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Iranian Military Says It's Copying US Drone

Posted by timothy on from the so-it's-sort-of-a-buzzing-noise dept.

New submitter skipkent writes "Iran's military has started to build a copy of a U.S. surveillance drone captured last year after breaking the software encryption, Iranian media reported on Sunday. General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guards aerospace division, said engineers were in the final stages of decoding data from the Sentinel aircraft, which came down in December near the Afghan border, Mehr news agency reported."

8 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. Send the MPAA by qbast · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's obviously a copyright infringement. If we are lucky, maybe Iranians will just shoot them.

    1. Re:Send the MPAA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      You're thinking way too small. We can also get Patent attorneys into the fight. Then, if we can get the whole war moved to the Eastern district of Texas, we'll have the home turf advantage.

  2. DMCA violation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    If only it were the RIAA or MPAA instead of the CIA, then Iran would be in serious trouble.

  3. Release the drone.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    #1 I doubt it .....
    #2 who is running things over there, Dr. Evil ?
    #3 In the extremely unlikely event that they somehow figured it all out - why on earth would you tell everyone ?

  4. Open Source by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It would be funny if they Open Sourced it.

    1. Re:Open Source by Zackbass · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That strikes more at the heart of the issue here than you may realize. The actual aircraft sitting in their hands is much closer to a compiled binary than source.
      You can poke at it, run it, look inside and try to reverse engineer it, but the real secret sauce that goes into making drones like this is the design/manufacturing techniques and massive high tech industrial base that are necessary to produce the components. The aircraft's engine isn't likely going to give up the secrets of directional crystal growth that go into manufacturing the turbine blades, and the camera's CCD isn't likely to yield the secrets of semiconductor fabrication necessary to produce another one.

      --
      You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
    2. Re:Open Source by Vitriol+Angst · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Iranians should be able to do 95% of a drone off the shelf.

      However, their ability to add $5 Million in cost overruns for each drone might be hampered by an underdeveloped Corporate/Military Industrial Complex.

      --
      >>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
  5. Remember the scene in Iron Man 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Where Tony Stark pulls up the footage of other countries trying to duplicate his armor? Why do I have a feeling this is going to go something like that.