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RQ-170 Spy Drone impossible to bring down with electronic hijacking
The Iranians claim to have captured a top secret US unmanned drone using electronic warfare. This represents a major loss of stealth and sensory technology for the U.S. However, if the aircraft is indeed stealth, it would have been impossible to "hack" into the airplanes controls and take it over remotely.
A stealth craft has to maintain radio silence to avoid detection. Therefore, the craft must fly completely on its own, guided merely by its AI. Thus, the aircraft has no need for ground control. It would be impossible to hijack from the ground using electronic interference.
More likely the craft suffered a mechanical failure or fuel loss and gently crashed.
- zoowar 15y agoThe drone could be listening and reacting to radio transmissions without transmitting (idk).
- andyl 15y agoThe drone may be guided by AI, and limit emissions to prevent detection, but surely it listens for instructions. I think its unlikely that the drone was hacked, but without insider knowledge, how can you definitively rule out electronic hijacking?
- mikecsh 15y agoThis seems like baseless speculation to me. Surely it listens for instructions and I'd be very surprised if it didn't return communications in some manner, perhaps using some spread spectrum technique to drop the transmit signal below the noise floor to avoid detection without the CDMA codes.
- ceejayoz 15y ago> A stealth craft has to maintain radio silence to avoid detection. Radio silence means you don't transmit. There's no reason you can't passively receive. I'd imagine transmitting a narrow beam transmission at a satellite would be hard to detect with anything but dumb luck, too.
- kisom 15y agoThese drones feature live video feeds. You can't have a live video feed without a radio transmission.