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Iran Releases Video Of Captured US Drone Plane

44 points by pldpld 15y ago

chortik 15y ago
US military contractors should learn the difference between fail safe and fail secure.
huhtenberg 15y ago
They allegedly landed it with this - http://rt.com/news/radar-detectors-iran-arms-757 http://rt.com/news/radar-detectors-iran-arms-757 - by hijacking the control channel.
- panarky 15y ago
  That's an article about a mobile Russian radar unit. This drone appears to be a stealth drone, so it's less likely that radar would have been the key to downing it. Cyber attacks, stealth-penetrating radar, etc. seem unlikely. Until there are real facts, maybe Occam's razor is the best course. The simpler explanation is that the drone just malfunctioned.
  - latitude 15y ago
    Malfunctioned and landed itself neatly on a ground for the hostiles to pick up. Not much of an Occam's razor, is it? :)
  - huhtenberg 15y ago
    I doubt they would disclose how exactly they did it, but Iran receiving an electronic warfare equipment not 6 weeks ago and then this drone miraculously falling into their hands undamaged - it is reasonable to assume there is correlation. Or perhaps they shot it down, made a replica and tried convincing the US that they could land their drones at will. However, I think it is highly unlikely that the drone just "malfunctioned", and in a way that allowed it to be captured in perfect condition. In any case, http://www.google.ca/search?q=avtobaza+iran http://www.google.ca/search?q=avtobaza+iran > stealth-penetrating radar You might want to look up an incident in Serbia where the stealth jet was in fact downed that way (a bit more complicated that just a radar, but it was still tracked along the sky from the ground through electronic means).
    - adolph 15y ago
      http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htada/articles/20051121.aspx http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htada/articles/20051121.asp... Zoltan [the Serbian battery commander, whose missiles downed an American F-16, and, most impressively, an F-117] used the human spotters and brief use of radar, with short range shots at American bombers. The SA-3 was guided from the ground, so you had to use surprise to get an accurate shot in before the target used jamming and evasive maneuvers to make the missile miss. The F-117 he shot down was only 13 kilometers away. Zoltan got some help from his enemies. The NATO commanders often sent their bombers in along the same routes, and didn't make a big effort to find out if hotshots like Zoltan were down there, and do something about it. Never underestimate your enemy.
    - Caballera 15y ago
      Yeah because they setup along known routes of where NATO jets flew.
  - politician 15y ago
    The simplest explanation is that we gave them a drone.
goodweeds 15y ago
How many of us are fantasizing about hacking our own drone so we could become the kid with the coolest rc-plane on the block?
- yuvadam 15y ago
  Enter Paparazzi [1], [2] [1] - http://paparazzi.enac.fr/wiki/Main_Page http://paparazzi.enac.fr/wiki/Main_Page [2] - https://github.com/paparazzi/paparazzi https://github.com/paparazzi/paparazzi
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
arunabha 15y ago
"Iranian officials say its forces electronically hijacked the drone and steered it to the ground." "BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the intact condition of the Sentinel tends to support their claim." If this is true, how on earth did they manage to take control of the plane ? Surely a top secret drone would have significant defenses against precisely this kind of attack.
- mahyarm 15y ago
  They created enough interference/distortion to make the drone go into automatic landing mode? I don't know how they work so I don't even know if they if have that mode, but that's what I would guess.
  - shareme 15y ago
    that is more probable than anything else and matches Iran's electronic capabilities
  - politician 15y ago
    // bill: don't be so paranoid -mgmt //if (inIran && lost_tether) nosedive(); if (lost_tether) find_a_nice_flat_place_to_land(); Unlikely.
    - mahyarm 15y ago
      Knowing how unreliable RF can be, I think they had to make a tradeoff between self-destruct on interference being a hilarious and cheap way to destroy their expensive drone fleet and landing on extended interference.
      - politician 15y ago
        Self-destruct on interference ... of a stealth drone... in enemy airspace... because it is presumably damaged to the point where it can't fly east. It's stealth, so they shouldn't have been able to track it. It's encountering this over enemy airspace, so it should interpret this as an attack. The untethered drone has a few options: (a) fly east, (b) self-destruct, or (c) land. It's bizarre that it chose to land under those conditions.
nosequel 15y ago
Since most people are going with Iran's side of the story being correct, I'll be the counter voice. It is far more likely that the plane did malfunction and it landed on its own and Iran picked it up. I'm not saying it is impossible for them to hack the communications channel, but is extremely unlikely. Pretend for a second that the military was using something even marginally dumb (which they aren't), the minimum requirement for Iran to take control would be: * Intercept the control signal * Decrypt it somehow (in a short period of time) * Jam (from the ground) the US signal going to the plane, while not jamming themselves (equally unlikely) * Give the proper C&C commands to the plane to land Or the more likely scenario of the plane malfunctioned (it is a test plane being used in production) and landed itself. My biggest concern would be if the self-destructs onboard fired as they were supposed to.
- marshray 15y ago
  Or perhaps they lured it to a known location, spotted it in the daytime with binoculars, intercepted it with an old-fashioned human pilot in a jet, who blasted it with turbulent jet exhaust until it went into an unrecoverable stall. Sure it's probably a long shot, but we don't know how many times they may have tried and it didn't work either.
- bajsejohannes 15y ago
  Agreed, it's a simple application of Occam's razor. The only possible scenario I see where they actually managed to take control of it is if they have good inside information. That's not impossible, of course, but then they wouldn't give it away like that.
  - 9oliYQjP 15y ago
    China was able to gain full access to an American satellite (or at least blamed for it [http://informationweek.com/news/government/security/231901900 http://informationweek.com/news/government/security/23190190... ]). I would bet that Russia has similar capabilities. Iran isn't working in isolation, and if either Russia or China decided to crack their knuckles in this situation, the likelihood of the craft being downed is higher than one might initially think.
politician 15y ago
Honestly, this whole episode sounds like the Americans allowed the super secret drone to fall into Iran's hands. Think about it, we're being told that there are no contingency plans to scuttle sensitive drone technology when it goes rogue? That this rogue drone landed itself in hostile territory when we know full well that it has GPS and probably a detailed map of no-fly zones? We scuttle everything that is abandoned: subs, stealth choppers. This capability was certainly not overlooked in these drones. This is either a super fancy way of getting a new version of Stuxnet into Iranian research facilities, or a proxy play to deliver crippled/broken stealth technology to China.
- krschultz 15y ago
  The drones have a way to blow themselves up, and the US also knew where it crashed and considered bombing it in place. Because it was on Iranian soil the decision was made to not do this for diplomatic reasons.
  - politician 15y ago
    It didn't crash, it landed. It decided to land, in Iran. It could have nosedived if the self-destruct system was non-responsive, but it landed instead. Valuable stealth technology just automatically landed in Iran, think about that. Iran, where multiple missile bases have just been randomly blowing up recently. Something ain't right.
    - ibisum 15y ago
      You don't know that "it" decided to land. This is an assumption. Beware assumptions in this matter of international importance!
  - huhtenberg 15y ago
    Source?
    - krschultz 15y ago
fletchowns 15y ago
How come a drone like this doesn't have a self destruct?
- jcarreiro 15y ago
  Perhaps the technology simply isn't sensitive enough to require one?
- ww520 15y ago
  Difficult to detect a self destruct condition. Is losing all signals a condition? Then it's a simple matter of jamming all signals to force it to self destruct.
- nosequel 15y ago
  Who says it doesn't?
Iaks 15y ago
I wonder if this story is linked to the below? http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/drone-virus-nuisance/ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/drone-virus-nuisance... This could make an understanding of the drone's C&C structure by Iran much more of a feasible possibility. I have no idea if these really are connected but it was the first thing that came to mind reading about this story.
jc4p 15y ago
As an Iranian I can tell you the one thing the Iranian government loves the most is propaganda. Always bet on the side of incompetence rather than Iran being super secret spies. I can almost guarantee you that no Iranian believes anything about this that's coming from Iran's side, but you should not blindly trust either of what Iran or the US is saying about what happened. This is just trying to catch people's attention and make Iran seem like a powerful country and a threat, and trust me the only people falling for it are the blind followers of mainstream news. No Iranian believes any of this.
jdelsman 15y ago
My bet is that the US wants them to try to use the technology to either a.) get another Stuxnet into their computers while they download data from it, or b.) see them try to use it and ultimately embarrass themselves in the process.
- VladRussian 15y ago
  > a.) get another Stuxnet into their computers while they download data from it, i hope the CIA didn't forgot to put the virus carrying USB stick into the weapons bay :)
- refurb 15y ago
  They've done it before. See Farewell Dossier https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/96unclass/farewell.htm https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...
thetrendycyborg 15y ago
That must have been a big net!
knieveltech 15y ago
There have been a lot of interesting views described so far, from hacking the control channel to the plane intentionally landing to put crippled technology into certain countrys' R&D pipelines. My question is this: How do we even know that's a working drone? It would take a competent body and fender guy less than a week to fabricate and paint a 1:1 model of the exterior of one of these drones.
runjake 15y ago
I've never worked on the RQ-170, but I have directly worked on other models, as well as other low observability aircraft. It has a command channel but was likely running autonomously. To me, it looks like a rushed mockup designed from existing images for a press event: - The wing seams are jacked up for a low observable airframe, though this could be because they disassembled it prior. - The inlet grill configuration is an odd design for low observability and looks like it would significantly block airflow, but this is a low speed aircraft. - The paint job is odd. Birds are always being repainted all kinds of crazy schemes, but I've never seen this kind. The body does look like it was crated with aircraft metal, though. I'm willing to bet the original crashed and burned and that this is a mockup. Iran doesn't have the resources to land one of these intact, themselves. Neither does China or Russia.
- VladRussian 15y ago
  >I'm willing to bet the original crashed and burned and that this is a mockup. this is after falling from 20km height after being hit by a surface-to-air missile. Would be enough to produce a very closely resembling mockup : http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/u2/u2-wreckage.jpg http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/u2/u2-wreckage.... >Iran doesn't have the resources to land one of these intact, themselves. Pretty much the same believe was held about Soviet Union surface-to-air capabilities before the U2 incident (and the belief was true right to exactly the point of the accident as it did took 14 missiles to score the hit)
  - runjake 15y ago
    The interesting thing is that the video doesn't show anything which can't be found off the Internet or easily assumed. I didn't say it was impossible, considering they likely have support from China and possibly Russia. It's just highly, highly unlikely in my opinion. And they're not going to just "jam" GPS and make it think an Iranian airport is it's home base. It doesn't work like that.

44 points by pldpld 15y ago

US military contractors should learn the difference between fail safe and fail secure.

They allegedly landed it with this - http://rt.com/news/radar-detectors-iran-arms-757 http://rt.com/news/radar-detectors-iran-arms-757 - by hijacking the control channel.

panarky 15y ago
That's an article about a mobile Russian radar unit. This drone appears to be a stealth drone, so it's less likely that radar would have been the key to downing it. Cyber attacks, stealth-penetrating radar, etc. seem unlikely. Until there are real facts, maybe Occam's razor is the best course. The simpler explanation is that the drone just malfunctioned.
- latitude 15y ago
  Malfunctioned and landed itself neatly on a ground for the hostiles to pick up. Not much of an Occam's razor, is it? :)
- huhtenberg 15y ago
  I doubt they would disclose how exactly they did it, but Iran receiving an electronic warfare equipment not 6 weeks ago and then this drone miraculously falling into their hands undamaged - it is reasonable to assume there is correlation. Or perhaps they shot it down, made a replica and tried convincing the US that they could land their drones at will. However, I think it is highly unlikely that the drone just "malfunctioned", and in a way that allowed it to be captured in perfect condition. In any case, http://www.google.ca/search?q=avtobaza+iran http://www.google.ca/search?q=avtobaza+iran > stealth-penetrating radar You might want to look up an incident in Serbia where the stealth jet was in fact downed that way (a bit more complicated that just a radar, but it was still tracked along the sky from the ground through electronic means).
  - adolph 15y ago
    http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htada/articles/20051121.aspx http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htada/articles/20051121.asp... Zoltan [the Serbian battery commander, whose missiles downed an American F-16, and, most impressively, an F-117] used the human spotters and brief use of radar, with short range shots at American bombers. The SA-3 was guided from the ground, so you had to use surprise to get an accurate shot in before the target used jamming and evasive maneuvers to make the missile miss. The F-117 he shot down was only 13 kilometers away. Zoltan got some help from his enemies. The NATO commanders often sent their bombers in along the same routes, and didn't make a big effort to find out if hotshots like Zoltan were down there, and do something about it. Never underestimate your enemy.
  - Caballera 15y ago
    Yeah because they setup along known routes of where NATO jets flew.
- politician 15y ago
  The simplest explanation is that we gave them a drone.

goodweeds 15y ago

How many of us are fantasizing about hacking our own drone so we could become the kid with the coolest rc-plane on the block?

yuvadam 15y ago
Enter Paparazzi [1], [2] [1] - http://paparazzi.enac.fr/wiki/Main_Page http://paparazzi.enac.fr/wiki/Main_Page [2] - https://github.com/paparazzi/paparazzi https://github.com/paparazzi/paparazzi

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

arunabha 15y ago

"Iranian officials say its forces electronically hijacked the drone and steered it to the ground." "BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the intact condition of the Sentinel tends to support their claim." If this is true, how on earth did they manage to take control of the plane ? Surely a top secret drone would have significant defenses against precisely this kind of attack.

mahyarm 15y ago
They created enough interference/distortion to make the drone go into automatic landing mode? I don't know how they work so I don't even know if they if have that mode, but that's what I would guess.
- shareme 15y ago
  that is more probable than anything else and matches Iran's electronic capabilities
- politician 15y ago
  // bill: don't be so paranoid -mgmt //if (inIran && lost_tether) nosedive(); if (lost_tether) find_a_nice_flat_place_to_land(); Unlikely.
  - mahyarm 15y ago
    Knowing how unreliable RF can be, I think they had to make a tradeoff between self-destruct on interference being a hilarious and cheap way to destroy their expensive drone fleet and landing on extended interference.
    - politician 15y ago
      Self-destruct on interference ... of a stealth drone... in enemy airspace... because it is presumably damaged to the point where it can't fly east. It's stealth, so they shouldn't have been able to track it. It's encountering this over enemy airspace, so it should interpret this as an attack. The untethered drone has a few options: (a) fly east, (b) self-destruct, or (c) land. It's bizarre that it chose to land under those conditions.

nosequel 15y ago

Since most people are going with Iran's side of the story being correct, I'll be the counter voice. It is far more likely that the plane did malfunction and it landed on its own and Iran picked it up. I'm not saying it is impossible for them to hack the communications channel, but is extremely unlikely. Pretend for a second that the military was using something even marginally dumb (which they aren't), the minimum requirement for Iran to take control would be: * Intercept the control signal * Decrypt it somehow (in a short period of time) * Jam (from the ground) the US signal going to the plane, while not jamming themselves (equally unlikely) * Give the proper C&C commands to the plane to land Or the more likely scenario of the plane malfunctioned (it is a test plane being used in production) and landed itself. My biggest concern would be if the self-destructs onboard fired as they were supposed to.

marshray 15y ago
Or perhaps they lured it to a known location, spotted it in the daytime with binoculars, intercepted it with an old-fashioned human pilot in a jet, who blasted it with turbulent jet exhaust until it went into an unrecoverable stall. Sure it's probably a long shot, but we don't know how many times they may have tried and it didn't work either.
bajsejohannes 15y ago
Agreed, it's a simple application of Occam's razor. The only possible scenario I see where they actually managed to take control of it is if they have good inside information. That's not impossible, of course, but then they wouldn't give it away like that.
- 9oliYQjP 15y ago
  China was able to gain full access to an American satellite (or at least blamed for it [http://informationweek.com/news/government/security/231901900 http://informationweek.com/news/government/security/23190190... ]). I would bet that Russia has similar capabilities. Iran isn't working in isolation, and if either Russia or China decided to crack their knuckles in this situation, the likelihood of the craft being downed is higher than one might initially think.

politician 15y ago

Honestly, this whole episode sounds like the Americans allowed the super secret drone to fall into Iran's hands. Think about it, we're being told that there are no contingency plans to scuttle sensitive drone technology when it goes rogue? That this rogue drone landed itself in hostile territory when we know full well that it has GPS and probably a detailed map of no-fly zones? We scuttle everything that is abandoned: subs, stealth choppers. This capability was certainly not overlooked in these drones. This is either a super fancy way of getting a new version of Stuxnet into Iranian research facilities, or a proxy play to deliver crippled/broken stealth technology to China.

krschultz 15y ago
The drones have a way to blow themselves up, and the US also knew where it crashed and considered bombing it in place. Because it was on Iranian soil the decision was made to not do this for diplomatic reasons.
- politician 15y ago
  It didn't crash, it landed. It decided to land, in Iran. It could have nosedived if the self-destruct system was non-responsive, but it landed instead. Valuable stealth technology just automatically landed in Iran, think about that. Iran, where multiple missile bases have just been randomly blowing up recently. Something ain't right.
  - ibisum 15y ago
    You don't know that "it" decided to land. This is an assumption. Beware assumptions in this matter of international importance!
- huhtenberg 15y ago
  Source?
  - krschultz 15y ago

fletchowns 15y ago

How come a drone like this doesn't have a self destruct?

jcarreiro 15y ago
Perhaps the technology simply isn't sensitive enough to require one?
ww520 15y ago
Difficult to detect a self destruct condition. Is losing all signals a condition? Then it's a simple matter of jamming all signals to force it to self destruct.
nosequel 15y ago
Who says it doesn't?

Iaks 15y ago

I wonder if this story is linked to the below? http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/drone-virus-nuisance/ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/drone-virus-nuisance... This could make an understanding of the drone's C&C structure by Iran much more of a feasible possibility. I have no idea if these really are connected but it was the first thing that came to mind reading about this story.

jc4p 15y ago

As an Iranian I can tell you the one thing the Iranian government loves the most is propaganda. Always bet on the side of incompetence rather than Iran being super secret spies. I can almost guarantee you that no Iranian believes anything about this that's coming from Iran's side, but you should not blindly trust either of what Iran or the US is saying about what happened. This is just trying to catch people's attention and make Iran seem like a powerful country and a threat, and trust me the only people falling for it are the blind followers of mainstream news. No Iranian believes any of this.

jdelsman 15y ago

My bet is that the US wants them to try to use the technology to either a.) get another Stuxnet into their computers while they download data from it, or b.) see them try to use it and ultimately embarrass themselves in the process.

VladRussian 15y ago
> a.) get another Stuxnet into their computers while they download data from it, i hope the CIA didn't forgot to put the virus carrying USB stick into the weapons bay :)
refurb 15y ago
They've done it before. See Farewell Dossier https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/96unclass/farewell.htm https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...

thetrendycyborg 15y ago

That must have been a big net!

knieveltech 15y ago

There have been a lot of interesting views described so far, from hacking the control channel to the plane intentionally landing to put crippled technology into certain countrys' R&D pipelines. My question is this: How do we even know that's a working drone? It would take a competent body and fender guy less than a week to fabricate and paint a 1:1 model of the exterior of one of these drones.

runjake 15y ago

I've never worked on the RQ-170, but I have directly worked on other models, as well as other low observability aircraft. It has a command channel but was likely running autonomously. To me, it looks like a rushed mockup designed from existing images for a press event: - The wing seams are jacked up for a low observable airframe, though this could be because they disassembled it prior. - The inlet grill configuration is an odd design for low observability and looks like it would significantly block airflow, but this is a low speed aircraft. - The paint job is odd. Birds are always being repainted all kinds of crazy schemes, but I've never seen this kind. The body does look like it was crated with aircraft metal, though. I'm willing to bet the original crashed and burned and that this is a mockup. Iran doesn't have the resources to land one of these intact, themselves. Neither does China or Russia.

VladRussian 15y ago
>I'm willing to bet the original crashed and burned and that this is a mockup. this is after falling from 20km height after being hit by a surface-to-air missile. Would be enough to produce a very closely resembling mockup : http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/u2/u2-wreckage.jpg http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/u2/u2-wreckage.... >Iran doesn't have the resources to land one of these intact, themselves. Pretty much the same believe was held about Soviet Union surface-to-air capabilities before the U2 incident (and the belief was true right to exactly the point of the accident as it did took 14 missiles to score the hit)
- runjake 15y ago
  The interesting thing is that the video doesn't show anything which can't be found off the Internet or easily assumed. I didn't say it was impossible, considering they likely have support from China and possibly Russia. It's just highly, highly unlikely in my opinion. And they're not going to just "jam" GPS and make it think an Iranian airport is it's home base. It doesn't work like that.