-134 would have been a 3rd or 4th generation craft, with significant design changes. We would have already practiced atmospheric skip re-entry, and other methods to not require such a hot re-entry. We would have practiced air launches. We would have had more than one shuttle up at a time, and practiced craft to craft transfers (not docked to the ISS).

    And, most likely, they would have reduced the number of switches in the cockpit, as virtually all could be moved from physical dedicated switches, to on-screen soft switches.

    But hey, the US space craft are retired. We're dedicated to using the Soviet parachuting capsules, and the folks on the ISS are one capsule away from saying "oh shit, we don't have a ride home".

   

Re:Forget PR

[idontgno]

If you're operating a high-value stealth strike aircraft, the last thing you want to do is strap on a high-powered radio emitter. Kind of defeats the purpose.

This is why we operate strike packages, complete with slightly-more-expendable aircraft to do the jamming.

Self-containment is why the F-15 is the Cadillac of all the air-superiority fighters.

I don't know where you come from, but it's been a long time in my neck of the woods since "Cadillac" was considered a positive metonym. If they can't see you, in theory, they can't shoot you. However, even the best low-observability technology won't protect you if you operate the mission stupidly. (Didn't we learn this lesson in 'Nam?)

Re:Forget PR

[radtea]

There's a reason for classifying technology, and it's not to hide super-secret features. It's to prevent the enemy from knowing what a piece of shit the technology is.

I thought the reason was to slow down the inevitable diffusion of new technology to your enemies in the hope that the idiots who developed the current stuff would be retired before it comes back to bite them.

After all, as soon as something exists, it becomes easier of others to make it. Even the lies people tell about the details can be informative. The US taught the Russians that a fission bomb was possible. They then taught the Russians that a fusion bomb was possible and the fallout from it provided quite a bit of detail on how to go about building one. Lithium and all that.

Every piece of tech the US creates produces a 100% certainty that people who hate the US will have substantially the same tech in a few years, which works wonderfully for people who hate the US, like arms manufacturers and military procurement people in all branches of government, but not so well for the first-line dupes who actually go out and get killed, or for the American people generally.

Anyone who claims it's possible to keep technology secret indefinitely is lying or deluded.

Re:Forget PR

[tokul]

about 100,000,000

What percentage of Japanese, Vietnamese and native American population is that?

Re:Forget PR

[makomk]

You can hate Israel all you want, and they are dicks, but they still have (with loud minority exceptions) the most gender-neutral society in the entire world.

I guess, to be fair, that only some Jewish areas of Israel force women to literally sit at the back of the bus, and there aren't that many violent attacks on young Jewish women by other older women, and that politicians are a tad embarrassed about the fact that because some parts of religious law are enshrined in Israeli law Jewish men are to allowed to divorce their wives but women need permission from their husband to get a divorce (though not enough to change the law), and...

It's not exactly gender-neutral, which shouldn't be surprising given that a lot of the really nasty ideas in Islamic law were outright nicked from Jewish religious law. (Muhammed did remove some of the worst bits, including women not being able to get divorces, but in other ways Islam is worse mostly because it's far more rigid a religion. Judaism apparently has a long tradition of working around inconvenient religious laws.)

Re:Forget PR

[hairyfeet]

I read recently our best defense against the Chinese stealth fighter is.....drumroll...the F-15. the F-15 can carry a MUCH more powerful radar in its nose and because adding external hardpoints won't blow any stealth you can load it up with droptanks and missiles. Personally i believe we should buy the upgraded "Stealth Eagle' and upgraded F-18 and drop the turkey that is the F-35. With the amount of SAMs and AAA the Russians are selling to anybody with a buck any future enemies will be able to "bullet spam" the airspace and the lack of hardpoints for fuel really limits the roles the F-35 can take. Both the F-15 and F-18 can serve as fighter/bombers, frontline fighters, CAP, they have multiple roles they can cover while being a solid proven technology. We have already reached the point both of the teen series have to have limits placed on their turning radius because they can do moves that would kill the pilot and for stealth i really think we should concentrate on the drones as they can be cranked out faster and cheaper and the loss of pilots means they can turn sharper and take more Gs.

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing about drones is how great they are for the military-industrial complex. They are "pretty clearely necessary" to kill enemies of the US, and they do it with no risk to American lives. But here's the good part: for each enemy of the US they kill, they create 100 new ones, the relatives of the "collateral damage" also killed by the drone. See how sweet that is? They not only kill US enemies, they create new ones as they do it, insuring a never-ending need for more drones! Hey, isn't that great for the drone manufacturers? And it provides jobs for Americans!

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

"War zone?" Are we at war with Iran?

Re:Forget PR

[Anonymous Coward]

Drones are pretty clearly necessary, so finding an actual vulnerability would generate more contracts to fix the problem, not fewer from the elimination of drones.

Sure. But it could also lead to new contracts with a different company, one which doesn't have an "informal agreement" to employ certain decision-makers in cushy jobs a few years down the road.

- T

what they'll get..

[gl4ss]

is the same shit they could have ordered from DX.

really, that's the reason for using shit cheap drones, no big loss.

(though of course average iranian wouldn't have web access to check out dx and to order)

Re:what they'll get..

[DigiShaman]

They will exchange or gift it to some other nation in exchange for diplomatic relations. Namely China or Russia. Aside from the whole stealth paint technology, it provides little extra value.

Re:what they'll get..

[Anonymous Coward]

Must have used the DROP SHIP to Iran option by accident. ;)

Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

Do people expect the military to admit that their drone wasn't hacked and gently landed? Of course they're going to save face here. I don't trust their PR department any more than I trust any other PR department.

Re:Uh

[adamofgreyskull]

"Our drone was NOT hacked by the enemy, in fact no outside influence was required to cause our super-expensive, top-secret drone to crash land in enemy territory. We refuse to divulge why precisely this happened, but we can assure you that whatever happened, it was our own fault, and not the work of enemy forces. No questions please."

Way to save face...

Re:Uh

[icebike]

Do people expect the military to admit that their drone wasn't hacked and gently landed? Of course they're going to save face here.

Did you read the linked article:

Then many Americans familiar with the RQ-170 carefully studied the pictures of the "captured" RQ-170 and immediately suspected something was off. For one thing, the RQ-170 shown was the right size and shape but the wrong color. Not just a different color from that seen on many photos of the RQ-170s in Afghanistan but also a color unknown in American military service. A closer examination of the Iranian RQ-170 photos indicated that the Iranians had reassembled an RQ-170 that had crashed and broken into three or more pieces.

It wasn't even the military that first noticed the paint job.
And the landing gear was always hidden by drapery.
If it landed intact why hide it?

Re:Uh

[AHuxley]

If a US drone lands/fails/is zapped and crashes in your part of the world:
1) Get to the optics, control and electronics in a very fast way and get as much out as you can.
2) If a missile hits/team lands to destroy the drone, every second counts.
3) If you can keep the parts for a show and tell at a later date - use a very safe location that would be great for more PR if the US sends in a missile...
4) The gear up/down may give away details of settings used/not used. Keep the flights final settings a mystery ...
Any missing parts/cut holes may be used as PR to say its a big hoax.. so don't show too much

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

the fact is that Iran HAS the unit, even if they had to duct tape it back together. Even if it crashed, it was still close enough to Iran to land ON THEIR SIDE of the border. The thing to take as US citizens is that our military is consistently goading Iran along... Obviously the drone was violating Iran's airspace when it went down... so our government is stoking them to keep up the crazy talk.. just because they are paranoid doesn't mean our side isn't out to start shit.

Re:Uh

[MidGe]

Paint job???

The only paint job is the attempted whitewashing!

It is news to me that you can tell the original color from a photo! Calibration would be impossible, imo, even with US technology which is always "assumed", implicitly, to be superior.

Why hide it? And why would the Air Force not say how it happened, if they know? Why, indeed.

I choose not to believe everything I read, whichever side it comes from. Although, based on the record, it is hard to tell which one of the Pinocchios has the longest nose.

 

Re:Uh

[cold fjord]

It wasn't even the military that first noticed the paint job.
And the landing gear was always hidden by drapery.
If it landed intact why hide it?

You must remember this is Iran. Although in English, the word drone is neuter, I believe that in Farsi, the word for drone is feminine, so the drone is considered female. As such it must be properly draped so as to be modest. Also, the old paint job done by the American manufacturers, in the eyes of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, made the drone look like a whore. And as far as the widely rumored Revolutionary Guards rubber tire fetish.... let's not go there. The Revolutionary Guards did what they could so that they would not have to stone the drone, although they were apparently forced to flog it.

In truth, the drone probably broke into pieces due to not executing a controlled landing on a runway. The Iranians pieced it back together and repainted it. The drapes were probably to hide further damage or missing pieces.

The only thing crazier than my joke (not the mention dangerous) is the actual government of Iran.

From 2010: Iran Threatens To 'Freeze' Europe for Backing Sanctions*

The warning was issued as European leaders prepared to debate sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.

"Iran sits on 50 percent of the world’s energy, and if it wants, Europe will spend the winter in the cold," Salami told Iranian troops in the city of Kerman. His speech was published by the Iranian Fars news agency.

Iran is in possession of roughly 16 percent of the world’s natural gas and is the fourth-largest exporter of crude oil. In addition, Iran borders the Strait of Hormuz (Persian Gulf), through which much of the world’s oil supply passes.

Salami also mentioned Iran’s missiles. The country has recently tested long-range missiles, and announced just weeks ago that it had launched a satellite-capable rocket.

"Our missiles are now able to target any spot which the conspirators are in," he said.

Western powers have been discussing the possibility of sanctions on Iran in the United Nations security council. Israel has lobbied for tough sanctions, while Russia and China continue to oppose harsh measures. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) plans to discuss Iran’s nuclear program next week.

* A couple of years ago this story was available from more news outlets - I guess it just isn't popular to remember it.

Re:Uh

[Ethanol-fueled]

Aldous Huxley, let me give you and the other burgeoning terrorists some advice regarding that:

If you manage to get your grubby hands on a drone, call a buddy over to help you pull the boxes. Get one man on the front section while the other pulls the boxes from the center of gravity (near the middle of the plane).

The rule of thumb is that boxes with the widest data connectors and RF (Coaxial) connections are more valuable. The more connections the box has, the more valuable it is.

Next, strip all antennae from the plane. I can't say more about this without being taken away by a black SUV, but if something is sticking out from the airframe, it's an antenna.

Ignore the propulsion section and all electronics connected to fuel lines.

TOP SECRET: You perform a hex dump only to find Excel on Windows CE running its flight simulator.

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't claim it landed intact.

They claimed to spoof the drone into believing it was over its home base, in which the runway was a few meters lower then at the Iranian airbase. As a result, the drone came in for a "hard landing", damaging its undercarriage because it expected the ground to be coming up in a few more meters rather then exactly when it did.

I'm not saying I believe the Iranian explanation by any means -- while I can believe them spoofing the civilian band GPS signal (those are very low power signals, which can be overpowered by a local transmitter), I find it very hard to believe the drone wouldn't be using the *encrypted* military band of GPS. They can't spoof that without access to the encryption keys (which admittedly, has been done recently by the Iranians as well).

I also find it very hard to believe the drone would fall back on civilian band GPS when the military band was unavailable, but stupider things have been done in the past. It is possible the military said "oh shit, from now on, if the military band goes unavailable, the drone self destructs instead of falling back on civvy gps" and that's why they believe its safe to fly them again, but aside from having a TS clearance, I doubt any of us will ever know the full truth in our lifetimes.

Re:Uh

[Formalin]

A hypothetical Iran freezing Europe situation probably lost it's edge when Russia actually did, in fact, freeze Europe.

"Iran sits on 50 percent of the world’s energy, and if it wants, Europe will spend the winter in the cold," Salami told Iranian troops.

Awesome name.

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously valulable on the drone is the stealth paint. I bet they sand blasted it to get the paint off then repainted it (or left it nude) so that you can't tell if the stealth paint is still there.

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh what? Modded you up one point from 0 to 1 insightful and /. inserted Troll! WTF?

Re:Uh

[Patch86]

Why hide it? And why would the Air Force not say how it happened, if they know? Why, indeed.

I can't think of a situation in which the Air Force wouldn't be acting evasive. We know the Iranians have the drone- that means there are only really three possibilities:

1) The Iranians downed it. That's an embarassing loss for the US Air Force.
2) The drone crashed due to a malfunction. Losing top technology because of a cock up is even more embarassing.
3) The drone was crashed on purpose, for obscure conspiracy reason of choice. Whatever the conspiracy, it's unlikely to work if the Iranians knew it were done on purpose.

And finally, the very fact that US military aircraft routinely violate the airspace of peace-time rivals is hardly top trumps in diplomatic circles. Avoiding talking about it is about the only defense they have.

Re:Uh

[Zorpheus]

I don't believe that the Iranians repainted the drone. There are scratches at the front of it that look as if it landed without gear. These scratches would have been overpainted.
To me it looks like the drone was sawed into 3 pieces and put together again with duct tape. They took it apart before presenting it, removing all the electronics and only showing the empty body.
If it was broken into 3 pieces (would it really break in such a straight way?), and then repainted, why wouldn't they assemble it properly before repainting it? I can't believe that this is the opinion of experts.

Re:Uh

[gtall]

Keeping an eye on an adversary is not goading them. During the cold war, the U.S. and Russia routinely ran planes close to each other's borders to peer in. We know why both were doing it and neither side considered it goading, and that was from the paranoid Russians who recently tried to blame their satellite screwup on fancy American radar.

Re:Uh

[bjourne]

Even if you don't believe the Iranian story, you still got to give them credit for coming up with a pretty believable sounding explanation. That's more than the US Air Force could apparently. It doesn't sound so far fetched to me that they could have found an exploitable vulnerability in the drones navigation system. Even if they really wish it were true, Iranian engineers aren't any dumber than American ones.

Re:Uh

[AmiMoJo]

Iran isn't any more crazy than the US, just more direct. They talk about killing members of the terrorist nation of America, the US talks about targeting killings of key personnel in rouge states.

Re:Uh

[AmiMoJo]

It wasn't even the military that first noticed the paint job.

So for deniability they pain black ops drones in non-standard colours. Hardly surprising, assuming of course they are not just lying and it is some secret paint job they developed for middle eastern spy missions.

And the landing gear was always hidden by drapery.
If it landed intact why hide it?

If it was damaged that would fit with their claim that they confused its GPS system and made it land in Iran. It would be hard to make it land precisely on a runway only tens of metres wide. GPS does not provide a heading directly so the runway would also need to have been parallel to the US one in Iraq. Therefore it is likely that it landed on rough ground somewhere which probably would damage the landing gear, but that doesn't change the fact that Iran captured it 98% intact or make it any less embarrassing.

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

Key personnel in red states? You know what that means...

OMG ANTI-REPUBLICAN CONSPIRACY.

They didn't bring it down...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just so well made that it fell out the sky undamaged.

SOPA

[mr_lizard13]

They shouldn't just be able to take what they want from it. That technology is valuable IP.

This is why we need SOPA.

Re:SOPA

[oldhack]

Yeah, Lawyers vs. Mullahs.

I can only hope they annihilate each other.

Re:SOPA

[aurizon]

Was this a plant? Give them something in a way they think they stole, to cover up the stealth viral load...

Re:SOPA

[Anonymous Coward]

>They shouldn't just be able to take what they want from it. That technology is valuable IP.
>This is why we need SOPA.

hah... wait until Irans first rating agency debuts... afterwards you will wish they had just nuked you...

Re:SOPA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because stopping online piracy will prevent foreign countries from stealing physical technology... (eg: an unmanned aircraft) /eyeroll

Re:SOPA

[bky1701]

My god, you are a genius! We can get them to fight it out in ritual combat using swords and axes. Chris Dodd can head the US/Lawyer team, and Khamenei can head the Iran/Mullah team. If we put it on pay-per-view, we can probably pay off the US debt!

Re:SOPA

[benjamindees]

Wait, hold on a second. I didn't sign up for this. My idea of combat involves a sharp tongue and ritual scotch highballs.

Re:SOPA

[snspdaarf]

I'd buy that for a dollar!

Re:SOPA

[bky1701]

The idea has been modified for the good of humanity.

Re:SOPA

[MightyYar]

Can the cast of Jersey Shore get in on this?

Re:SOPA

[Anonymous Coward]

It just so happened that the UAV was over Iran when it shut down in protest of SOPA.

Re:SOPA

[elrous0]

We can get them to fight it out in ritual combat using swords and axes.

No, lawyers prefer to tear out their opponent's heart with their bare hands. It's fresher that way.

Re:SOPA

[Tablizer]

Or merge. Be careful what you wish for.

Re:SOPA

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the money wouldn't go to pay off the debt. That would be socialism. The money will go to whichever network puts in the highest bid to the privately run consortium arranging the fight.

Re:SOPA

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody needs SOPA, some dirty politicians need soap, but that's about it, people shouldn't be able to cause harm to others, but some do. That technology is probably closer to 5 year old tech. And MITM attacks are not new, this is why we need open source. Security through obscurity, is not security. It's keep-away, nothing more then a childrens game.

Planted

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not only Iran that often lies. So does the US military when it suits a purpose. This story looks planted, there is no real sourcing for the information. There are possible reasons, both good and bad, why someone would want this story out there whether it is true or not.

Jam

[Anonymous Coward]

Good Evening HBO
From Captain Midnight
$12.95/MONTH ?
No way !
[SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE!]

Re:Jam

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this modded down? Anybody who knows about the original incident might find it funny.. but modding it down simply denotes that you need to hand in your geek card.

Re:Jam

[Anonymous Coward]

Mods: The previous AC is not trolling. He's referring to the 1986 signal injection attack on the Galaxy 1 comsat that broadcast, among other things, HBO. Given the circumstances under discussion, trickery involving satellite signals (spoofed or otherwise) is not entirely out of the question.

Garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

StrategyPage? That site is absolute trash. Link to the actual USAF press release.

Self-Destruct anyone?

[mvmortier]

Why doesn't the drone have a self-destruct functionality?

I mean... isn't this like the ultimate reason for that functionality? So that technology doesn't get into enemy hands? Just like spies having these suicide pills?

Oh well... seems like this one doesn't have any.

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[Darkness404]

It does. At least all evidence points to it. After all, a few months ago a drone was nearly blown up when they accidentally pressed the spacebar. And I think there was some drone in 1999 which was accidentally blown up too because of a similar glitch.

However, if Iran was jamming the signal and there was no way to get commands to it, a failsafe of landing is usually much better than a faildeadly of exploding. Especially when you are dealing with millions of dollars. Saying a drone got hijacked/malfunctioned/etc. and fell into enemy hands is a lot better than saying, yeah, we just blew up a drone that cost us $5 million to build.

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo! - except you can't say this one didn't have any.

TFA's case is that this was a crashed drone; why it got re-painted the wrong color in the pics.

If you're going to bondo for the photo-session, there's no reason you can't also bondo the damage from the self-destruction of the important bits.

Given the extensive standard-procedure self-destruction built into any other flying intelligence equipment, it's nonsensical to think these drones don't have it. Just don't expect it to evaporate the whole vehicle -- that stuff adds weight. There will just be enough to chemically burn the really important parts. This drone likely had some scorch marks before the re-paint.

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on what you mean by "self-destruct".

A good "zeroize" will clear most of the really sensitive secrets from modern military hardware, and that functionality doesn't require special shipping and handling which make the stuff which goes "boom!" such a pain in the ass to deal with. You've also got the fact that the "boom!" often doesn't destroy the equipment as well as you might think (datapoint: go look at how much of the triggering electronics is typically recovered from an airline bombing - and that's stuff right up against the explosive charge itself.)

From the stuff I've occasionally seen, most fielded military gear is classed as a "high risk" design, and doesn't incorporate the really clever stuff anyway (I've also had a senior former NSA employee say the same thing to me directly). I'd be very surprised if there was much really clever stuff in the RQ-170 to discover.

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[izomiac]

I would imagine one could politically argue that putting explosives on an unmanned aircraft is just a convoluted way of making a missile, the use of which would be an act of war. Furthermore, I'm sure the designers made them exceptionally difficult to reverse engineer, and there are probably digital and perhaps even chemical self-destruct mechanisms that aren't as flashy nor leave as much visible external evidence. For all we know, Iran got a warped airframe with a bunch of melted circuit boards and oxidized stealth paint.

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[Hentes]

If it was hacked than the self-destruction wouldn't work.

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[Alastor187]

Why doesn't the drone have a self-destruct functionality?

I mean... isn't this like the ultimate reason for that functionality? So that technology doesn't get into enemy hands? Just like spies having these suicide pills?

Oh well... seems like this one doesn't have any.

It is likely that self-destruct functionality depends on the technology that is employed in the drones. Most sensitive electronics can be zeroized in some fashion to protect cyrpto keys without loss of the hardware. In some cases destructive zeroization is required, but another poster mentioned accidental activation of self-destruct systems is a reality so it needs to be considered with care where either loss of life/injury or expensive hardware costs could occur.

In the case of an unmanned vehicle it seems like the self-destruct mechanisms become far more complex if the autonomous systems have to determine when to destroy the vehicle or specific hardware. Assuming that in this case the drone was no longer in contact with the Operator how does it know that it is enemy hands? How does one ensure that the vehicle never gets confused and self-destructs during normal operation or in a friendly hanger?

I am sure extensive trade studies and have been done on this specific topic, but I have never seen real world technical problems and solutions documented anywhere. Would be interested if anyone has links to any technical information.

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[Pennidren]

Are you really that stupid? We don't want our self-destruct tech falling into enemy hands!

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[AHuxley]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Belgian_MiG-23_crash
Drone glides/fails into home/school/hospital/nursing home and ... crash or .....?
You can say it just had optics ect. and its sort of ok.
Traces of explosives found is less good.

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[shentino]

What are the odds that Iran is actually going to give it back, let alone in one piece?

Blowing it up wouldn't have actually cost any more than letting them shred it when they were done going over it with a fine toothed comb.

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should not be that hard to do that. Make a self-destruct mechanism that kicks in within 5 minutes of landing, unless the ground personnel enter the correct security code on ground. You probably do not need an explosion or anything like that, just erase the firmware, crypto-keys, and data.

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[cavePrisoner]

If you are talking about explosives, I would imagine it would introduce a number of safety issues. Aircraft experience a lot of extremes. Hot, cold, turbulence, and hard landings can all knock around explosives. Never mind all the fuel/oil and electronics around. I work with explosives with the army. The idea of working with or around an explosive mechanism that experiences wear and tear scares the crap out of me.

Sure it can be done, but making the process safe for maintenance crews would be expensive and a royal PIA.

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[gary_7vn]

It does, they do, that only makes sense. There are many references to that "feature" online. The Iranians said that the self destruct mechanism was never activated because the controllers were not aware the drone was jacked. The fact that the self destruct was not activated lends credence to the Iranian version.

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[gtall]

It probably didn't have self-destruct because weight is a premium for those UAVs given all the flight controls, engine, fuel, spying electronics and hardware. And it isn't as simple as packing it with C4, that only happens in the movies. A single detonation, unless it is really large, will only scatter the good bits around.

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[backwardsposter]

I'm sure in this day and age you don't need to blow up the whole UAV to achieve what you want them to achieve. I mean, when someone gets your cell phone, you don't blow it up, you remote wipe it. Although the thought has crossed some people's minds, I'm sure...

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[AmiMoJo]

if (signal_lost && low_fuel && (location == IRAN))
   self_destruct();

Re:Self-Destruct anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

if ((signal_lost || low_fuel) && location == IRAN)

There fixed it for you since you certainly could still have fuel when signal is lost without an assumption of auto systems guiding it back to base ....

Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[grumling]

Imagine if this was a U2 or similar piloted vehicle instead of a drone. We'd be preparing the bombers right now, along with special congressional resolutions condemning the Iraqis to death for "capturing" one of "our boys." Meanwhile the Iraqi government would be parading him all over Tehran, mostly for the western media to slobber over.

Instead we get a few jokes on Leno and the Daily Show, and a lot of diplomatic posturing.

No doubt we're going to war with Iran no matter what the American people want, but at least not over a spyplane (for a change).

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[jon3k]

:%s/iraq/iran/g

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[grumling]

Whoops! Iran, Iraq... My brain knows the difference, but my fingers don't.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[EmagGeek]

Whether or not the US goes to war is not an issue for popular opinion to decide. World War 1 was hugely unpopular. World War 2, slightly less so, but still had a low approval rating among the public.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[ironjaw33]

Imagine if this was a U2 or similar piloted vehicle instead of a drone. We'd be preparing the bombers right now, along with special congressional resolutions condemning the Iraqis to death for "capturing" one of "our boys."

There are at least two cases where this has happened. The Soviets shot down a U2 in 1960 and held the pilot hostage for over a year until he was traded for another prisoner. Also, in 2001, the Chinese forced a P-3 to land on Chinese soil and held the crew hostage for 10 days before they were released. In both cases, I'm sure the Soviets and the Chinese pored over whatever sensitive stuff was left intact and wasn't destroyed by the crash in the case of the U2 or the US aircrew in the case of the P3.

I wasn't born in the 1960s so I couldn't tell you what the public sentiment was at the time, but in the 2001 incident, I don't remember anyone caring all that much about the hostage crew, all the way up to President Clinton. If I remember, the Chinese forced Clinton to give some kind of apology before they released the crew.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[ironjaw33]

Sorry, my mistake, it was Bush who gave the apology, not Clinton.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[ThorGod]

I don't remember anyone caring all that much about the hostage crew, all the way up to President Bush. If I remember, the Chinese forced Bush to give some kind of apology before they released the crew.

Fixed it for you. Clinton was out of the white house by the time this incident occurred.

From your own link:

The incident took place ten weeks after the inauguration of George W. Bush as president and was his first foreign policy crisis

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

A U-2 was also shot down over Cuba. Relatively few people seem to be aware of this incident, which could hardly have happened at a more sensitive time; during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as you don't call Iranians "Arabs", I think most of us would get a grip.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Except he didn't really apologize. In Chinese he did, but here in English they sounded way different and the Chinese naturally realized he was playing somebody.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[chebucto]

:%s/iraq/iran/g

Iran, Iraq, what the hell's the difference?

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[russotto]

Sorry, my mistake, it was Bush who gave the apology, not Clinton.

Yep, and it was a half-assed BS apology... which is all China deserved, considering the whole incident was their pilot's fault.

Both President Bush and Secretary of State Powell have expressed their sincere regret over your missing pilot and aircraft. Please convey to the Chinese people and to the family of the pilot Wang Wei that we are very sorry for their loss.
            Although the full picture of what transpired is still unclear, according to our information, our severely crippled aircraft made an emergency landing after following international emergency procedures. We are very sorry the entering of China's airspace and the landing did not have verbal clearance, but very pleased the crew landed safely. We appreciate China's efforts to see to the well-being of our crew.

Note that they never clearly apologized to the Chinese government for anything; in fact, the "apology" for entering Chinese airspace without clearance can easily be read as a backhanded rebuke to China for not clearing the plane to land.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[TubeSteak]

but in the 2001 incident, I don't remember anyone caring all that much about the hostage crew, all the way up to President Clinton.

President Bush cared very much about the hostages, but it is standard protocol to not inflame such situations by talking about it in the press.

All the action goes on behind closed doors and out of the public eye, until a resolution is reached.
There are some hostage situations that we don't even learn about until after the person has returned home,
because the government asks the media to black it out so as not to upset delicate negotiations.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[0123456]

World War 2, slightly less so, but still had a low approval rating among the public.

In case you failed to notice, America stayed out of the war until Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor and the Nazis declared war on America.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[gtall]

One's Arab, one's Persian. One's 20% Sunni, one's 90% Shi'ite. One's fighting a civil war, one's trying to keep one from breaking out.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[chebucto]

... one's a colonial creation, the other is the core of an ancient and powerful civilization... I know, I know.

Relax, guy! It was a quote from the greatest South Park episode ever: Terrence and Phillip - Not Without My Anus.

That episode by itself is more insightful about the middle-east than 1,000 hours of network news, though for the life of me I can't recall what its insights were...

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

So I hear that the way to find Osama bin Laden - he's on dialysis, you know - the only way to find him is to find only extension cord in Afghanistan and follow it to his dialysis machine.

Zing!

Oh, wait, commandos already stormed his compound and killed him & what was left of his cronies

Zing!

No, seriously, though, you folks with your poor armies and stuff really close that technological gap with your bravery, seriously, we respect you for it, immensely.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[AmiMoJo]

Actually when Iran captured some UK sailors in its waters (allegedly, I can't remember if it was true or not) they did treat them reasonably and didn't parade them too much. In fact their treatment was more humane than what the US does at Guantanimo.

Iran is not dumb. They know about PR. The US does too, but apparently doesn't care as much.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know if he cared or not?

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[mbone]

First, unauthorized overflights by foreign powers are illegal pretty much everywhere, as is espionage, and so it is a mistake to call Capt. Powers a hostage. The Soviets were completely within their rights to hold him. He was a prisoner, who was eventually exchanged for another prisoner.

Second, President Eisenhower was made to look like a fool by Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviets didn't mention capturing the pilot, so the CIA assumed that Powers had either been killed or had committed suicide rather than be captured (as I believe his orders were), so the White House said that the missing plane was a weather plane and that there never been any spy overflights of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev produced the pilot (and the cameras) and proved the lie. This wrecked a planned summit meeting in Paris, and I am sure led to an acceleration of our spy satellite program.

I was very young at the time, and can vaguely remember the fuss about the U2. I am not sure that there was much public sentiment; the Cold War was on, and there certainly wasn't much support for anything the Soviets did. I can remember hearing, much later, than some in the CIA were critical because they felt Powers should have committed suicide, rather than surrender, but I don't think that was widely shared by the public.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[radtea]

Fixed it for you. Clinton was out of the white house by the time this incident occurred.

Yeah, but Clinton was well-known to hate the military so much he kept them out of stupid wars (but I repeat myself) so it must have been him. Bush on the other hand was so pro-military that he got over 3000 soldiers killed in a successful invasion and failed occupation of a country that posed no threat to the US.

Even though everyone knows the facts, the impressions distort our thinking.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[elrous0]

When the U.S. detains spies indefinitely, they're prisoners. When some country does the same to a U.S. spy, they're hostages.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[Xphile101361]

Of course it isn't. Voters don't hold their representatives responsible for getting us into wars. I fail to understand why we reelect the same people to officer who made bad choices and got into things such as the Iraq war. If people actually looked at what their representatives voted for and then elected someone else when they felt their representative was wrong... instead of along party lines... we might actually have a government that represented the people.

Re:Why Drones? Right Here's Your Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

a q and an n

may it does or at least a suicide battery

[Joe_Dragon]

may it does or at least a suicide battery

Re:may it does or at least a suicide battery

[Overzeetop]

Sony and Chevy are both competing for the new self-destruct battery contract.

Re:may it does or at least a suicide battery

[alexhs]

Sony and Chevy are both competing for the new self-destruct battery contract.

I suspect that Sony actually provided the special self-destructing battery in that drone, and that battery failed to self-destruct.

Alt. Scenario

[Anonymous Coward]

U.S. receives intelligence that Iran are working on tech to bring down an enemy drone safely.
U.S. plays along and lets Iran "land" a drone with sub-par/poisoned tech on board.
U.S. pretends to try and reproduce the bug that Iran publically announces, hence the delay.
U.S. claims that Iran's method couldn't have possibly worked and that it was an unknown error.

Iran thinks that U.S. is either incompetent or has failed to realise the key, unreleased, step in their methodology.
U.S. lets Iran believe that their method works, and, optionally, leads them down the garden path with poisoned tech on board the planted drone.
When Real War breaks out, U.S. has an advantage, drones continue to fly and Iran wastes time and energy trying to perfect their drone-capturing skillz.

Re:Alt. Scenario

[l00sr]

The real scenario:

Drone crash-lands in Iran due to software bug.
Iran hauls drone away in pick-up truck, gives it a paint job, and makes it the centerpiece of a propaganda campaign.

Never attribute to advanced spycraft that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Re:Alt. Scenario

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Software bug, operator error, got shot down, etc. -- any of a dozen perfectly mundane reasons might have made this thing crash. After the crash Iran finds it, tapes it back together, and claims that they outsmarted us by using toothpicks and hair gel to force the drone down. Honestly I'm a little surprised Iran didn't claim it gave them backdoor access to the DoD computers and blow job. It's not the at trust the Air Force to tell the truth, but there's no reason to trust Iran any more, and the truth is almost certainly somewhere in the middle -- really boring and not nearly as detrimental/advantageous as either side claims.

Re:Alt. Scenario

[Anonymous Coward]

U.S. receives intelligence that Iran are working on tech to bring down an enemy drone safely.
U.S. plays along and lets Iran "land" a drone with sub-par/poisoned tech on board.
U.S. pretends to try and reproduce the bug that Iran publically announces, hence the delay.
U.S. claims that Iran's method couldn't have possibly worked and that it was an unknown error.
Iran thinks that U.S. is either incompetent or has failed to realise the key, unreleased, step in their methodology.
U.S. lets Iran believe that their method works, and, optionally, leads them down the garden path with poisoned tech on board the planted drone.
When Real War breaks out, U.S. has an advantage, drones continue to fly and Iran wastes time and energy trying to perfect their drone-capturing skillz.

Of course! It was all part of an elaborate guise! We were pulling their legs all along!

Never underestimate the fantastic scenarios some people will invent to protect the illusion of an infallible United States. Places like Defense Tech, etc are full of nutjob storylines like the above.

Self-destruct

[sakdoctor]

At least your post had a self-destruct. Now I can't understand it at all.

can you say cover-up?

[RandomAvatar]

Wow, what is this, the third time the U.S. military has changed their story on this? is there any more obvious way of saying "we are trying to cover something up"?

$5 says it ran out of gas

[Flector]

... 'nuff said

or they copied capcom and the battery kills the co

[Joe_Dragon]

or they copied capcom and the battery kills the code / fpga config.

Islamic Republic of Iran Software Rating Board

[game kid]

Rated I (Imam and up). Contains Violence, Discussion of Magic, Pictures of Jewish Women, and Muslim Ankle Nudity. Online Interactions Not Rated by the IRISRB.

Re:Islamic Republic of Iran Software Rating Board

[JaredOfEuropa]

You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.

Why are you aggravating the fact that the Iranians now have this secret technology, disclosing parts of the super secret manual?!

Re:Islamic Republic of Iran Software Rating Board

[game kid]

If their secret technology is anything like the Guardian, then I demand a peaceful resolution to this conflict, and some time to personally inspect the system!

arduino

[Anonymous Coward]

All they could glean from it was that the drone was run by an arduino mega and a few hundred lines of code.

Drone are pretty dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

The current drones are pretty overrated and made to look like some sort of SF self thinking AI creation.
A drone just flies just along it's determined flight path with the assumption that it will not be detected or attacked.
It isn't that smart that it can actually do any evasive action based on it's own judgement.
So if you yam all communications its just a very expensive RC plane that is as lame as a duck.
You just need a way to grab it out of the sky.
And that is the least of your problems.

Double plus wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Oceania captured a Eurasian drone.

RecDep, Ministry of Truth.

Drones don't "fall out of the sky"

[walterbyrd]

The drones are made to be extremely stable. They practically fly themselves.

If the engine died, it would glide to a crash landing. It would not "fall out of the sky."

Re:Drones don't "fall out of the sky"

[Anonymous Coward]

Flying wing shaped bodies are inherently UNstable. Only through the use of complex control methods are they rendered airworthy, so in the event of a total control system failure the drone would actually fly like a rock.

Don't trust USAF, but in this case . . .

[walterbyrd]

It is extremely unlikely that Iran "hacked" the drone and landed it.

You are right not to trust the US government stories. But, Iran is not especially trustworthy either.

The most likely story is: the drone lost signal, or had some sort of mechanical problem, and glided to a crash landing. Iran picked up wreckage - which was probable not that bad.

Re:Don't trust USAF, but in this case . . .

[AmiMoJo]

Shouldn't it have self-destructed to protect all that super secret hardware? Nose diving into the ground at a few hundred MPH is pretty effective.

Re:Don't trust USAF, but in this case . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The internal hardware probably falls into one of two categories:
1) carefully integrated components that are individually expensive top-of-the-line products from specialist companies that Iran can get by two steps off black market
or
2) specially designed products integrated together that take a higher level of manufacturing tech than anyone else has and are a real pain to try to even get a good enough look at to reverse-engineer

The concept of cameras on a remote control plane is not new, the high end consumer tech level of cameras is growing fairly swiftly, and most modern electronics are constructed so precisely that damage (such as from an impact) often makes them useless even as a template to copy from.

Re:Don't trust USAF, but in this case . . .

[shutdown -p now]

Iran didn't claim to have hacked the control system of the drone. What they claim is that they have found a way to feed subverted navigation info (specifically, GPS signal) to it, and let the normal program guide it to where they wanted it to be.

Also, it seems that many Americans underestimate how advanced Iran actually is when it comes to technology. It's no US or Russia, but it's an industrialized country with universities and research labs and many competent specialists, and they do partake in numerous joint defense programs with China, so there's considerable exchange there as well. So saying that they can't have the expertise to pull of something like this is incorrect.

as us Aussies would say...

[Anonymous Coward]

BULLSHIT.

Question:Why didnt the drone get remotely exploded

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't the air drone get remotely exploded?

The US has the technology to remotely explode unmaned spacecraft since 1967. The ability to do so, was plannly show cased in the Giligan's island episode 'Splashdown'.

Unman US spacecraft went missing, arriving on Giligan's Island. Close to the end of the episode, the US did not want the unman spacecraft to be found by non-friendly froces, and the US remotely detonated the unman spacecraft.

Strange that the technology was around since 1967, but was not used in this case.

Perhaps there was a reason for that?

PsyOps, OSS, CIA, and a rubberhose in a crypotree!

[Anonymous Coward]

I BREAK FOR WATER BOARDING! :: PsyOps ::
+ http://www.pipeline.com/~psywarrior :: The Office of Strategic Services :::
+ http://guardianspies.com/
+ http://osssociety.org/
+ http://ossreborn.com/
+ http://ossog.org/
+ http://ossinitaly.org/
+ http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/oss/oss.htm :: CIA ::
+ http://www.zoklet.net/totse/en/politics/central_intelligence_agency/index.html
+ http://cryptome.org/0005/cia-iqt-spies.htm
+ http://www.youtube.com/user/ciagov
+ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciagov
+ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1004145-1,00.html
+ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KUBARK
+ https://www.cia.gov/ ::: WoW! :::
+ http://publicintelligence.net/
+ http://cryptocomb.org/
+ http://www.cryptome.org/
+ http://www.cryptogon.com/
+ http://afio.com/
+ http://www.afcea.org/signal/signalscape/
+ http://rijmenants.blogspot.com/

I call your bluff...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like a ridiculously bad game of international poker. The information "Iran didn't actually down the drone" is so innocous that for them to not have said it until now shows says something.

Things to ponder:
(1) Why not say something so innocuous until now? -- why hold back something so seemingly benign...?
(2) In order to know how to hack something, you need to first know how it works. How did Iran manage to hack a supposedly secret military technology and get it to land gently on the ground without damaging it?
(3) Simply because the drone didn't self-destruct doesn't mean there aren't technologies preventing tampering with important chips within the drone.
(4) If there is no anti-tampering technology in that drone...I'm sure half of America wants a refund on the gross amount of taxes they're paying towards Defense. Because to not have that when even non-Ph.D. sporting average Joes can watch some action movie and tell you "you need a self-destruct mechanism"...is BEYOND pathetic...in fact, there isn't even a word for how pathetic that is...
(5) For all the money going towards Defense when our economy is basically being given the paddles as we speak yet hasn't had a pulse for a few years now...you can afford to get the same public relations people that dealt with OJ Simpson and Michael Jackson, so do so...they obviously knew how to speak to the press better than you do.

Helicopters are'n' shot down, they malfunction

[Anonymous Coward]

This is kind of like when the US military report that a helicopter wasn't shot down, and that it malfunctioned. I've heard lots of news reports of US helicopters malfunctioning while being shot at. I know correlation isn't causation, but still.

Should be nothing

[ichthus]

though the more interesting question is what technology will they be able to glean from what they did capture.

The answer would have been, "probably nothing". That is, if we didn't have such a wimp for a president.

Re:Should be nothing

[dutchd00d]

Oh, sure. First violate another country's airspace, then compound the error by sending in an airstrike to destroy the property you so carelessly lost. If another country did that to the US, there'd be hell to pay.

Honestly, it's no wonder the US has such a bad rep in some parts of the world. Maybe you shouldn't have been flying your precious drones over another country if you didn't want to lose them.

Did they hire this guy recently?

[melted]

http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/images/07-minister.jpg

I think I'm hearing familiar intonations there.

Trojan Horse

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly you. It was an intentional Trojan Horse they sent.

The Drone is transmitting back information on the location surrounding it.

The Trojan Horse was made with Radio Shack technology.

brainwashed americans = they live = it's real

[Anonymous Coward]

"Incidentally, that would be admitting to breaking the law, because the US military is bound by law to aim psyops solely at foreign populations."

Are you a fucking idiot? Where have YOU been? Read this shit:

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, CIA Director

Swallow it, swallow it DEEPLY.

They won't get much out of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at what other US technology they've had since the 70's and only recently the best they've been able to do is a home grown version of the F-5 with two tails. They don't have much capability of even copying decades old tech much less something modern.

They would say, wouldn't they?

[mbone]

The Air Force is saying that "Iran's claim to have forced it down is erroneous."

WIth all due respect they would say that, wouldn't they ? So, as an indication of what happened, I am afraid this is not very useful.

paint job

[Anonymous Coward]

it's possible the paint (yellow pastel) is accurate. You use different colored paint depending on the intended altitude in order to better match scattering from below and above. Generally the higher you fly the darker you want yourself (as there's more air below you to scatter up and back down when it hits the plane), so the U-2 was black, higher altitude drones are medium grey, and lower altitude drones (could be painted different colors depending on the mission) might be whitish, like the the drone in question.

Originally the F-117 was intended to be painted in pastel colors for low observability, but the AF decided to use it exclusively at night and so changed to black.

Sure they didn't

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, the US Air Force continues its long-standing tradition of lying about anything and everything they dislike, regardless of actual importance to military operations or classified status.

Nothing.

[scurvyj]

They will gain nothing from it. All the executing realtime code is encrypted and it and all the friend/foe and nav components are designed to fry themselves if it detects an unauthorized landing. There is nothing special about the airframe or engines and the weapons payload would have been ditched or self-detonated as well. This isn't the movies.

nt

[brilanon]

What if they get the software

This is not new

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that the drone did not "land soft" is not new. It was pretty widely discussed and speculated about in the aerospace press and blogs from about the second or third day (when the better pictures came out). Odd paint, missing/hidden landing gear, and mis-matched sections with taped/covered seams.

We have never been at war with East Irania

[Sarusa]

... so they certainly could not have tricked our drone into landing even though we give zero consideration to any security but physical.

That drone needs to be open sourced!

[Anonymous Coward]

If Iran wants to stick it to the US, they should consider open sourcing the drone hardware and software. In addition to being hilarious, this would allow the public to test for bugs and see if the USAF's claims are credible.

Does have self-destruct

[bill_mcgonigle]

Oh well... seems like this one doesn't have any.

One of the news articles from a few weeks ago cited an analyst familiar with the program who says that it did have a self-destruct, but it malfunctioned.

Perhaps since Iran reportedly forced it down with GPS spoofing the code for the automated return-to-base landing didn't have listener hooks for the self-destruct.

I don't know what TFS is on about - people in Iran have claimed they got the lat/long coordinates right but messed up the altitude so the thing landed hard, destroying the landing gear and bottom of the craft, so that's why they paraded it with the bottom covered.

Disinformation is disinformative.

double plus ungood Newspeak

[KingAlanI]

Minitrue.

Re:double plus ungood Newspeak

[The Askylist]

All Iranian claims must be sent to the MEMRI hole forthwith.

Autodestruct?

[assertation]

I'm sure there is a good reason why it didn't happen or the drones don't have such a capacity, but one would think that something like a drone would have an autodestruct capacity to prevent just this sort of situation.

Knew the color was off

[GameboyRMH]

The article said the color was off, that seemed strange to me too, I thought maybe it had yellowed due to dirt, or maybe UV effects like an old PC case, but apparently the thing they built was a replica of the actual drone that crashed hard and broke into little pieces.

Re:Knew the color was off

[Xphile101361]

Perhaps Iran should invest in that "paint matching" technology that stores like Lowes or Home Depot has

Re:Knew the color was off

[GameboyRMH]

LOL XD

If they'd chosen any variety of white it wouldn't have raised any eyebrows, but they painted it cigarette-tinged-beige.

Re:Knew the color was off

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps Iran should invest in that "paint matching" technology that stores like Lowes or Home Depot has

Yeah, I'm having a real hard time believing this part of the story. It's too goofy to believe and without any sources, I'll pass on this one.

Really?

[redwraith94]

I know those things are expensive, but we should really have a self destruct feature on those things...Lose communication while flying over Iran? BLOW IT UP. It pains me to see the amount of money we pour into things like this only for it to be pilfered by Chinese hackers, or this...

Salughterhouse was judicial activism at its finest

[A nonymous Coward]

When the 14th was written, both proponents and opponents agreed on its purpose, which was to apply the first 8 amendments to all citizens and prevents states from denying them. The explicit intent of Slaughterhouse was to overturn that. Congress did nothing about it because no one wanted to defend blacks any more; the Civil War was too distant a memory by then, and Reconstruction had worn out Northern enthusiasm for reining in Southern abuse of the Constitution.

Strategy Page?

[Sr. Zezinho]

Is there any other news source for this besides Strategy Page? Strategy Page is bad. Usually they know just enough to make their mistakes sound plausible.

They could well just have made up this announcement.

Iranian misinformation

[mbone]

First, the basic facts of the situation. The Iranians got one of our drones. We know that, but we don't know what its condition was. The Iranians announce this, but don't show any pictures for a few days, then display something for the press. Lots of people comment that the drone the Iranians displayed looks like a crude copy, and they don't show the landing carriage at all.

Here is what I think happened :

Once they got the drone, in whatever condition, they spirited it away, took what they have, and the existing pictures of this sort of drone in the Western Press, and quickly made a mockup , which they then show to the world. I would suspect that the mockup has one or two features of the real drone (even if all they had to work with were small pieces), just enough to convince the US that they have something. It doesn't matter otherwise if the mockup is crude, and without any landing gear, as the US intelligence community knows it's a mockup anyway. This way, we know they have something, but not how much. They might have an intact drone. They might have some small pieces. We don't know. I suspect the Iranians regards that as a good outcome.

Ass Math

[zooblethorpe]

If a half assed regime could down a multi-billion dollar super high tech weapon with shit bought at Home Depot, people might question if all those juicy contracts are really necessary.

Half-assed is hyphenated, you insensitive clod!

And, as they say, two half-asseds make an ass whole!

I'm here all week, folks. Try the veal.

...now where's that scotch...

reason for 386/486 processors...

[schlachter]

I've heard that some applications prefer older processors like 386/486 CPUs because they are more reliable/stable and less immune to radiation from space/atmosphere...mostly due to their larger circuit size.

Simple answer - the drone defected.

[Anonymous Coward]

Curse the rise of the machines.

This reminds me of a joke

[wiedzmin]

"During the military action in Iraq, local news networks reported that 2 stealth jets and 3 long-range surface-to-surface missiles have been shot down by Iraqi air force. United States has issued a press-release, saying that the statement was false and all jets and missiles have returned to their respective home bases."

Re:Salughterhouse was judicial activism at its fin

[donscarletti]

Exactly, to apply federal rights (constitutional amendments) to former slaves and to provide full citizenship to the state where they resided. The court found rightly that federal rights were not abridged and this was not related to the original intent of the amendment (most of the claimants were not even black). Freedom in my mind involves drinking from water that isn't laden with offal, blood and shit, if my state needs to twist some business owner's arms to give me that, I'm no less free... in fact the word could do with a bit more of that.

Just because courts these days have taken to interpreting the constitution as widely as possible to over-rule any action by elected representitives that they don't agree with does not mean that is correct. I'm sure that some meat packing lobby would have made sure the judges found in the "right" way these days.

On the topic of constitutional law, I'm also curious by the way, when is the US government planning on regulating the "well regulated militia" that's been in the works for so long?

Re:Salughterhouse was judicial activism at its fin

[A nonymous Coward]

You ought to read the record on the 14th amendment before pontificating on it.

Then read up on the history of law and realize that it isn't modern courts only who interpret the law according to their personal whim.

You also need to look up the 1787 definition of "well regulated" and "militia".

Re:Salughterhouse was judicial activism at its fin

[donscarletti]

I have read the 14th amendment, especially section 1 that Slaughterhouse supposedly is based on. The clause "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." was, not only specifically meant in the context of slavery and reconstruction (the context that it emerged under), but "due process of the law" does not specifically exclude an elected body of the people legislating to restrict business practices.

I don't have to look up any 1787 definition of militias, in those days not even professional armies, let alone militias, had a standardised musket calibre, but well regulated then as is now, means something measured against the standards of the era. If you want a well regulated militia these days then the armaments should be standardised to allow easier servicing and pooling of ammunition, to be a credible tactical force. What is patently ridiculous is that the only practical US made light infantry arms, such as the M4 carbine and M16 rifle are banned as "assault weapons", while arms that are prohibited by the Geneva convention (shotguns), arms not suitable for non officers (pistols) and weapons not suitable for national defence (antique firearms) are obtainable. The Swiss are a great example of doing this correctly, they mandate that able bodied men keep and maintain a SIG SG 550 for militia duty since it is a fantastic infantry rifle, perfectly suitable for national defence and standardised to allow for practical battlefield servicing.

However, it seems now that second amendment means now "guns are fun and exciting, let us play with them" and fourteenth amendment means "states no longer have the power to compel people to do anything they don't want to do, 'cause you know, freedom and stuff".

Re:Salughterhouse was judicial activism at its fin

[A nonymous Coward]

well regulated then as is now, means something measured against the standards of the era. If you want a well regulated militia these days then the armaments should be standardised to allow easier servicing and pooling of ammunition, to be a credible tactical force. What is patently ridiculous is that the only practical US made light infantry arms, such as the M4 carbine and M16 rifle are banned as "assault weapons"

There's several mistakes right there. M4 and M16 are NOT classified as assault weapons. All legal definitions of the made-up category of assault weapons that I have ever heard of are all for semi-automatic; M4 and M16 are select-fire, ie full auto machine guns, which are banned because they are manufactured after a certain date (1968 or 1986, I forget which). Otherwise, machine guns are available at exorbitant prices due to the arbitrary scarcity, albeit with a $200 NFA tax and extra background check. The civilian version, the AR-15, is semi-auto and available in most states, even in California, where some versions are arbitrarily classified as assault weapons by name or by cosmetic feature.

Well regulated meant well drilled, smoothly functioning, and has nothing to do with common calibers. It just means they practice regularly.

It doesn't take much investigation to find modern squads using several calibers at once, just as in yee olden days.

Re:Salughterhouse was judicial activism at its fin

[donscarletti]

Firstly, they are not "machine guns" they are "assault carbine" and "assault rife" respectively, but you are right in that they are banned because of automatic fire, rather than the now defunct "assault weapon" criteria.

Secondly, most people with guns in the United States do not practice regularly either. But my suggestion that they actually get suitable militia weapons rather than useless dick surrogates like the Desert Eagle is (I believe) more palatable to the average American than actually going out for paramilitary training. Small steps, small steps.

Thirdly, modern infantry use M4 and M16 assault carbine/rifle and the M249 light machine gun that all shoot off the 5.56×45mm NATO round. They might have a designated marksman with a M14 battle rifle, or their machine gunner with an old M60, both firing 7.62×51mm NATO rounds, but it is rare these days, the case for comparable rounds is stronger in current military doctrine than the advantages of having different calibres for different roles. Furthermore there is a reason those two calibres have NATO in their names, because you need to share ammo with your allies too.