Putting aside the fact that aviationweek.com is little more than an instrument of the US military propaganda machinery, this was a pretty interesting read. The

Putting aside the fact that aviationweek.com is little more than an instrument of the US military propaganda machinery, this was a pretty interesting read. The control systems on these aircraft need to be extremely robust and reliable, and they incorporate advanced autopiloting, "return home" capability, etc. I bet it'd be a fun project to work on one of these drones' controllers and avionics, though it likely wouldn't involve much hacking. For the control systems for these and other aircraft, thoroughly-tested, deliberate, plain code is the order of the day. Easy to inspect, stay away from corner-cases where behaviour is ill-defined, etc.