23 ms·

Tehran tracked, captured, studied, copied RQ-170

133 points by vinnyglennon 12y ago

aceperry 12y ago
Very interesting. I would love it if the Iranians open-sourced the drone that they captured. :-)
- mschuster91 12y ago
  Put it up on Kickstarter. iDrone ;)
3327 12y ago
Strange comments here. It saddens me that the US lost a drone like this. Maybe not everyone is American here, but the technology in this vehicle will be in China's hands Russia's hands etc. The whole world will miss the old world order some day. By that I mean today's world order. the US will some day will not be able to police the world for one reason or another. Then the world will realize how valuable what the US stood for despite its shortcomings.
- us0r 12y ago
  " but the technology in this vehicle will be in China's hands Russia's hands etc." While I don't think it is necessarily a good thing they have this technology, when has either been threatening to the US (recently)? I get Russia blames everything on America and they aren't exactly friendly to Americans when traveling there (yet there sure are a lot us there) but as actual military threats - I've either completely missed the story or it doesn't exist. Personally, I'm more worried about the determined Pakistani dad who lost his wife and children in one of our adventures which completely missed the target.
  - lancewiggs 12y ago
    >Personally, I'm more worried about the determined Pakistani dad who lost his wife and children in one of our adventures which completely missed the target. I'm concerned about undereducated radicalised individuals from any country. No country is free of these, even Scandinavian ones. The question is how many are created, what sort of access to weapons they have and what sort of support system is in place to make sure they don't implement their plans. I note that the answer to any those three questions is not "more guns".
- Zigurd 12y ago
  If we were not messing with Iran for what might be relatively unimportant reasons, the drone would not have been lost, and Iran might not be so tight with Russia. Drones are a tempting way to "do something" when doing nothing, or doing less, might be wiser.
  - BugBrother 12y ago
    It seems that dictators generally need to make enemies out of the world's democracies. This is so the populations don't start to get ideas about why their junta's steal so much money and they don't have any freedom. "Democracy and freedom are just lies -- the westerners are degenerates which tolerate homosexuality, etc." So if Iran couldn't antagonize the West for what you consider "relatively unimportant reasons" (e.g. being one of the world's worst terror supporters), they would just try harder. And still be tight with other juntas which also fear democratic influences of their slav... population.
    - Zigurd 12y ago
      Iran is roughly four times the population and GDP of Iraq. Beyond the sanctions already in place, what are we going to do to Iran? Invade?
      - BugBrother 12y ago
        It is not relevant to my point to just say that an invasion of Iran would be expensive. (But you know that, I think.)
        jacquesm 12y ago
        It is not just 'expensive', it is in-feasible. Not that that will stop the US from trying if they ever feel like it. Look at the mess in Iraq, then multiply by 5 or so (Iran + a new civil war in Iraq). You could very well end up with a much worse situation than there is today, loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and a very large chunk of the world with a strong motivation to hate everything and anything the West stands for. Very Bad Idea.
- meric 12y ago
  "Then the world will realize how valuable what the US stood for despite its shortcomings." The West, maybe. Not if you're living in a Middle Eastern country, with oppressive rulers kept in power by US funds, forcing the country to sell its oil resources cheaply. Not if you're living in Eastern Ukraine, where the US toppled an elected government to install a government that is hostile to your people. http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/03/25/355978/nuke-8-million-russians-in-ukraine/ http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/03/25/355978/nuke-8-milli... You could pretty much tell her attitude to them by the way she suggested the 8 million ethnic Russians living in Eastern Ukraine should be nuked. Not if you're living in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw#t=79 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw#t=79 All countries where the U.S. has sought to destroy domestic, independent, public institutions if and when they arise. If you're living in an African country where the U.S. has previously tried to destabilize your government, and where China instead have offered to build infrastructure for your country, you might not be so sad that the US has lost a drone, which it was probably using for spying purposes. If the world was Panem, then U.S. is the Capitol, and its closest allies are the Capitol's adjacent districts. Of course, you're probably from the U.S., if not, then probably, U.K or Australia, or N.Z. Of course you'd have something to lose if the US will some day not be able to police the world. EDIT: What's the downvote for? A lack of citations?
  - xi 12y ago
    > EDIT: What's the downvote for? A lack of citations? Maybe because of them? The article about Timoshenko is written by a serious antisemitic nutjob.
    - user9756 12y ago
      Could you please quote the antisemitic parts?
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        It mentions the Jewish lobby and how congress is eager to receive their funds in two places, but I find it hard to equate that with 'anti-semitic nutjob'. The Jewish lobby is real enough that they warrant their own wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_Stat...
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  I used to think this way, but I no longer do. In the book 1984 -- which has far more similarities to today's reality than I am comfortable with -- the Oceanians are utterly and completely convinced that their side is the good side. Throughout the book there are various hints that this is in fact not the case. But the Oceanian government's control on information, combined with people's cognitive dissonance, prevents the truth from being realized. And the few who do realize it are imprisoned, tortured and converted (or killed). What would today's world be like if China and/or Russia were the dominant power? The answer is that no one knows. No one can know. It's like asking, "what would the world be like if Hitler had won?" That alternate universe was created so long ago that it is simply not possible to conceive of. It is silly to look at today's China and Russia and conclude that they would continue their current practices and ideologies after becoming dominant world-powers, since said practices and ideologies are very likely what is preventing that from happening. It is also possible that there will be a reversal of roles, with them becoming "good" and the USA becoming a tyrannical, fascist state. I'd say there is a scary amount of indication that the latter is very likely, actually.
  - BugBrother 12y ago
    You are allowed to write that in the Western world. Some people in USA and other countries live good lives by writing conspiracy theories about their own countries. Try to do something similar in China or a similar autocratic state. It might be a problem to write that in Russia today, too. :-( And hopefully, China will change. I've seen arguments that to get beyond a certain GNP/Capita, countries have to democratize (unless they have lots of oil, of course). (What scares me, is the possibility with AI and language understanding -- to have a 1984 control state with a working free economy; future history as a foot trampling a face...)
    - tedks 12y ago
      You're allowed to write it, sure. But if you try to distribute it, it'll be deleted off of people's kindles, and they'll be added to the NSA watchlist. We have a control state with a mostly-working "free" economy.
- zik 12y ago
  As a non-American I see it differently - the US illegally flew an aircraft in another country's sovereign airspace, spying on them. I don't want anyone doing this over my country (Australia) - but no matter which country it's done to it's illegal and wrong.
  - mpyne 12y ago
    Actually it was, in this case, probably at a standoff distance and hijacked remotely by Iran (perhaps by local GPS jamming) which, as a reminder, borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Persian Gulf. There's no good reason to send a drone into Iranian airspace in the first place when you have things like NRO's Keyhole satellites to get imagery for you; even if there was a bigger upside, Iran actually has a good set of military radars so a political situation could easily be expected (not to mention something worse, like this).
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      That sounds a lot less plausible than that they captured it over their own territory. You're essentially implying the Iranians can jam local GPS, then capture US drones at will and pilot them to their own territory during the first attempt without the US being able to do much about it. That's not a realistic picture. Much more likely that they set up a bunch of jammers/transmitters over their own territory and waited for a drone to get within the trap, then to bring it down while jamming the US control signals and GPS at the same time. After all, if they could control them that well then the best use they would have of this tech would be to embarrass the United States by sending US drones into high value targets abroad. That would do a lot more damage. If there are no good reasons to send drones into Iranian airspace because of Keyholes and so on then those reasons apply just as strongly to Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Persian Gulf. Clearly there are reasons to deploy drones and some of those reasons might apply to Iran.
      - mpyne 12y ago
        > You're essentially implying the Iranians can jam local GPS. Wait, do you think this is difficult? This is old hat, especially if Iran were able to engage the Chinese. Either way, that's only one possibility, you could also probably simply overpower the UAV's receiver with your own command stream if you could figure out the protocol (and if it was unencrypted). This isn't to say it's impossible the UAV was over Iran but that would indicate a low opinion of Iranian skill, which is not the opinion held in the U.S. military at this point.
- jzwinck 12y ago
  1926: "It saddens me that Britain has lost control of its colonies. Maybe not everyone is British here, but the resources in these colonies will no longer benefit the Crown. The whole world will miss the nineteenth century world order some day." The world will move on, as it always has. Today's politics and militaries will be as obsolete in a few hundred years as this drone will be in a decade. You know who misses the old world order? Whoever was in power back then. Even after their entire population has been renewed by death and birth, broken empires are nostalgic. Those they policed, however, mostly enjoy their museums.
  - growupkids 12y ago
    I'm sorry, I don't follow. You're comparing 19th century imperial Britain with 21st century America? A country headed by an African American, progressive pro-international community President?
    - alrs 12y ago
      I see your Obama and raise you Disraeli. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disraeli http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disraeli
- beloch 12y ago
  The U.S. has dominated the UN to the point where the UN is no longer credible. The U.S. staunchly promoted the authority of the Hague over everyone else while simultaneously denying its jurisdiction over U.S. corporations and citizens. The U.S. sat idly by while it's own corporations triggered famines and genocide, all to make a buck. The U.S. actively deposed unfriendly democracies and propped up friendly despots. The U.S. even failed to meet it's obligations in trade treaties, making any country who has signed a free trade treaty with the U.S. look foolish for allowing themselves to be made less "equal" than the U.S. is. If China supplants the U.S. as the world's preeminent superpower only a small percentage of the world's populations will really notice. Ask yourselves this: If the U.S. was such a great brother to the world, why is that world so eager to deal with "the dreaded communist enemy"? China and Russia are both countries with dubious records in many respects, but the U.S. has behaved badly enough that the devil the world knows is no more appealing than the devils they do not know. Russia and China are probably torturing their prisoners, just as the U.S. is, but are they eavesdropping on every single conversation of entire nations? Are they trying to reforge the internet so that their corporations can make a few more bucks? Are they pressuring other nations to enact draconian anti-piracy laws that stifle innovation? I'm not anti-American. The U.S. has explored more of space than any other nation. The U.S. is the world's longest surviving democracy, even if that democracy has been perverted into a plutocracy. Despite how the country is run and the dubious quality of its own students, the U.S.'s post-secondary academic institutions are still second to none, largely because they attract the world's best and brightest. However, the notion that U.S. control of the world is a fundamentally good thing is ridiculous, and it's past time even americans dropped it. Quite frankly, americans have squandered the gifts of their forefathers and desperately need to earn their place in the world again. The U.S. simply has not been a beacon to the world for a good long time.
  - adventured 12y ago
    Which US corporations triggered genocide and famines, and in which countries?
    - beloch 12y ago
      For an example of famine, look up Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Ethiopia: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-goldman-gambled-on-starvation-2016088.html http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari... For genocide, try looking up the 1954 Guatemala coup, in which case the CIA got involved directly at the behest of Coca-Cola and the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita).
- curiousDog 12y ago
  I really, really hope such a day doesn't come. @GsElevator put it well the other day, "If it weren't for America we'd all be eating Bratwurst for dinner"
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Borscht maybe, bratwurst very unlikely.
    - arethuza 12y ago
      Or perhaps a more likely scenario - most of in Western Europe wouldn't be eating anything for dinner as we would never have existed. "Reasoning": - Without an Allied landing, the Soviets would probably have "liberated" all territories occupied by the Nazis - The UK would probably still be free - but an even more important base for operations against the Soviets than it was in reality - The US would have felt even more threatened by the Soviets than they did - A nuclear "Sunday Punch" first strike against the Soviets and all of their occupied territories would have become even more likely (and SAC showed no discrimation in who they would bomb until well into the 60s - the original versions of the SIOP involved bombing everyone who was 'socialist' even if they weren't allies of the Soviets and there was only one plan). - The UK would have been utterly destroyed by Soviet weapons - but that seems to have been a part of pretty much all Cold War scenarios... :-| [NB The Soviets on the English Channel is part of the scenario for Charlie Stross's novella "Missile Gap"]
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        Yes, that could have happened. Or maybe the Soviets would have found trying to keep all of Western Europe except for the UK under their boot a lot harder than it looked like from the beginning and they would have ended up in an Afghanistan like situation a lot earlier. The problem with alternate realities is that no matter how intellectually interesting thinking about them might be we'll never know because we only have this one. So, bratwurst, borscht or nothing, it's all just fantasy. One thing is for sure, and common to all those scenarios, in that world anything between the UK and mother Russia would have been in for one hell of a ride.
- Htsthbjig 12y ago
  Empires come and go. The US empire, like any other empire before them will be replaced by something else. Of course you are American, by the mere fact of being born there your have privileges over people born in the rest of the world. For example, any time you have problems you print money,money that thanks to petrodollars and US military the rest of the world have to buy by force. You export inflation to the rest of the world. So instead of you suffering for your own abuses, you make suffer the rest of the world. Every new QE(Quantitative Easing) makes people from Egypt go from 30% of the population not being able to buy the basics to 70% and so on. The rest of the world is not happy, and of course they plan to replace the petrodollar as soon as they can, to replace the "Exorbitant Privilege". Of course as an American you believe this is fantastic, but put yourself into someone else in the world skin just for 5 minutes or so. People that work much harder than Americans but live way worse, people that speak at least two languages(most Americans barely speak one), engineers, physics PhDs, whatever, and you will start seeing another picture.
  - bzbarsky 12y ago
    Note that the dollar as reserve currency means the the rest of the world is exporting unemployment to the US via currency operations. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/09/07/an_exorbitant_burden http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/09/07/an_exorbita... has a good analysis of the situation there. The US would be much better off economically if USD were not the world's reserve currency. In particular, we wouldn't need the QE business at all if we weren't having China's and Germany's unemployment forced on us. Of course it's simpler to latch on to the phrase "Exorbitant Privilege" and hate the US than it is to try to analyze all the pieces of what's going on.
- supergirl 12y ago
  You should add sarcasm tags otherwise we'll think your serious.
Oculus 12y ago
Sentinel has two separate hard drives, both encrypted. After deciphering the hard drives, the IRGC-AF And that's how we know most of what the Iranian military says regarding the Sentinel is completely fabricated. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be nearly impossible for them to decrypt a properly encrypted hard drive unless they had an powerful supercomputer?
- mschuster91 12y ago
  Fixed keys in the bootloader, RAM freezing attacks. One does not break the crypto, rather the (ALWAYS) buggy implementation.
- wyager 12y ago
  >wouldn't it be nearly impossible for them to decrypt a properly encrypted hard Yes. But they probably weren't properly encrypted. Experts don't even necessarily agree about what "properly encrypted" even means. There are so many things that can go wrong in any implementation.
- rikacomet 12y ago
  I wonder why they haven't put the encryption method out in public, they necessarily don't need to tell how they broke it. It won't be used anymore on American side, nor Iran would use it now that it is broken, so why not for educational purpose put it in public domain?
- anologwintermut 12y ago
  Depends entirely on why and how it was encrypted. If we are talking about the flight control software, the airplane must(edit,not necessarily) have the keys to boot clearly. If we are talking about recorded data, it's less clear. The imagery data may be encrypted to provide access control after the drives are removed from the plane and handed somewhere else. In which case, there's little reason the drone wouldn't have the decrypt keys. You could encrypt the data with a public key and store it so that the drone itself can't read it. About the only reason to do this would be to ensure if it was captured, the target wouldn't see what was on it. I'd suspect the way the military planed to handle that eventuality, however, would use on an exothermic random number generator (a.k.a. a self destruct mechanism/ explosive charge) rather than encryption. There's a lot of way more sensitive thing on the aircraft than just what it took pictures of that you need to destroy.
mpyne 12y ago
Similar to how the Russians bootstrapped their strategic bomber (by copying, rivet-for-rivet, some interned B-29s).
- commandar 12y ago
  >(by copying, rivet-for-rivet, some interned B-29s) Not quite. The Tu-4 was a very close copy of the B-29, but the sheet metal the Soviets had available was slightly thicker (and thus heavier)than American sheet metal, which required some engineering to work around.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    It was the difference between 'metric' and numbered gages that had this effect. They took the next standard size up but still ended up with a plane that weighed almost the same as the B-29. Makes you wonder how much weight the B-29 could have still saved.
- ilamont 12y ago
  After landing, Capt. Jarrell ordered the crew to stay aboard the B-29 while he left and tried to communicate with the Russian pilots, but none spoke English. A few hours later, the crew left the plane and joined Capt. Jarrell. Capt. Jarrell asked to be allowed to contact the American Consul in the city, but permission was denied. The Russian "Allies" interrogated the American crew for three days trying to obtain operational details about the plane and its capabilities. The crew refused to divulge secret information and after three days of questioning without contact from the American Consul, the crew refused to even speak for a week. On the 11th day after landing, the crew was finally able to speak with the Consulate. Unfortunately, the crew was not released to the consulate and remained prisoners of the Russians for seven months before being released along with about 100 other U.S. Army and Navy fliers forced to land in Russian territory during WWII. The Russians kept the "Ramp Tramp" in spite of American protests, along with three other B-29s that landed on Soviet territory (two made similar emergency landings in Vladivostok and the other crash landed in Siberia). The Tupolov aircraft manufacturer examined the B-29s in minute detail and copied them almost exactly (a fairly remarkable engineering feat). The resulting plane was designated TU-4 (NATO code name BULL). The TU-4 remained the Soviet Union's primary long-range bomber until about 1955 when it was phased out in favor of newer types. Several TU-4s were transferred to the Communist Chinese Air Force in the mid-1950s and continued to serve for many more years. Source: SOVIET UNION IMPOUNDS AND COPIES B-29 http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=1852 http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id...
maxerickson 12y ago
The money quote: At the end of the presentation, Hajizadeh said that Iran’s 1:7-scale copy of the drone has already flown, while half-scale and full-scale models would fly this year So they haven't finished matching the capabilities of it yet (matching the capabilities is sort of implied by "copied").
AmVess 12y ago
Kind of a strange exercise they are doing. Not that I can blame them, I'd be pulling it apart to see what makes it tick myself. As a practical exercise, however, this is rather futile; they aren't going to be able to replicate the stealth technology, nor the electronics, nor the engine...or anything else important, for that matter. What they do have, however, is a large scale model making hobby. Maybe they should contact Airfix or Revell for a licensing deal.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  The best way to find weaknesses in a system is to analyze, and then to see if you can replicate it. This has been done just about forever with weapons systems. Piloting a drone will teach you about the blind spots of a drone, that's golden knowledge if you need to take them down.
  - mpyne 12y ago
    If Iran is approaching this the same way they have approached "replicating" U.S. aircraft carriers then I don't think the West would have much to worry about with this. So I suppose that's the big question here, what exactly is this replicated drone—an accurate copy of at least the airframe, or a propaganda piece designed to appeal to the local populace?
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      Replicating an aircraft carrier versus replicating a drone is a challenge of a totally different level, never mind the practical applications. Iran is much more likely to encounter a US built drone on its territory than it is to encounter an aircraft carrier within the 12 mile zone. Most likely it is more than you think it is and less than they would want, and its only practical uses right now are analysis of soft spots and propaganda (and that's working well by the looks of it).
- cc439 12y ago
  They may not be able to replicate the materials used to build the aircraft. However as the article explains, they have all of China's resources at hand and China can surely build a decent turbo fan engine and the electronics are the easiest part to reverse engineer. The basic components are likely to have some production in China and all that corporate/DoD espionage gives them a leg up in mirroring whatever we design. Material science requires far more technical and scientific expertise along with significant investment in production and the coatings and alloys are key to proper stealth but just having a capable drone will be enough to give Iran powerful reconnaissance capability even if we have the advantage in detecting their design.
beloch 12y ago
There seems to be a lot of comments to the effect of, "They'll never get their version to work.". First, this probably isn't true and, second, it's not what's really important here. How many parts inside these drones are off-the-shelf parts manufactured in China? Of the parts that aren't off-the-shelf, how many can be reproduced exactly just by sending a design files and a check to the right place? How much of the software do they now have binaries for? Iran could probably produce a drone configured to run on the U.S. TDRSS system fairly quickly. All they'd have to do is reproduce the drone that crashed exactly. Unfortunately, this wouldn't do them a whole lot of good. The big problem is probably going to be to reverse engineer and adapt the drone's software/hardware so they can be used with Iranian systems, which probably don't exactly have global coverage. It's another challenge still to learn enough from this design for Iran to be able to produce different designs. Copying is a great way to learn though. The drone's stealth tech may be compromised for a variety of reasons, such as the difficulty of reproducing paint coatings, etc.. This brings us to what is really important. This same stealth tech was already compromised by the Chinese radar installations Iran used to detect and hijack the drone in the first place. Iran is already using Chinese radar systems and is probably not working alone. The opportunity to reverse engineer the latest stealth drone hardware is going to make China (or perhaps Russia) very generous to Iran. Chinese radar systems can already penetrate the latest U.S. stealth tech given the right circumstances, but now they are likely to get even more effective. Stealth requires such huge compromises from aircraft designs that I wouldn't be surprised if stealth designs are soon abandoned. This incident is not the beginning of the end for Stealth aircraft, it's closer to the end of the end!
- Zigurd 12y ago
  There is some history of countries, especially China, trying to reverse engineer airplanes. It isn't easy in practice, and not just secrets like the stealth paint. Iran's industry probably can't manufacture an RQ-170. That said, it's pretty tragic to lose a modern drone intact. There is a lot to be learned even if the learning can't be directly translated into a clone.
  - trhway 12y ago
    >Iran's industry probably can't manufacture an RQ-170 ... >There is a lot to be learned even if the learning can't be directly translated into a clone. yes, it isn't only about cloning. It reminds me about the MiG-25 flown to Japan from USSR. US didn't clone it, yet it was a huge win for US and a big loss for USSR.
knowaveragejoe 12y ago
There's a lot of claims in this article, but from what I can tell they're taking the Iranian media's reports entirely on good faith. Given Iran's propensity in the past to stretch the truth(putting it lightly) with regards to their military capabilities, I'd take this article with a huge grain of salt. This was linked in the Further Reading section, which seems to debunk many of those claims(similar arguments have been made in the comments here): https://medium.com/war-is-boring/ed9dd24dffa8 https://medium.com/war-is-boring/ed9dd24dffa8 > That a drone landed in Iranian hands is still an intelligence failure—the CIA is widely believed to operate the Sentinel. But one rule of drones is to not fly anything you’re not willing to lose. This is because drones are finicky and crash at higher rates compared to manned aircraft. > Aviation Week also reported in 2011 that the RQ-170’s sensor package was already obsolete. And it’s unclear if Iran managed to copy the drone’s sensors. Even if the Iranian drone can fly, it doesn’t mean it can spy.
- Shivetya 12y ago
  obsolete for us isn't obsolete for everyone. plus we are the great satan so anytime they triumph over us its a victory for their leadership, let alone the proof they need to rightly claim we are doing what they claim we do
Pxtl 12y ago
I'm more disturbed that they managed to remotely "trick" a US drone into taking new orders. Imagine if that was a Reaper.
geoffsanders 12y ago
I'm prior Air Force. Few pieces of military technology are so individually valuable to overall tactical and strategic capabilities that knowledge or possession of such technology would tip the scales one way or the other. An exception would be the nuclear bomb. We may have embarrassingly given the Iranians a freebie, but their ability to dissect and understand it is far different from their ability to reproduce or manufacture it for any tangible military advantage. Keep in mind, the global dominance of the U.S. Air Force isn't rooted in any one aircraft or technology, rather it comes from the massive network of supporting technologies (e.g. global radar networks, manufacturing technologies, communication and satellite tech, etc.) and personnel (e.g. intelligence agencies, engineers and scientists, pilots, etc.) that support such advanced aircraft.
- adventured 12y ago
  People seem to miss the part where Iran won't be able to build a thousand of these, supply them, fly them, train for them, maintain them, upgrade them, equip them with the appropriate technology, and build the next generation of them. It'd be like saying: oh look I stole an Intel processor, and was able to figure out how it works. Now all I need is to build a fab and a global supply chain so I can churn out thirty million of them. Or hey, I know how PageRank works, Google better watch out.
- omilu 12y ago
  yes good point, one stealth drone design does not an air force make.
hangonhn 12y ago
I'm part way through James Fallows' "China Airborne" and he talks about what it would mean for China to have an airline industry like the US. It means it would have the technical know-how in designing engines, manufacturing high-precision parts for engines, advanced metallurgy for body, wings, etc., advanced electronics, and software to tie it all together. In addition, it must have the organizational ability to direct all the flights around the country and do advanced scheduling (computationally difficult) to minimize wait time, etc. China is part way there but not completely. It will be a while. Even their fighters today use Russian engines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-10 If someone is going to copy the RQ-170 and use it operationally the same way the US does, it won't be China and much less Iran anytime soon.
growupkids 12y ago
A bit of a click bait headline. The end of the article summarizes by stating "even if the Iranian Sentinels fly on the schedule, they probably won’t be truly stealthy." The intent of the RQ-170 is the be stealthy, a copy that's not stealthy isn't a copy. It's propaganda.
qq66 12y ago
The bottom line is that you can't fly a bunch of planes around an airspace without losing a few, and the people who build and fly these planes know this. Second, the technology behind bare-bones drone surveillance isn't that special. For $250 you can get an "FPV" remote control plane (first-person view) that lets you fly around and see a real-time video-feed from the plane. Of course the RQ-170 is a million times more powerful than a Walmart toy, but the fact of the matter is that any government that wants to can put surveillance drones in the sky.
eyeareque 12y ago
I think their copying is more propaganda for them than anything else. Just look at how they're displaying these models for show in a plastic tent. Really?

133 points by vinnyglennon 12y ago

aceperry 12y ago

Very interesting. I would love it if the Iranians open-sourced the drone that they captured. :-)

mschuster91 12y ago
Put it up on Kickstarter. iDrone ;)

3327 12y ago

Strange comments here. It saddens me that the US lost a drone like this. Maybe not everyone is American here, but the technology in this vehicle will be in China's hands Russia's hands etc. The whole world will miss the old world order some day. By that I mean today's world order. the US will some day will not be able to police the world for one reason or another. Then the world will realize how valuable what the US stood for despite its shortcomings.

us0r 12y ago
" but the technology in this vehicle will be in China's hands Russia's hands etc." While I don't think it is necessarily a good thing they have this technology, when has either been threatening to the US (recently)? I get Russia blames everything on America and they aren't exactly friendly to Americans when traveling there (yet there sure are a lot us there) but as actual military threats - I've either completely missed the story or it doesn't exist. Personally, I'm more worried about the determined Pakistani dad who lost his wife and children in one of our adventures which completely missed the target.
- lancewiggs 12y ago
  >Personally, I'm more worried about the determined Pakistani dad who lost his wife and children in one of our adventures which completely missed the target. I'm concerned about undereducated radicalised individuals from any country. No country is free of these, even Scandinavian ones. The question is how many are created, what sort of access to weapons they have and what sort of support system is in place to make sure they don't implement their plans. I note that the answer to any those three questions is not "more guns".
Zigurd 12y ago
If we were not messing with Iran for what might be relatively unimportant reasons, the drone would not have been lost, and Iran might not be so tight with Russia. Drones are a tempting way to "do something" when doing nothing, or doing less, might be wiser.
- BugBrother 12y ago
  It seems that dictators generally need to make enemies out of the world's democracies. This is so the populations don't start to get ideas about why their junta's steal so much money and they don't have any freedom. "Democracy and freedom are just lies -- the westerners are degenerates which tolerate homosexuality, etc." So if Iran couldn't antagonize the West for what you consider "relatively unimportant reasons" (e.g. being one of the world's worst terror supporters), they would just try harder. And still be tight with other juntas which also fear democratic influences of their slav... population.
  - Zigurd 12y ago
    Iran is roughly four times the population and GDP of Iraq. Beyond the sanctions already in place, what are we going to do to Iran? Invade?
    - BugBrother 12y ago
      It is not relevant to my point to just say that an invasion of Iran would be expensive. (But you know that, I think.)
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        It is not just 'expensive', it is in-feasible. Not that that will stop the US from trying if they ever feel like it. Look at the mess in Iraq, then multiply by 5 or so (Iran + a new civil war in Iraq). You could very well end up with a much worse situation than there is today, loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and a very large chunk of the world with a strong motivation to hate everything and anything the West stands for. Very Bad Idea.
meric 12y ago
"Then the world will realize how valuable what the US stood for despite its shortcomings." The West, maybe. Not if you're living in a Middle Eastern country, with oppressive rulers kept in power by US funds, forcing the country to sell its oil resources cheaply. Not if you're living in Eastern Ukraine, where the US toppled an elected government to install a government that is hostile to your people. http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/03/25/355978/nuke-8-million-russians-in-ukraine/ http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/03/25/355978/nuke-8-milli... You could pretty much tell her attitude to them by the way she suggested the 8 million ethnic Russians living in Eastern Ukraine should be nuked. Not if you're living in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw#t=79 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw#t=79 All countries where the U.S. has sought to destroy domestic, independent, public institutions if and when they arise. If you're living in an African country where the U.S. has previously tried to destabilize your government, and where China instead have offered to build infrastructure for your country, you might not be so sad that the US has lost a drone, which it was probably using for spying purposes. If the world was Panem, then U.S. is the Capitol, and its closest allies are the Capitol's adjacent districts. Of course, you're probably from the U.S., if not, then probably, U.K or Australia, or N.Z. Of course you'd have something to lose if the US will some day not be able to police the world. EDIT: What's the downvote for? A lack of citations?
- xi 12y ago
  > EDIT: What's the downvote for? A lack of citations? Maybe because of them? The article about Timoshenko is written by a serious antisemitic nutjob.
  - user9756 12y ago
    Could you please quote the antisemitic parts?
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      It mentions the Jewish lobby and how congress is eager to receive their funds in two places, but I find it hard to equate that with 'anti-semitic nutjob'. The Jewish lobby is real enough that they warrant their own wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_Stat...
enraged_camel 12y ago
I used to think this way, but I no longer do. In the book 1984 -- which has far more similarities to today's reality than I am comfortable with -- the Oceanians are utterly and completely convinced that their side is the good side. Throughout the book there are various hints that this is in fact not the case. But the Oceanian government's control on information, combined with people's cognitive dissonance, prevents the truth from being realized. And the few who do realize it are imprisoned, tortured and converted (or killed). What would today's world be like if China and/or Russia were the dominant power? The answer is that no one knows. No one can know. It's like asking, "what would the world be like if Hitler had won?" That alternate universe was created so long ago that it is simply not possible to conceive of. It is silly to look at today's China and Russia and conclude that they would continue their current practices and ideologies after becoming dominant world-powers, since said practices and ideologies are very likely what is preventing that from happening. It is also possible that there will be a reversal of roles, with them becoming "good" and the USA becoming a tyrannical, fascist state. I'd say there is a scary amount of indication that the latter is very likely, actually.
- BugBrother 12y ago
  You are allowed to write that in the Western world. Some people in USA and other countries live good lives by writing conspiracy theories about their own countries. Try to do something similar in China or a similar autocratic state. It might be a problem to write that in Russia today, too. :-( And hopefully, China will change. I've seen arguments that to get beyond a certain GNP/Capita, countries have to democratize (unless they have lots of oil, of course). (What scares me, is the possibility with AI and language understanding -- to have a 1984 control state with a working free economy; future history as a foot trampling a face...)
  - tedks 12y ago
    You're allowed to write it, sure. But if you try to distribute it, it'll be deleted off of people's kindles, and they'll be added to the NSA watchlist. We have a control state with a mostly-working "free" economy.
zik 12y ago
As a non-American I see it differently - the US illegally flew an aircraft in another country's sovereign airspace, spying on them. I don't want anyone doing this over my country (Australia) - but no matter which country it's done to it's illegal and wrong.
- mpyne 12y ago
  Actually it was, in this case, probably at a standoff distance and hijacked remotely by Iran (perhaps by local GPS jamming) which, as a reminder, borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Persian Gulf. There's no good reason to send a drone into Iranian airspace in the first place when you have things like NRO's Keyhole satellites to get imagery for you; even if there was a bigger upside, Iran actually has a good set of military radars so a political situation could easily be expected (not to mention something worse, like this).
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    That sounds a lot less plausible than that they captured it over their own territory. You're essentially implying the Iranians can jam local GPS, then capture US drones at will and pilot them to their own territory during the first attempt without the US being able to do much about it. That's not a realistic picture. Much more likely that they set up a bunch of jammers/transmitters over their own territory and waited for a drone to get within the trap, then to bring it down while jamming the US control signals and GPS at the same time. After all, if they could control them that well then the best use they would have of this tech would be to embarrass the United States by sending US drones into high value targets abroad. That would do a lot more damage. If there are no good reasons to send drones into Iranian airspace because of Keyholes and so on then those reasons apply just as strongly to Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Persian Gulf. Clearly there are reasons to deploy drones and some of those reasons might apply to Iran.
    - mpyne 12y ago
      > You're essentially implying the Iranians can jam local GPS. Wait, do you think this is difficult? This is old hat, especially if Iran were able to engage the Chinese. Either way, that's only one possibility, you could also probably simply overpower the UAV's receiver with your own command stream if you could figure out the protocol (and if it was unencrypted). This isn't to say it's impossible the UAV was over Iran but that would indicate a low opinion of Iranian skill, which is not the opinion held in the U.S. military at this point.
jzwinck 12y ago
1926: "It saddens me that Britain has lost control of its colonies. Maybe not everyone is British here, but the resources in these colonies will no longer benefit the Crown. The whole world will miss the nineteenth century world order some day." The world will move on, as it always has. Today's politics and militaries will be as obsolete in a few hundred years as this drone will be in a decade. You know who misses the old world order? Whoever was in power back then. Even after their entire population has been renewed by death and birth, broken empires are nostalgic. Those they policed, however, mostly enjoy their museums.
- growupkids 12y ago
  I'm sorry, I don't follow. You're comparing 19th century imperial Britain with 21st century America? A country headed by an African American, progressive pro-international community President?
  - alrs 12y ago
    I see your Obama and raise you Disraeli. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disraeli http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disraeli
beloch 12y ago
The U.S. has dominated the UN to the point where the UN is no longer credible. The U.S. staunchly promoted the authority of the Hague over everyone else while simultaneously denying its jurisdiction over U.S. corporations and citizens. The U.S. sat idly by while it's own corporations triggered famines and genocide, all to make a buck. The U.S. actively deposed unfriendly democracies and propped up friendly despots. The U.S. even failed to meet it's obligations in trade treaties, making any country who has signed a free trade treaty with the U.S. look foolish for allowing themselves to be made less "equal" than the U.S. is. If China supplants the U.S. as the world's preeminent superpower only a small percentage of the world's populations will really notice. Ask yourselves this: If the U.S. was such a great brother to the world, why is that world so eager to deal with "the dreaded communist enemy"? China and Russia are both countries with dubious records in many respects, but the U.S. has behaved badly enough that the devil the world knows is no more appealing than the devils they do not know. Russia and China are probably torturing their prisoners, just as the U.S. is, but are they eavesdropping on every single conversation of entire nations? Are they trying to reforge the internet so that their corporations can make a few more bucks? Are they pressuring other nations to enact draconian anti-piracy laws that stifle innovation? I'm not anti-American. The U.S. has explored more of space than any other nation. The U.S. is the world's longest surviving democracy, even if that democracy has been perverted into a plutocracy. Despite how the country is run and the dubious quality of its own students, the U.S.'s post-secondary academic institutions are still second to none, largely because they attract the world's best and brightest. However, the notion that U.S. control of the world is a fundamentally good thing is ridiculous, and it's past time even americans dropped it. Quite frankly, americans have squandered the gifts of their forefathers and desperately need to earn their place in the world again. The U.S. simply has not been a beacon to the world for a good long time.
- adventured 12y ago
  Which US corporations triggered genocide and famines, and in which countries?
  - beloch 12y ago
    For an example of famine, look up Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Ethiopia: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-goldman-gambled-on-starvation-2016088.html http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari... For genocide, try looking up the 1954 Guatemala coup, in which case the CIA got involved directly at the behest of Coca-Cola and the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita).
curiousDog 12y ago
I really, really hope such a day doesn't come. @GsElevator put it well the other day, "If it weren't for America we'd all be eating Bratwurst for dinner"
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Borscht maybe, bratwurst very unlikely.
  - arethuza 12y ago
    Or perhaps a more likely scenario - most of in Western Europe wouldn't be eating anything for dinner as we would never have existed. "Reasoning": - Without an Allied landing, the Soviets would probably have "liberated" all territories occupied by the Nazis - The UK would probably still be free - but an even more important base for operations against the Soviets than it was in reality - The US would have felt even more threatened by the Soviets than they did - A nuclear "Sunday Punch" first strike against the Soviets and all of their occupied territories would have become even more likely (and SAC showed no discrimation in who they would bomb until well into the 60s - the original versions of the SIOP involved bombing everyone who was 'socialist' even if they weren't allies of the Soviets and there was only one plan). - The UK would have been utterly destroyed by Soviet weapons - but that seems to have been a part of pretty much all Cold War scenarios... :-| [NB The Soviets on the English Channel is part of the scenario for Charlie Stross's novella "Missile Gap"]
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      Yes, that could have happened. Or maybe the Soviets would have found trying to keep all of Western Europe except for the UK under their boot a lot harder than it looked like from the beginning and they would have ended up in an Afghanistan like situation a lot earlier. The problem with alternate realities is that no matter how intellectually interesting thinking about them might be we'll never know because we only have this one. So, bratwurst, borscht or nothing, it's all just fantasy. One thing is for sure, and common to all those scenarios, in that world anything between the UK and mother Russia would have been in for one hell of a ride.
Htsthbjig 12y ago
Empires come and go. The US empire, like any other empire before them will be replaced by something else. Of course you are American, by the mere fact of being born there your have privileges over people born in the rest of the world. For example, any time you have problems you print money,money that thanks to petrodollars and US military the rest of the world have to buy by force. You export inflation to the rest of the world. So instead of you suffering for your own abuses, you make suffer the rest of the world. Every new QE(Quantitative Easing) makes people from Egypt go from 30% of the population not being able to buy the basics to 70% and so on. The rest of the world is not happy, and of course they plan to replace the petrodollar as soon as they can, to replace the "Exorbitant Privilege". Of course as an American you believe this is fantastic, but put yourself into someone else in the world skin just for 5 minutes or so. People that work much harder than Americans but live way worse, people that speak at least two languages(most Americans barely speak one), engineers, physics PhDs, whatever, and you will start seeing another picture.
- bzbarsky 12y ago
  Note that the dollar as reserve currency means the the rest of the world is exporting unemployment to the US via currency operations. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/09/07/an_exorbitant_burden http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/09/07/an_exorbita... has a good analysis of the situation there. The US would be much better off economically if USD were not the world's reserve currency. In particular, we wouldn't need the QE business at all if we weren't having China's and Germany's unemployment forced on us. Of course it's simpler to latch on to the phrase "Exorbitant Privilege" and hate the US than it is to try to analyze all the pieces of what's going on.
supergirl 12y ago
You should add sarcasm tags otherwise we'll think your serious.

Oculus 12y ago

Sentinel has two separate hard drives, both encrypted. After deciphering the hard drives, the IRGC-AF And that's how we know most of what the Iranian military says regarding the Sentinel is completely fabricated. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be nearly impossible for them to decrypt a properly encrypted hard drive unless they had an powerful supercomputer?

mschuster91 12y ago
Fixed keys in the bootloader, RAM freezing attacks. One does not break the crypto, rather the (ALWAYS) buggy implementation.
wyager 12y ago
>wouldn't it be nearly impossible for them to decrypt a properly encrypted hard Yes. But they probably weren't properly encrypted. Experts don't even necessarily agree about what "properly encrypted" even means. There are so many things that can go wrong in any implementation.
rikacomet 12y ago
I wonder why they haven't put the encryption method out in public, they necessarily don't need to tell how they broke it. It won't be used anymore on American side, nor Iran would use it now that it is broken, so why not for educational purpose put it in public domain?
anologwintermut 12y ago
Depends entirely on why and how it was encrypted. If we are talking about the flight control software, the airplane must(edit,not necessarily) have the keys to boot clearly. If we are talking about recorded data, it's less clear. The imagery data may be encrypted to provide access control after the drives are removed from the plane and handed somewhere else. In which case, there's little reason the drone wouldn't have the decrypt keys. You could encrypt the data with a public key and store it so that the drone itself can't read it. About the only reason to do this would be to ensure if it was captured, the target wouldn't see what was on it. I'd suspect the way the military planed to handle that eventuality, however, would use on an exothermic random number generator (a.k.a. a self destruct mechanism/ explosive charge) rather than encryption. There's a lot of way more sensitive thing on the aircraft than just what it took pictures of that you need to destroy.

mpyne 12y ago

Similar to how the Russians bootstrapped their strategic bomber (by copying, rivet-for-rivet, some interned B-29s).

commandar 12y ago
>(by copying, rivet-for-rivet, some interned B-29s) Not quite. The Tu-4 was a very close copy of the B-29, but the sheet metal the Soviets had available was slightly thicker (and thus heavier)than American sheet metal, which required some engineering to work around.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  It was the difference between 'metric' and numbered gages that had this effect. They took the next standard size up but still ended up with a plane that weighed almost the same as the B-29. Makes you wonder how much weight the B-29 could have still saved.
ilamont 12y ago
After landing, Capt. Jarrell ordered the crew to stay aboard the B-29 while he left and tried to communicate with the Russian pilots, but none spoke English. A few hours later, the crew left the plane and joined Capt. Jarrell. Capt. Jarrell asked to be allowed to contact the American Consul in the city, but permission was denied. The Russian "Allies" interrogated the American crew for three days trying to obtain operational details about the plane and its capabilities. The crew refused to divulge secret information and after three days of questioning without contact from the American Consul, the crew refused to even speak for a week. On the 11th day after landing, the crew was finally able to speak with the Consulate. Unfortunately, the crew was not released to the consulate and remained prisoners of the Russians for seven months before being released along with about 100 other U.S. Army and Navy fliers forced to land in Russian territory during WWII. The Russians kept the "Ramp Tramp" in spite of American protests, along with three other B-29s that landed on Soviet territory (two made similar emergency landings in Vladivostok and the other crash landed in Siberia). The Tupolov aircraft manufacturer examined the B-29s in minute detail and copied them almost exactly (a fairly remarkable engineering feat). The resulting plane was designated TU-4 (NATO code name BULL). The TU-4 remained the Soviet Union's primary long-range bomber until about 1955 when it was phased out in favor of newer types. Several TU-4s were transferred to the Communist Chinese Air Force in the mid-1950s and continued to serve for many more years. Source: SOVIET UNION IMPOUNDS AND COPIES B-29 http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=1852 http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id...

maxerickson 12y ago

The money quote: At the end of the presentation, Hajizadeh said that Iran’s 1:7-scale copy of the drone has already flown, while half-scale and full-scale models would fly this year So they haven't finished matching the capabilities of it yet (matching the capabilities is sort of implied by "copied").

AmVess 12y ago

Kind of a strange exercise they are doing. Not that I can blame them, I'd be pulling it apart to see what makes it tick myself. As a practical exercise, however, this is rather futile; they aren't going to be able to replicate the stealth technology, nor the electronics, nor the engine...or anything else important, for that matter. What they do have, however, is a large scale model making hobby. Maybe they should contact Airfix or Revell for a licensing deal.

jacquesm 12y ago
The best way to find weaknesses in a system is to analyze, and then to see if you can replicate it. This has been done just about forever with weapons systems. Piloting a drone will teach you about the blind spots of a drone, that's golden knowledge if you need to take them down.
- mpyne 12y ago
  If Iran is approaching this the same way they have approached "replicating" U.S. aircraft carriers then I don't think the West would have much to worry about with this. So I suppose that's the big question here, what exactly is this replicated drone—an accurate copy of at least the airframe, or a propaganda piece designed to appeal to the local populace?
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Replicating an aircraft carrier versus replicating a drone is a challenge of a totally different level, never mind the practical applications. Iran is much more likely to encounter a US built drone on its territory than it is to encounter an aircraft carrier within the 12 mile zone. Most likely it is more than you think it is and less than they would want, and its only practical uses right now are analysis of soft spots and propaganda (and that's working well by the looks of it).
cc439 12y ago
They may not be able to replicate the materials used to build the aircraft. However as the article explains, they have all of China's resources at hand and China can surely build a decent turbo fan engine and the electronics are the easiest part to reverse engineer. The basic components are likely to have some production in China and all that corporate/DoD espionage gives them a leg up in mirroring whatever we design. Material science requires far more technical and scientific expertise along with significant investment in production and the coatings and alloys are key to proper stealth but just having a capable drone will be enough to give Iran powerful reconnaissance capability even if we have the advantage in detecting their design.

beloch 12y ago

There seems to be a lot of comments to the effect of, "They'll never get their version to work.". First, this probably isn't true and, second, it's not what's really important here. How many parts inside these drones are off-the-shelf parts manufactured in China? Of the parts that aren't off-the-shelf, how many can be reproduced exactly just by sending a design files and a check to the right place? How much of the software do they now have binaries for? Iran could probably produce a drone configured to run on the U.S. TDRSS system fairly quickly. All they'd have to do is reproduce the drone that crashed exactly. Unfortunately, this wouldn't do them a whole lot of good. The big problem is probably going to be to reverse engineer and adapt the drone's software/hardware so they can be used with Iranian systems, which probably don't exactly have global coverage. It's another challenge still to learn enough from this design for Iran to be able to produce different designs. Copying is a great way to learn though. The drone's stealth tech may be compromised for a variety of reasons, such as the difficulty of reproducing paint coatings, etc.. This brings us to what is really important. This same stealth tech was already compromised by the Chinese radar installations Iran used to detect and hijack the drone in the first place. Iran is already using Chinese radar systems and is probably not working alone. The opportunity to reverse engineer the latest stealth drone hardware is going to make China (or perhaps Russia) very generous to Iran. Chinese radar systems can already penetrate the latest U.S. stealth tech given the right circumstances, but now they are likely to get even more effective. Stealth requires such huge compromises from aircraft designs that I wouldn't be surprised if stealth designs are soon abandoned. This incident is not the beginning of the end for Stealth aircraft, it's closer to the end of the end!

Zigurd 12y ago
There is some history of countries, especially China, trying to reverse engineer airplanes. It isn't easy in practice, and not just secrets like the stealth paint. Iran's industry probably can't manufacture an RQ-170. That said, it's pretty tragic to lose a modern drone intact. There is a lot to be learned even if the learning can't be directly translated into a clone.
- trhway 12y ago
  >Iran's industry probably can't manufacture an RQ-170 ... >There is a lot to be learned even if the learning can't be directly translated into a clone. yes, it isn't only about cloning. It reminds me about the MiG-25 flown to Japan from USSR. US didn't clone it, yet it was a huge win for US and a big loss for USSR.

knowaveragejoe 12y ago

There's a lot of claims in this article, but from what I can tell they're taking the Iranian media's reports entirely on good faith. Given Iran's propensity in the past to stretch the truth(putting it lightly) with regards to their military capabilities, I'd take this article with a huge grain of salt. This was linked in the Further Reading section, which seems to debunk many of those claims(similar arguments have been made in the comments here): https://medium.com/war-is-boring/ed9dd24dffa8 https://medium.com/war-is-boring/ed9dd24dffa8 > That a drone landed in Iranian hands is still an intelligence failure—the CIA is widely believed to operate the Sentinel. But one rule of drones is to not fly anything you’re not willing to lose. This is because drones are finicky and crash at higher rates compared to manned aircraft. > Aviation Week also reported in 2011 that the RQ-170’s sensor package was already obsolete. And it’s unclear if Iran managed to copy the drone’s sensors. Even if the Iranian drone can fly, it doesn’t mean it can spy.

Shivetya 12y ago
obsolete for us isn't obsolete for everyone. plus we are the great satan so anytime they triumph over us its a victory for their leadership, let alone the proof they need to rightly claim we are doing what they claim we do

Pxtl 12y ago

I'm more disturbed that they managed to remotely "trick" a US drone into taking new orders. Imagine if that was a Reaper.

geoffsanders 12y ago

I'm prior Air Force. Few pieces of military technology are so individually valuable to overall tactical and strategic capabilities that knowledge or possession of such technology would tip the scales one way or the other. An exception would be the nuclear bomb. We may have embarrassingly given the Iranians a freebie, but their ability to dissect and understand it is far different from their ability to reproduce or manufacture it for any tangible military advantage. Keep in mind, the global dominance of the U.S. Air Force isn't rooted in any one aircraft or technology, rather it comes from the massive network of supporting technologies (e.g. global radar networks, manufacturing technologies, communication and satellite tech, etc.) and personnel (e.g. intelligence agencies, engineers and scientists, pilots, etc.) that support such advanced aircraft.

adventured 12y ago
People seem to miss the part where Iran won't be able to build a thousand of these, supply them, fly them, train for them, maintain them, upgrade them, equip them with the appropriate technology, and build the next generation of them. It'd be like saying: oh look I stole an Intel processor, and was able to figure out how it works. Now all I need is to build a fab and a global supply chain so I can churn out thirty million of them. Or hey, I know how PageRank works, Google better watch out.
omilu 12y ago
yes good point, one stealth drone design does not an air force make.

hangonhn 12y ago

I'm part way through James Fallows' "China Airborne" and he talks about what it would mean for China to have an airline industry like the US. It means it would have the technical know-how in designing engines, manufacturing high-precision parts for engines, advanced metallurgy for body, wings, etc., advanced electronics, and software to tie it all together. In addition, it must have the organizational ability to direct all the flights around the country and do advanced scheduling (computationally difficult) to minimize wait time, etc. China is part way there but not completely. It will be a while. Even their fighters today use Russian engines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-10 If someone is going to copy the RQ-170 and use it operationally the same way the US does, it won't be China and much less Iran anytime soon.

growupkids 12y ago

A bit of a click bait headline. The end of the article summarizes by stating "even if the Iranian Sentinels fly on the schedule, they probably won’t be truly stealthy." The intent of the RQ-170 is the be stealthy, a copy that's not stealthy isn't a copy. It's propaganda.

qq66 12y ago

The bottom line is that you can't fly a bunch of planes around an airspace without losing a few, and the people who build and fly these planes know this. Second, the technology behind bare-bones drone surveillance isn't that special. For $250 you can get an "FPV" remote control plane (first-person view) that lets you fly around and see a real-time video-feed from the plane. Of course the RQ-170 is a million times more powerful than a Walmart toy, but the fact of the matter is that any government that wants to can put surveillance drones in the sky.

eyeareque 12y ago

I think their copying is more propaganda for them than anything else. Just look at how they're displaying these models for show in a plastic tent. Really?