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Leaked Documents Detail Al-Qaeda's Efforts To Fight Back Against Drones
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post reports, 'Al-Qaeda's leadership has assigned cells of engineers to find ways to shoot down, jam or remotely hijack U.S. drones ... In July 2010, a U.S. spy agency intercepted electronic communications indicating that senior al-Qaeda leaders had distributed a "strategy guide" to operatives around the world advising them how "to anticipate and defeat" unmanned aircraft. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reported that al-Qaeda was sponsoring simultaneous research projects to develop jammers to interfere with GPS signals and infrared tags that drone operators rely on to pinpoint missile targets. Other projects in the works included the development of observation balloons and small radio-controlled aircraft, or hobby planes, which insurgents apparently saw as having potential for monitoring the flight patterns of U.S. drones... Al-Qaeda has a long history of attracting trained engineers ... Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, holds a mechanical-engineering degree ... In 2010, the CIA noted in a secret report that al-Qaeda was placing special emphasis on the recruitment of technicians and that "the skills most in demand" included expertise in drones and missile technology.'"
Should we be prosecuting them?
So leaks that are marketing for NSA mass surveillance is OK then?
If the NSA leaks to market itself, it will leak to discredit politicians the General doesn't like, and leak opponents emails to its supporters. The leaks they reveal as marketing simply reveal how the rules don't apply to the leadership of the NSA.
In July 2010, a U.S. spy agency intercepted electronic communications indicating that senior al-Qaeda leaders had distributed a "strategy guide" to operatives around the world
They may just be making this up to get more funding. Sometimes these "intercepted messages" or "chatter" look just so convenient (often well timed) and meaningless that one has to wonder.
Better pay, free food, "20% time" to work on individual plots to destroy Israel, and of course, 72 geeky virgins.
Designed to create the belief:
1 - Intelligence intercepts and interrogations are effective at getting information that "protects" "us".
2 - Drones are an effective weapon against "our" "enemies" and not principally dangerous to villagers and local civic functions.
But WHY do you believe ANY public information from an agency that has DECEIT in its charter?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I'm guessing every other military in the world is also interested in a defence against drones.
I can't believe the summary mentioned Khalid Sheik Mohammed without mentioning that he's not just any trained engineer -- he designed a classified vacuum cleaner .
Sheesh...and they call this "News for Nerds"....though come to think of it all the true nerds already knew this!
I don't think that most US citizens are against intervention. I really think most voters really do want something to be done, the hard part is figuring out what that something is.
As for Putin, he's probably wrong if experience is any indicator. He doesn't want the US to do anything; obviously having the US do something bad is bad for the world, but at the same time having the US do something good is bad for Putin's self image at home. Ie, Russia still wants to consider itself one of the two superpowers in existence even though it has lost tremendous power since the breakup of USSR, so being ignored by the US is a huge loss of face. Putin maintains a lot of power in Russia by being perceived as a strong man who can stand up to the outside world.
As well, Russia has strong ties to Syria in several ways. Russia wrote off much of Syria's debt, and there is arms investment in Syria from Russians. So there's a vested interest in keeping the Syrian government afloat. Russia has influence in Syria, and it's one of the last places in the region where it does have that influence. Losing Syria and the naval base there would similarly be a big loss to Russia's self image as an important superpower.
So yes, it is in Putin's self interest to claim that the Syrian rebels are dominated by Al Qaeda and that Assad is the good guy.
For when the time comes "they" turn these weapons against American Citizens.
These people may be able to assist you in your search for self-defense :
http://domesticdronecountermeasures.com/
"Al-Qaeda has a long history of attracting trained engineers..."
More evidence that the STEM crisis is a myth.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Whenever it's a terrorist collaboration they are called cells? Why don't they just call them teams or work groups? Then they can start buying those motivational posters, have team-building programs, etc.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Would work in principle, but I don't think these little planes have either the speed or the agility. If it became a problem, the drones to then be equipped with some kind of heat sensors that could make avoiding them become rather trivial, at which point their best hope would be to somehow train birds to fly into these drones.
GPS spoofing - I don't know for certain, but I don't think it would be difficult at all to add RSA signing to the timing beacons, even if they did it to existing satellites in orbit. Maybe not the older members of the constellation (which are constantly being phased out,) but the newer ones for sure. Something akin to that is long overdue anyways. As far as all out jamming goes, there is already ample technology available to allow navigation in small areas without the need for GPS, just enough to seek and destroy targets in a given area after reconnaissance photography has already been taken (which it presumably has been, unless we're just blindly picking targets.)
Unless Al-Qaeda can secure some automated targeting systems of its own (i.e. unmanned interceptors) their chances of waging a successful war against these drones is rather non-existent.
These drones are pretty fucking scary to be anywhere near the receiving end of, and if you ask me, the fact that being in Al-Qaeda puts you in their crosshairs is a pretty good deterrent to recruitment - or at least it should be to any sane person (but the religious viewpoints of its members sort of rules out sanity.) I think at best this might be their way of saying "we're doing something about the drones" when in reality they are probably making approximately zero progress, but saying they are making progress might be good enough to help with recruitment efforts.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
It will be interesting. Soviet/Warsaw pact equipment updated with data from Serbia/former Yugoslavia/NATO vs US drones and their digital efforts.
Will the drones face: Blowpipe and stay up?
Or Stinger and have some issues?
Can the drones offer the mercenaries/externally funded 'freedom' fighters a total victory on the cheap?
Will the special forces have to call in the older US equipment to allow their 'freedom' fighters to gain total victory?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I can't put myself in the head space of someone who would go there. The only aspect of the profiles I happened upon suggest most recruits are twenty somethings with a hormonal state that pushes them to "adventure" and status. I just can't get there from where I am. The world's moving so fast away from the mindset of fundamentalists like al-Qaeda that were they not so psychotically violent they'd be pathetic and pitiable.
"I don't think that most US citizens are against intervention."
Reuters poll of from yesterday -- 56% oppose intervention in Syria, 19% support intervention.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/03/us-syria-crisis-usa-idUSBRE97T0NB20130903
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I guess the CIA training offered to Al Qaeda, back when they were our guys, didn't cover drones.
We're supposed to be afraid of these douchebags? We're supposed to fear their engineering "prowess"? Is that what this is supposed to mean?
They make underpants bombs that won't even work under the best of circumstances. I grew up in the Cold War. I feared Russian engineering, because they actually could lob a *nuclear* tipped missile over the North Pole or from a submarine (they never solved the "launch from under water" thing, though). And the both the Bush and Obama administrations were calling these underpants bombs "sophisticated." Bullshit. Complete, utter bullshit. You know what's sophisticated? Over-the-horizon radar. ICBMs. Nuclear submarines. Tsar Bomba even if it was impractical.
What is not sophisticated: IEDs. ANFO bombs. Flying planes into buildings. These are not sophisticated. These can be pulled off by people of average intelligence and just enough insanity to believe in their bullshit cause.
"But they have a world-wide network of engineers!!!1111ONE@#$@#$R"
What a lot of crap. All the engineering in the world isn't going to help you if you can't implement your "master plan" and the only logistics that they seem capable of is ground fightin' and IEDs. Bring down drones? There are governments that have been throwing money at this problem and Iran got just *one* drone to show for all their work, and it's even disputable that they got it by jamming GPS (which is possible if you've got a loud enough transmitter and a crappy enough receiver). That's not much of a return on investment.
When all you have is a bunch of mentally-ill (because this kind of religious devotion is mental illness) engineers and suicidal foot-soldiers, you really don't have a lot of bright people. You have dolts. Dedicated, but not too bright. Because if they were bright... well... I'll leave you with this apropos quote:
--
BMO
I think living in the middle east or in any muslim country tends to put you in their crosshairs. Can't you just shoot down the drowns with anti-aircraft guns or a shoulder fired missile?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
... they are not supposed to defend themselves....
Thank god. The CIA makes SURE that the TRUTH is out there! Like, way, way out there...
In Dec. 2012 it was reported Said al-Shihri, supposedly an "al Qaeda number two", was killed.
It was the third time, according to "official sources", informed by Intelligence, the US reported they'd killed him
And another Three-fer was Abu Yahya al-Libi, which the US claimed to have killed 2 times before they yet again claimed to have killed him in June 2012.
Damn! This US intelligence is SO GOOD it kills "Al Qaeda" guys THREE TIMES!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It is a bit primitive. The "US is a sole superpower", "Russia lost power", etc.
The US and Russian are still capable to destroy each other several times over.
"something good" would be promoting education and development in the region. That's what it really needs. No one would mind it.
I think living in the middle east or in any muslim country tends to put you in their crosshairs. Can't you just shoot down the drowns with anti-aircraft guns or a shoulder fired missile?
No, because:
1. They fly awfully high.
2. Shoulder fired missiles like the Stinger are "heat seeking." The exhaust of drones are thermally attenuated through various means because of this..
3. You have to actually see them - either on radar or visually. Since AlQ doesn't have radar, they rely on sight only. The paint schemes on these drones make them really difficult to see visually.
4. If you can't see them visually or on radar, can you hear them? At the heights they fly at and the low noise engine...that's a big-fat No.
Drones aren't your dad's model aircraft.
--
BMO
Modern terrorist orgs tend to attract engineers (including far right wing neo-nazi in the US).. Engineering is a high status job in the middle east, You sweat through getting that degree, in expectation of the high status job, but hey, there are no jobs. You feel cheated: I did my part, they didn't live up to the bargain: that makes you ripe for recruitment: it was those corrupt government types that are responsible, come with us and follow the true way. These organizations have a set of rules, you follow the rules, and things happen as promised. Engineers, by nature, tend to like this sort of thing: they like predictability, they've been trained for it.
Very different than the disaffected liberal arts majors and lawyers in the Red Army Faction/ Baader Meinhof style nihilists/terrorists of the 60s and 70s. They were all about more subjective stuff.
Throw in the fact that when you shoot down a drone, you don't lose a pilot that cost years of expensive training that could easily run into a fair fraction of a million dollars to replace
Don't forget the Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) team that may be sent into harms way if we hear from the pilot once he is on the ground. For example when an F-16 pilot went down in Serbia, O'Grady, the rescue force included 2 CH-53 transport helicopters, 2 AH-1 helicopter gunships, 2 AV-8 ground attack jets, their crews and 51 Marine infantryman. The AH-1's took missile fire but successfully evaded. The CH-53's were hit with small arms fire.
Because their country taught them to.
Either to fight against the tyranny of governments with secret reports, or because capitalism is the religion of america and therefor leads to a greater good (for someone). Either opinion is equally likely to be true. The only difference being the political leanings of the observer.
-
I was debating as to whether to feed the anti-US trolls on here, but you've made the points I would have cited. The standoff (distance from the object to the UAV) is a "good distance," they'll never overcome. And if they did try to remotely send a small plane, well, there's an RF signal for us to home in on via many means, with many different people who can "come to visit and bring great tidings of joy." If Iran can't do it, a state-level agency,then these guys very likely can't. Take a look at GPS II-F and III Block specs (e.g. M-band, etc). We already have features deployed and more to follow that defeat jamming and spoofing. For anyone interested in reading technical facts, rather than spouting ignorant barbs, check out GPS World. Read this month, and go back about 3-4 issues. They specifically write about jamming and spoof defeats. OK, so AQ just started hiring Engineers to develop this? We've had engineers in the US working on this for over a decade.
No. The reaper has an operational altitude of 50,000 feet. You might somehow get a hobbyist RC plane more than half that high, but to then chase down and hit the reaper? No way, forget it. Even a Stinger missile can only get around half that high.
Perhaps it would be a good time for DARPA to offer one of their technology challenges... perhaps $1m to the first team/person who can successfully bring down a drone using a home-made countermeasure.
That way we'd know for sure just how viable such "amateur" countermeasures would be (and I'd be $1m richer :-)
Seriously though -- drones flying at lower altitudes (ie: 5000m or lower) would *not* be that hard to take out using "off the shelf" technology adapted and applied in innovative ways.
No. The reaper has an operational altitude of 50,000 feet. You might somehow get a hobbyist RC plane more than half that high, but to then chase down and hit the reaper? No way, forget it. Even a Stinger missile can only get around half that high.
The only practical way for people with no missiles or fighter jets to counter drones like the Reaper in anything other than a passive way (hiding/obscuring the targets) would be to find and track the military satellites that relay control signals, and then target them with jamming/hacking/etc.
Perhaps a very powerful and tightly-focused MASER aimed at the sats, if they can acheive accurate enough tracking, might burn out the satellite radio relay/C&C receiver front-ends and turn them into space junk. That would take an extremely powerful MASER, however. Not a large number of suitable power sources commonly available in most of the remote/primitive areas, or even many of the relatively more modern areas, that the drones and ALQ. typically operate in.
If they can beam a sufficient level of broadband RF noise, concentrated in the band that the drone uplinks to the sat on at the sat, it may be able to jam the uplink signal from the drone by overloading the sat receiver front-end.
I doubt that efforts to jam the drone from receiving the sat downlink would work due to the very directional nature of the drone's sat downlink antenna(s) that point (physically and/or electrically/electromagnetically) up at the sky, not at the ground. It would take far, far too much power.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
They clearly don't appreciate that the US can hurt them without putting any human into their reach. If they do succeed in disabling or destroying a drone, all they get is hardware. No hostage. No video opportunity for a nice beheading. No propaganda victory.
Serves them right!
After all, they are evil death cult followers hell-bent on killing women and children for reasons so insane it's out of this world, and any blow we can deal them is both justified and well deserved.
Terrorists have by their inhumane actions denounced their human rights and should be treated accordingly. They use bombs to target only random innocent people and that is so evil it's hard to comprehend, so getting targeted by drones even when hiding their cowardly asses behind their women and children is completely fair in every way.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
But... We love death more than you love ... sitting in a comfy chair munching popcorn playing with million dollar toys... oh wait.
It's possible that many people "want something done" while realizing that the military strikes proposed by Obama aren't the right something, or that there is no effective "something" to do. I would have been in the majority in that poll, counted as "opposed". I DO want somebody smart to come up with some effective action. I do want something done, and understand there's nothing we CAN do that will help.
Of course "most Americans" are probably busy watching Honey Boo Boo and have no idea who "Assad" is.
I hope al Qaeda shares their findings with everyone else who might need that information.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
At least Assad likely had no intentions of going at war with USA and Western World in general. Support anti-Israel groups - maybe, but AQ are no fans of Israel either. So in terms of stability and security it would only be logical to concentrate fire on said "rebels" - they are clearly more dangerous.
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
Use that title, out the full text up on Kindle Marketplace, see how long it takes someone to notice.
I would think it would be cheap and easy to put together a bunch of ground-based IR emitters, possibly with the ability to be solid or blink or all of the above in random increments. A related idea would be an object that emits light in the same manner as the reflected laser targeting system.
I could see where having a lot of these in a concentrated space might make it harder for targeting and laser guidance, and they should be cheap to build and operate.
"the idea of a device that can dispense death from the skies with total impunity seems rather bleak"
"Maybe I am too grumpy this morning."
Just consider that 40 years ago that we would have been dropping napalm from Thuds and BUFs and before that, carpet bombing with incendiaries - Dresden, Tokyo...
--
BMO
There's plenty of dung, like between your ears, for starters.
That may be true. However, there are three problems. First, my ears (and what's between them) are no where near the camps. Second, I don't think dung burns bonfire style. I think it just sort of smoulders. And third, how will the missiles be able to tell if the fire is a dung fueled decoy fire, or a dung fueled cooking fire, because, trust me, you don't want to get goat and lentil stew on your hellfire missile.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
What does "destroy" even mean in this context?
Global Thermonuclear Apocalypse
Seriously, how did this help Americans? It DOES help AQ, because now, they know what we know about them. They also learn how we think about them. Point is, Snowden's continued document releases show that he is more traitor than whistle blower and that he does not care. He should be treated as a traitor once brought back here.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Your (plural "you") repeated calls for Snowden's execution are going to just make it harder to get him extradited legally. Not that it appears that you Americans give a shit about legality.
Oh, incidentally, if you fancy claiming that the journalists are traitors too, I'll give you Wallaces' (mythical) answer : "I can not be a traitor, for I owe him no allegiance. He is not my Sovereign; he never received my homage; and whilst life is in this persecuted body, he never shall receive it." They're not Americans,so they can't be traitors to America.
Yes, the releases are being calculated to continue embarrassing American spies. That's what people who hate what the American spy agencies are doing (including many Americans) do, to try to stop American spy agencies from fucking with the rest of the world.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
First off, you have never seen me call reporters traitors. Had they paid for this information or out and out helped obtain, and then printed it, I might call them a traitor. BUT, when it is delivered into their hands by somebody else's actions, then I would print it as well, though I DO think that there should be selective publication of this rather than all of it. In particular, greenwald is an American and I believe should be more selective about what he is printing. There is a lot there that is NOT whistle blowing, but out right treason. BUT, that is a different issue.
Where have you seen me calling for doing illegal things in my postings ?
Heck, I believe that Manning should be executed (again, out and out treason combined with whistle blowing).
OTOH, while I do not believe that Assange is a reporter, he is clearly not American and therefore we have no legal battle with him. As such, I do believe that we have a right to extradition of him (though sweden clearly does).
Likewise, I oppose what UK is doing to Glenwald's boyfriend, Miranda. They had no reason to hold him once they recovered the stolen material (which that part was legal in my mind; but it will not matter, snowden will simply leak it out other ways). Obviously, the 5 eyes knew that he had it. But holding him for all of those hours and grilling him was plain wrong.
As to Snowden, in the first set of data releases, I was good with it. It was something that I had been concerned about and have said so on this site and others for many years. After all, unlike most ppl here, I DO have experience on this stuff. Lack of oversight was a serious issue. BUT, Snowden went much further than that. Once he started speaking about how it is done and how we do it on other nations and how we follow terrorists and others, he became a traitor. In fact, all other nations would execute him, or worse, lock him up for life, for having done what he is doing now. Personally, I think that we are out of our mind, but I know why. He holds a lot more information. A LOT MORE. Still, it does not change the current situation. He is a whistle blower (good) and a traitor (bad).
And as to the American spy agency fucking with the rest of the world, hey, I hate to point this out, but all of the nations spy on each other and fuck with it as well. UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China are far worse than what America is today, in terms of messing with the rest of the world. This is common. Even the 5 eyes spy on each other (and then share that information). Canada, Australian, New Zealand, and UK all spy on Americans and others around the world. Likewise, I have dealt with 1 confirmed Chinese spy, and probably another, already.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.