The Iranians have put on display what appears to be the RQ170 that went down. The color is odd, though. Could be a mockup. If it is the real thing, it’s in really good shape… indicating less of a shootdown and a crash than, perhaps, a hacking and rough landing.
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Given that the Obama administration has shown itself willing to send weapons to the enemies of the US so that they can be used against the interests of the US in order to push the administrations social-change-ideology… one can be forgiven for wondering if perhaps this high-tech stealth aircraft was essentially “given” to the Iranians, who can be relied upon to share the technology with the Chinese and perhaps Russians. This would reduce Americas military technology lead… just the thing if your goals include knocking the US down a peg or three.
38 Responses to “RQ170 on display”
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I wonder if this drone wasn’t hacked. The RQ170 is supposed to GPS navigate back to its home airfield if control/communications is lost. This obviously did not occur, but implies that the Iranians may well have hacked the communications channel and taken control. If so, a thorough investigation needs to be undertaken to determine if Lockheed Martin exercised due diligence in ensuring that the communications control interface was sufficiently encrypted so as to prevent such hacking from occurring. We should recall that the early versions of the Predator did *not* encrypt the video feed so that it was possible (and in fact occurred) for insurgents to view the video and use it to evade detection.
Also, let’s not forget that there was a story a few months back that a stateside drone control/training center was penetrated by a computer virus (in fact, the very computers which are used to control drones were compromised). This story made the major media and the U.S. military did confirm that it had occurred. Perhaps this event is related to the loss of this drone.
Considering it looks like 3rd prize in the Tehran County Fair Butter Sculpture contest, I’m a little surprised that there hasn’t been any sort of official contention that it is a mockup. There have been reasonable number of officialish people on the news saying “we have no reason to believe it isn’t our drone”.
Rather hard to take people seriously when they suggest that rather than being a CIA foulup, it was in fact the CIA following Obama’s orders to soft-land a drone for Iran to parade. Just like when Obama told them to leave a helicopter tail behind as a parting gift to the Pakistanis, I guess.
Agreed Bert. I might not like some or all of the president’s politics, but suggesting that he might have ordered it be given to them? Come on… I’m sure he’s tasked LockMart and other defense contractors to allow their systems to be hacked to give foreign nations information as well. [rolls eyes] Are you just trolling Scott? I like the site, but the political commentary can be a bit…. strong at times. Free country though [shrug]
The likelihood is that this was the result of either a screwup, or some talent on the part of the Iranians. But as I said, the behavior of this administration makes me wonder.
To me, the idea that Obama would sell out the US is a lot more realistic than the idea that the Tea Party is racist. “Gunwalker” alone is enough to mark this administration as one of the worst in American history.
It would make sense that Obama and the CIA arranged for the drone to fall into Iranian hands. What I want to know is: in exchange for what?
Ordinarily, I would say that the military is too smart to allow something like this happen, but even their drone control system got compromised. Something like this was bound to happen.
Remember, we had a president who arranged for the Chinese to gain access to our nuclear secrets, so the idea of Obama allowing this to happen isn’t too far fetched.
> What I want to know is: in exchange for what?
Despite Obama’s bleatings today that he’s not an appeaser, his foreign policy has been pretty much “appeasement.” His history is that of someone who does not like the US as it has been… i.e advanced, rich, powerful, proud. Letting our adversaries have our technologies would make the world “more equal,” which would fit in with his domestic goals of wealth redistribution.
In exchange for …? That’s a good question. Ask yourself who in the USA would vote for Obama and his policies if the United States were vulnerable to attack by weapons with this level of sophistication. One way to force redistribution of wealth is to convince the citizenry that their survival depends on that redistribution..
It’s been suggested by Ian33 over at the SPF that the CIA drone which was compromised was an older version of the RQ170 than that photographed in USAF service. Quite possible, IMHO.
> Rather hard to take people seriously when they suggest that rather than being a CIA foulup, it was in fact the CIA following Obama’s orders to soft-land a drone for Iran to parade.
Shrug. One would have thought that the idea that the government would provide weapons to out-and-out criminals for the purpose using that as a Reichstag Fire moment to aid in restricting gun rights would be hard to take serious… until the emails came out stating pretty much that.
Obama is a commie just like Eisenhower. That pinko Ike gave Khrushchev the damn U-2, can’t you believe that? That no good Gary Powers is nothing but a commie delivery boy.
2/10.
???? What is 2/10. Am I that old that I don’t even know the internet lingos no more….
You only rated a two out of ten in your trolling attempt.
Haha…not bad for a few seconds of typing.
Didn’t know that I was doing that. just try to point out how ridicules that chain of logic may be. these aircraft are design to be used, and every time it is used, it’s hope that the intelligence gain is worth the risk.
The U-2 effort gave a clear picture of the so called “missile gap”, the RQ-170 may just try to do the same in IRAN or elsewhere. U R a smart guy, and i am pretty sure you knew that already. Don’t mind a little rants and screams here and now on this blog at all. Cats are fine by me as well. After all, it is your blog. 🙂
If I was an Iranian general and an unmanned drone soft landed on one of my military airstrips, and contained video tape of everywhere it had been fllying all around my country undetected, I would first put on clean pants and then tell my ayatollahs that Iran was vulnerable to total destruction any time the US got pissed, and no, Iran could not stop them one little bit.
If I was a CIA analyst and wanted to scare the bejesus out of Iran, I might sacrifice an obsolete drone, stripped of everything but video and recording devices, and send it on such a mission.
One problem with that scenario: the current occupier of the White House has no credibility that he would get tough on our enemies.
I don’t know about it being a fake. It does look weird. But, it looks like the white balance is a little off in that photo so that might account for it (I suppose I could bring it into photoshop and rebalance it, but I’m lazy). The military does admit that they lost a drone. It seems unlikely that the Iranians would have a mockup laying around on the off chance that the U.S. might loose a drone.
I afraid that it’s all too real and we’ve lost a very sensitive piece of hardware. If so, this a huge foul up, and there needs to be a complete investigation into how this happened.
I take it back. The white balance is fine in that video. I don’t know how to account for the odd color unless it was just painted a desert tan to make it blend in from above.
> I don’t know how to account for the odd color unless it was just painted a desert tan to make it blend in from above.
Which seems kind of odd. It’s designed to cruise at high altitude, something like 50K feet. The Taliban is unlikely to have assets above that altitude that would look down on it.
Maybe painted “sand” in case it crashed in a desert somewhere, to keep it kinda hidden until a bomber could get to it to blow it to flinders.
Yes, you’re right about the altitude. Certainly the Taliban aren’t going to be looking at it from above at 50kft. The idea about painting it tan in case it lands/crashes in the desert seem possible though.
If it is looking for signs of nuclear activity, I would not be surprised to see the drone come down to low altitude to sniff the air currents for isotopes.
This picture here seems to shows the RQ-170 in tan color over Kandahar.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/iran-did-capture-a-secret-u-s-drone/
> I would not be surprised to see the drone come down to low altitude
Politically dangerous. A high altitude drone would be “safer” because it would be less likely to be noticed, never mind intercepted. A low altitude drone would be more readily detected by a Mark 1 Eyeball.
On the other hand, if Lockheed could make drones like this in large numbers for low cost and make them reasonably stealthy and controllable, having a vast flock of them roving around Iran at will might make for some interesting strategy. Never mind the intelligence they’d be able to capture… they’d be noticed by the Iranian military, and it’d probably drive ’em buggo. It would be a way for the US to send a message without saying a word.
Another thing strikes me about about this video. Notice how the underside of the craft is covered by some sort of bad high school float skirt that the Iranians have made and placed round it. Why would they do that? Possibly because if they did hack the drone and put it down safely on a runway somewhere it would be sitting up on it’s landing gear with no damage to the underside. This would indeed be a great clue that they had taken control of the craft and landed it versus it flying out of control and “landing” i.e. crashing or at least belly landing once it ran out of fuel. Why else to obscure the underside? After all, according to the Iranian’s on story they either shot it down or it crashed.
BTW, just saw on the news that the U.S. military is confirming that the craft on the Iranian video is the RQ170 drone that they lost.
There is some more video floating around, along with the standard ration of internet experts saying “I can tell by the pixels”. But it does seem pretty small to be an RQ-170. Wiki thinks it should be 85′ long, and it isn’t that. Further, some decently sharp pictures seem to have the access panel on top drawn on with a sharpie. Poorly, with overdrawn lines and apparently markered in fasteners.
So, quickie mockup with a smoking pile of wreckage and some bad google images for reference?
> So, quickie mockup with a smoking pile of wreckage and some bad google images for reference?
On the one hand, you’d expect Lockheed/CIA/DoD would have shouted “shenanigans” if it was fake. On the other hand, there aren’t too many realistic situations where the Iranians get the thing as intact as it appears.
As for “quicky,” they could have easily manufactured a mockup like this in a few days. But they also could’ve made it months ago for some obscure purpose, and just decided to whip it out when the US lost one.
But our own military is saying that the drone in the video is in fact the drone they lost. I don’t see this being a mock up as a likelihood. If anything I would expect our military to deny it was real when it was, not the opposite.
Face it, we’ve lost a highly sensitive piece of hardware that will soon be up for grabs to the highest bidder. The task now is to figure out how the hell it happened and who should have stopped it. I’m going to guess that the control interface on the RQ-170 was not as secure as it should have been. There is precedence for this as earlier generation drones broadcast video unencrypted. This allowed insurgents to use fairly low tech equipment to intercept the video feeds and know when they were being survielled. Frankly, I can’t see ever transmitting or receiving any data from these crafts that isn’t highly encrypted with beaucoups of security protocols in place.
> soon be up for grabs to the highest bidder
Let’s hope that’s the way it’ll be… and that the CIA shows up with a suitcase full of cash and some dirty tricks.
Another conspiracy theory to chew on: this drone was “allowed” to be either crashed in Iran or pirated… not because the Administration is the freakin’ Manchurian candidate, but because the CIA and NRO are devious bastards, and this airframe is loaded to the gills with the *worst* technology possible. Computers filled with nasty but invisible trojans, fuel and hydrocarbon polymers that emit chemicals that are hard to detect but which will give people who examine the thing too closely some really nasty cancers, radar absorbent materials that light up IR sensors like the Statue of Liberty and IR treatments than emit radio waves louder than Howard Stern.
You would have a real productive career at the CIA or NRO or at the very least make one hell of a Science Fiction writer.
i have some Alternative explanation how the Iranians got the RQ-170
the Drone run simply out of fuel
is not the first time if civilian or military aircraft has this problem, so it happen to Drone also
so the RQ170 glide down and ripped gear off and it belly open during rough landing
that would explain why the Drone is on this odd display with American “death head” Flag
before the Panic comes: “OMG the Iranians gonna replace there V1 clone drones with RQ170 clones”
intrigue questions:
why din’t work the Self-destruct system of this RQ170 ?
or wanted the Obama Administration that this “particular RQ170” falls in hand of Iranians ?
The easiest way to hack a system is through social engineering. I’d expect that the specialists who control the drones would tend to have a degree of fluency in Farsi. Hmmm … Is it beyond the realm of plausibility that a more subtle version of Nidal Malik Hasan might lurk among the specialists who fly these things?
“or wanted the Obama Administration that this “particular RQ170″ falls in hand of Iranians ?”
“Quickly, Arash, plug this Cat 5 in and let us see what the Great Satan’s control software looks like!”
“I did, but now my computer seems to have locked up, Farshad…”
Lets not forget this Wired story from this last September:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/
The military actually confirmed this report of computer viruses on the machines used to control Predator and Reaper drones. They said at the time that the virus was a “generic” virus that was not targeted at their systems. Perhaps that was not correct and perhaps it went beyond Predator and Reaper systems.
Most drones will RTB is they lose link for a certain period of time, and in the event that they run out of gas or can’t make it back to base will self destruct. WHy this one did not is the question, the only, non-conspiratorial, way that it makes sense is if the computer got hosed and while in its death spiral pulled up sharply to make a relatively unscathed crash landing, or it lost power completely and somehow glided to a landing. Both of which are HIGHLY unlikely.
An even more simple explanation might be had. It wasn’t that long ago that we were reading posts about the use of jetliners as missile platforms right?–specifically about the sudden change in center of gravity once a munition is released whose weight is a significant fraction of that of the parent aircraft. Now an airliner is so large that it would be better able to soak up such changes–unlike something closer to the size of a Gee Bee, for example.
Well, as I recall, there were reports of Iranian facilities being bombed somehow. It might be that the drone was sent to release a cruise missile, and the sudden CG change caused it to lose control. The computer partially recovered, but not before it ran out of sky and did a belly flop and skids along mostly intact. The munition does its work, and the drone is only recovered after some time is passed. They put a skirt around the bottom of it (or a dummy of it so the real thing can’t be targeted)–so as to hide the damage.
They then claim it was shot down.
PS It’s butter paint scheme might be just desert camo after all
Apparently they did the simple thing – spoofed GPS signal to make the drone land where they wanted to.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1215/Exclusive-Iran-hijacked-US-drone-says-Iranian-engineer
You’d be surprised at what you can find in 2600 magazine if not elsewhere. Chess, after all, was a Persian game before the Russians made it their trademark. Perhaps all the cybernonsense will convince folks to build simpler systems more like what we had in the 1950s–with less of this “run-the-world-by desktop” garbage.