Exclusive: Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer

reply to post by SLAYER69


Accidents happen at any missile facility, remember how many rockets the USA blew up when first starting their space program; yea they certainly ad a rough landing but it is still mostly intact which is still impressive

Interesting to say the least. I get that you could "jam" the radio controls to make it lose contact, I don't see how you could continually feed wrong GPS coordinates to it though to make it "think" if was landing at it's home base. Wouldn't the drone be continually pinging Military GPS coordinates all the time from satellites?

I don't think the US intentionally lost a drone, nor do I think the Iranians did all the hacking they claim. I think the truth is somewhere between those two.

Either way, the US needs to ramp up it's drone security capabilities. Even if they weren't hacked, I can see nations working very hard at trying to hack/jam these things all the time. You will need to always bee a step ahead of the hackers, a very hard thing to do.

reply to post by pavil


GPS signals ARE radio waves, which is why radio waves in high enough focus at the right frequency will 'jam' up the recivers on the plane, not only can it not "see" where its going it cant take commands from the comm link either.

You would need to use line of sight infrared communications to avoid being jammed and thats not fool proof either.

EDIT: i should add that the problem with jamming such a drone, you would need to be spot on tracking, and guess what, its got stealth tech that makes it very hard to track in the first place. So jamming is possible but not easy what so ever to such a small stealthed unit.

Russian ECM modules on trucks are one thing, but the precision radar tracking is somthing else, its a tiny drone with a tiny stealthly signature, not an airliner or huge ass bomber.

Originally posted by THE_PROFESSIONAL
www.msnbc.msn.com...

"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian engineer told the Monitor, giving the most detailed description yet published of Iran's "electronic ambush" of the highly classified US drone. "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain."

The “spoofing” technique that the Iranians used – which took into account precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and longitudinal data – made the drone “land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center, says the engineer.

Yeah and then trick the autopilot how I wrote it.

Originally posted by Pokoia
reply to post by verschickter

 

I like your post. You still have to consider the fact that you need a satellite in orbit to pull this off.
So it is logical to assume the Russians or Chinese were involved.

Exactly. Not just one, I would say at least three. I doubt that the GPS antenna of the drone recognizes position data from ground because there would be different package runtimes if the signal is reflected from earth. So I think the only possibility is at least 3 satellites in orbit. But then you have to ask yourself the question: How to override it? The signals must be way stronger then the original ones and you have to assume that the drone finds no original signal from the GPS Sats and there are a bunch of them in orbit. So this all sounds a little fishy to me. Dont know what to think of that.

reply to post by Biigs


Your Edit makes the jammed theory even more suspect. Good points about the stealth, this is something I didnt thought of

reply to post by Biigs

I understand that, but don't GPS receivers triangulate their location based on multiple GPS satellite feeds? It would have to be pretty sophisticated operation to fool a military GPS receiver and pull it off. Not saying it's not possible, just seems like it would be very hard to do.

reply to post by pavil


multiple recivers is largly irrelivent, you fire enough EM radiation focused enough and it will hit all recivers inside outside or any other side, minus any stealth anti-jamming paints metals etc - can only specualte from what i know of science vs. top secret US technologys.

If i could be more speicifc or knew about such tech, id be paid a heck of a lot more than i do now

Originally posted by verschickter
reply to post by Biigs

 

Your Edit makes the jammed theory even more suspect. Good points about the stealth, this is something I didnt thought of

But this picture may make it less suspect:

Meet The Russian Avtobaza — Iran's Possible Drone Killer

Stephen Trimble from Flight Global reports Russia delivered the Avtobaza ground-based electronic intelligence and jamming system to Iran six-weeks ago.

While most weapons deliveries to Iran are blocked, a jamming system like the Avtobaza is allowed because it's a passively defensive machine "designed to jam side-looking and fire control radars on aircraft and manipulate the guidance and control systems of incoming enemy missiles."

Possibly what NATO regulators didn't plan on was the jammer's potential as a communications link allowing UAVs to be controlled remotely.

Russia delivers specialized jamming equipment to Iran 6 weeks earlier and some people want to claim jamming seems unlikely?

Please, give me a break. Jamming seems very likely, none of the reasons stated in this thread for jamming to be unlikely convince me it's unlikely, and I have some expertise in this area.

Now can I be sure jamming is the cause? Of course not. It could have just bee equipment failure for all I know. All I can say is that jamming is not as unlikely as some people are claiming it is. Just look at the picture of what Russia delivered to Iran, 6 weeks earlier, and tell me again how unlikely it is that Iran used their new toy.

Jamming just isn't that hard with a specialized piece of equipment like the Avtobaza. Taking control should be very hard to do, if the electronics were well designed, which, given the size of the black budget in the US, let's hope they were for that kind of money.

Originally posted by SLAYER69
Yet, We are to believe that the US needs to fly a drone into Iran to observe their covert activities at other locations?

Who said this drone was for visual surveillance?

According to the RQ-170 wiki, visual surveillance isn't the purpose unless you count infrared, but that's not a visible wavelength:

On the basis of the few publicly-available photographs of the RQ-170, aviation expert Bill Sweetman has assessed that the UAV is equipped with an electro-optical/infrared sensor and possibly an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar mounted in its belly fairing. He has also speculated that the two undercarriage fairings over the UAV's wings may house datalinks and that the belly fairing could be designed for modular payloads, allowing the UAV to be used for strike missions and/or electronic warfare.[11] The New York Times has reported that the RQ-170 is "almost certainly" equipped with communications intercept equipment as well as highly sensitive sensors capable of detecting very small amounts of radioactive isotopes and chemicals which may indicate the existence of nuclear weapons facilities.

You need to be closer to the source to intercept some communications, due to the inverse-square law which causes the intensity of radio signals to drop off rapidly with distance. It would be hard for satellites to capture the weaker signals. Cell phones transmit with a power of less than one watt, for example.

What is so easily thought of as impossible, one must then know that Iranian spies are infiltrated in all branches of the USA military. I am only speaking reality due to possibility.

What you teach your soldiers, Iran knows.

What you do not teach your soldiers, Iran does not know.

Originally posted by SLAYER69

Originally posted by THE_PROFESSIONAL

The “spoofing” technique that the Iranians used – which took into account precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and longitudinal data – made the drone “land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center, says the engineer.

Are these the same type of Iranian Engineers that blew themselves up recently at the missile facility? Also, if they were able to land it so precisely why are they hiding the under carriage damage? And the drone in question shows obvious signs of wing damage? [which they poorly taped up for the photo op]

I think the Iranians are grandstanding/showboating and trying to milk this for all it's worth and many here at ATS [Supposedly outside the box thinkers] are falling hook, line and sinker for it.

Go back and look at the pics from the plant.

Have you ever seen craters at the scene of an industrial explosion?

And that wing being removed can easily be explained by the fact that those pics were taken in a bunker.

No way in hell they'd risk putting it anywhere else. They had to cut it up to get it down there.

The Wars of the Future, Cyber Wars !
If a enemy turns are own kill drones and missiles
against america.

why do you blame?
their will not be much left.
So should we even be using Drones?

Originally posted by buddha
The Wars of the Future, Cyber Wars !
If a enemy turns are own kill drones and missiles
against america.

why do you blame?
their will not be much left.
So should we even be using Drones?

If you give a loaded gun to a chimp, and it shoots someone, do you blame the chimp?

The fact that our leaders knew these exploitable flaws were there years ago, but never fixed, and continued to fly them over hostile countries is on par with most decisions they have been making lately.

this is hilarious !!! I for one think this is a key piece in the imminent WW3. This drone may have been hijacked/captured, however I do think it quite likely it was stripped down version. I personally don't see what the Iranians stand to gain from capturing the drone. Aside from the tech inside I don't see why any nation couldn't produce their own equal drones. I'm also stunned to learn that something disposable like a drone, doesn't self destruct if captured or tampered with. It is after all disposable. It only makes sense that something as vulnerable as a UAV drone with technology that can be hijacked and reverse engineered should have measures to prevent the capture of technology.

I personally love the idea of a trojan horse. Hell, I personally will be keeping an eye on the news for an outbreak of a new super-virus or another explosion in an iranian facility. Again, these drones are disposable I still don't understand why they don't have self destruct whether by explosives or electrical systems. If by explosives, it could even provide that one last kill option.

I don't believe one word of this propaganda.

If you "jam" a drone, it thinks it lost signal and returns to base. It doesn't even rely on GPS navigation because GPS navigation is sometimes not accurate when moving fast speeds. It relies on internal navigation like magnetic compass, altimeter, and a clock, to compute it's position. It also remembers where it came from by memorizing a path.

This is pure propaganda.

I don't care how sophisticated the software is, you see a drone, listen for the encrypted data link. Debug it, amplify it and take over control. Especially 150 miles inside your country. We been flying these missions over Iran for how long? Bound to happen. All the hackers in the world don't work for the west. That was quite a challenge for the nerds of Persia. I applaud them. I bet they even laid a trap to capture one. Like "Abdul call up on a cell phone and talk at length about the shipment of enrichment centerfuges stuck in the desert cause you ran out of gas". Sure enough a drone came over the horizon and wham...

And another has "crash landed" at an airport somewhere? Is the fleet grounded right now? That "captured" drone in Iran looked to good to be shot down.

Originally posted by Pokoia
You still have to consider the fact that you need a satellite in orbit to pull this off.

I don't know about that. Look how the "over horizon radar" works:

The most common method of constructing an OTH radar is the use of ionospheric reflection. Given certain conditions in the atmosphere, radio signals broadcast up towards the ionosphere will be reflected back towards the ground.

en.wikipedia.org...

If Iran did indeed seize control of this drone, I wonder if they could control the weapons systems and make them fire on their own troops?

reply to post by Arbitrageur

I gave you a star for the information. But how do you explain the GPS trick? Jamming is one thing, GPS sat signal overcome is another. Also, wouldnt you program a watchdog that analyzes the incomming frequencies to alert if suddenly one frequency channel brings back garbage/is jammed? This is what happened. They forced the drone into autopilot. But who says th

This all doesnt explain the GPS trick they say they did.

Here is what I found on Wiki

Correcting a GPS receiver's clock One of the most significant error sources is the GPS receiver's clock. Because of the very large value of the speed of light, c, the estimated distances from the GPS receiver to the satellites, the pseudoranges, are very sensitive to errors in the GPS receiver clock; for example an error of one microsecond (0.000 001 second) corresponds to an error of 300 metres (980 ft). This suggests that an extremely accurate and expensive clock is required for the GPS receiver to work.
Because manufacturers prefer to build inexpensive GPS receivers for mass markets, the solution for this dilemma is based on the way sphere surfaces intersect in the GPS problem.

Of course, mil grade GPS is not for mass markets, so they propably came up with another way.
en.wikipedia.org..." target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow"> en.wikipedia.org...

But I thought they were almost done with decoding the thing....wasnt that the last report we got, 1, We captured it, 2. We almost have it hacked 3. We really hacked it and that is how this all happened??

Not happening guys, the only fact remains that hey have in their possession some sort of drone, the end.

Either the US wanted them to get this, or it was some type of accident and it glided down over there and the internals are fried via self destruct. Or the "explosion" at the factory the follow day or 2 reported was us taking it out....take your pick its one of these....

Russia and China will sell Iran stuff for sure, 5yr old missiles is one thing, but anything never seen, high end will not be wasted on these guys. They dont like Iran that much, only enough to make some cash off the older stuff.

Originally posted by intrptr
I don't care how sophisticated the software is, you see a drone, listen for the encrypted data link. Debug it, amplify it and take over control.

Maybe you should care how sophisticated the software is because what you just said is impossible with the correct challenge-response authentication combined with the implementation of zero-knowledge password proof methods.

You will have better odds listening in on a phone conversation between two people using a language that nobody knows, and trying to impersonate one of the people in the conversation in order to fool the other person while simultaneously guessing the ever changing password they both use before every sentence they speak.