Iran displays captured US drone

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Originally posted by Evil_Santa
This amuses me to no end. First to all the people stating that this should have had a self-destruct mechanism built-in to avoid the lost of intellectual property and secrets. If the device's receiver is beyond the transmission capacity of the controls, then a self-destruct command cannot be received and executed by the drone.

Have you ever heard of "dead man's switch"?

The self-destruct can be activated by a timer, UNLESS a "safety pin" is there, which is an encrypted heartbeat from the control station. I thought that was easy to figure out. The craft misses a number of heartbeats and goes boom.

I'm not familiar with the "dead man's switch" but what you're stating as a fail-safe mechanism is consistently used in high-availability fail-over clusters for servers. (if the heartbeat from server A goes dead, then change the connections to server B) That said a function like you suggest could have been included, but it also will include the possibility of there being a failure of the function and it being triggered without due cause causing the US gov billions. Only the design team knows what was programmed into the device and the specs the US gov had originally given.

I remember a helicopter pilot telling me that Afghanistan is one of the worst places in the world for action as everything starts at about 10,000 feet - the highest point is at 25,000 feet. So in the rarified atmosphere, some helicopter do better than others - the Lynx is virtually unusable.

I think this is a mechanical issue caused by these extreme heights in Afghanistan

How ingenius would it be that this was actually a false flag operation. The US claims they "lost control" of a drone only to have that drone contain secret listening and data gathering devices it would use to spy on Iran once they have the drone in one of there secret facilities....sounds like sci-fi and far fetched but the CIA is very very cleaver when it comes to how they work there espionage tricks.

They go in such great lenghts to gather the most minute information sometimes, just think of the soviet era of spying. Sometimes you have to give alittle to get alittle. Its like fishing, you always change your location but use the same bait and same techingue eventually youll catch the Big One.

Yeah a Sentinal seems like something that is very compomised now, but what if its major components were stripped before it took off, ie cameras, sensors, etc.....and replaced with older versions....once again sounds like a movie but these types of things do happen.

This would explain why we didnt blow the thing up when it crashed or sent special forces in to get it. Are you telling me we watched them walk away with billions of dollers in research alone and did nothing? The US could have easily used a predator to desrtroy the remains. It just dont add up.

By the looks of that thing, it looks to be a generation(s) ahead of what the general public has ever seen.

If it is indeed real i bet its jam packed with tech that america would definitely not want getting into the enemy's hands.

EDIT: I stand corrected this aircraft is indeed public knowledge as shown in the posts below.... hrm

Originally posted by templar knight
I remember a helicopter pilot telling me that Afghanistan is one of the worst places in the world for action as everything starts at about 10,000 feet - the highest point is at 25,000 feet. So in the rarified atmosphere, some helicopter do better than others - the Lynx is virtually unusable.

I think this is a mechanical issue caused by these extreme heights in Afghanistan

I believe you are correct to suspect mechanical failure and you are absolutely correct that most rotor-craft struggle past 10k however, I would point out that rotor-craft are entirely different beasts than fixed wing jets.

The RQ-170 is widely estimated as having a service ceiling of 50,000 ft+.

I doubt that altitude was a direct factor...




(15,240 Meters=50,000ft.)

RQ-170 Sentinel Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

It would seem that this incident is not an unprecedented fluke.

There was an earlier incident in Afghanistan during 2009 with a MQ-9 Reaper failing to respond to "positive control" that resulted in an intercept and shootdown.

09/16/2009 -

The United States Air Force (USAF) shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on Sunday morning after it lost control of the aircraft over a remote area in Northern Afghanistan.

The USAF does not know how or why operators lost control of the MQ-9 Reaper Unmanned Aircraft System. "We do not speculate on the cause of an aircraft mishap," Captain Frank Hartnett, a spokesman for the Air Force, told Security Management. An investigation, however, will be conducted to find an answer, he said.

The Reaper was flying a combat mission when operators lost "positive control" of the UAV, or the ability to establish connections and send control inputs to the remote-controlled aircraft. When operators noticed the UAV was bound to exit Afghani airspace and all efforts to reestablish communication with the machine failed, the Air Force deployed an F-15E Strike Eagle to destroy it.

The fighter jet fired one Sidewinder missile at the Reaper, causing the UAV to crash into a mountain side. There was no report of civilian casualties or damage to civilian property, according to a USAF statement.

USAF Shoots Down Out-of-Control Reaper Over Northern Afghanistan


USAF Splashes One Reaper

Originally posted by Jonro
By the looks of that thing, it looks to be a generation(s) ahead of what the general public has ever seen.

If it is indeed real i bet its jam packed with tech that america would definitely not want getting into the enemy's hands.

EDIT: I stand corrected this aircraft is indeed public knowledge as shown in the posts below.... hrm

edit on 9-12-2011 by Jonro because: (no reason given)

It's a flying camera, so the "tech" is really how good the cameras are, and I doubt the cameras are anything other than expensive, but not secret.

Some of you are putting way too much into this....

More details...

Officials: Navigation System Failure Probable Cause of Drone Crash

On the day Iran’s government televised footage of a captured American stealth Sentinel drone, U.S. officials and engineers here think it was a problem with the vehicle's navigation system that probably caused it to crash...

...Several software packages on board are programmed to corrupt themselves if the Sentinel’s communications nodes are not properly interrogated at certain points, but U.S. officials don’t know which are intact and which aren’t.

What worries the U.S. more than the stealth capabilities themselves is the possibility that China will help Iran access the software and figure out how to break the encryption used to protect it. Though codes can be changed, a knowledge of the underlying software logic could jeopardize other sensitive technical collection systems.

For all of you that believe in the all-powerful, New World Order, End of Days, Military/Government conspiracy,the idea that this unstoppable force cannot pilot a high tech plastic airplane through the airspace of a 14th Century governed, third world sand spit must be more difficult to handle than a well-crafted run-on sentence.

I think that this was a test to see how far the drone could penetrate into Iranian airspace, and to test their capabilities and response.

Source

The US drone which Iran said it had brought down penetrated 250 kilometres (150 miles) inside the Islamic republic's air space, state television's website reported on Friday.

In a letter of protest to the United Nations, the government said "the American RQ-170 spy plane violated 250 kilometres inside Iranian airspace before confronting the reaction of Iran's armed forces," the website reported.

Originally posted by Xtrozero

Originally posted by Jonro
By the looks of that thing, it looks to be a generation(s) ahead of what the general public has ever seen.

If it is indeed real i bet its jam packed with tech that america would definitely not want getting into the enemy's hands.

EDIT: I stand corrected this aircraft is indeed public knowledge as shown in the posts below.... hrm

edit on 9-12-2011 by Jonro because: (no reason given)

It's a flying camera, so the "tech" is really how good the cameras are, and I doubt the cameras are anything other than expensive, but not secret.

Some of you are putting way too much into this....

A very good point for anyone interested in facts rather than rhetoric and supposition.

The RQ-170 is a tactical platform, it was designed from the beginning to be good enough to do the job with a minimum of technical sophistication so that it would not be a tremendous threat to national security if it were flown into harms way and lost in hostile territory.

Case in point, the estimated fly away cost of the RQ-170 is estimated to be around $6 million.

Contrasted with the estimated fly away cost of over $50 million for the strategically tasked MQ-9, I think some of the more imaginative folks commenting should start to see the RQ-170's role in the big picture.

I'm guessing WW III will be at our doorstep in a few months time, if not sooner. Now that the cat is out of the bag, retaliation from several non-allied countries will ensue. It's just a matter of time before one of them makes the first strike. Prepare yourself.

Originally posted by hp1229

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Originally posted by hp1229
Perhaps a test to verify the defense and not necessarily the ability to Reverse Engineer

That's an interesting idea. What if the command decided to sacrifice a drone in a real test of Iranian air defense capabilities? Before it went down, it could have transmitted a lot of pretty unique info.

Well it very well could have transmitted a lot of pretty unique info since the US knows what Iran has purchased from Russia as well. Someone mentioned it before ELINT.

Ah, so it could have been a deliberate probe of Avtobaza. It actually does make sense, you know. One lost drone is well worth the info collected prior to intercept.

Originally posted by Laxpla
Here are some High Rez pictures. You can tell the wing ripped off, and the amateurishly taped it. And they blocked the belly cause of the crash.

cencio4.files.wordpress.com...

cencio4.files.wordpress.com...

cencio4.files.wordpress.com...

cencio4.files.wordpress.com...

cencio4.files.wordpress.com...

The wings may in fact have been removed, but it still wasn't shot down. There's nothing that looks like an impact blast.

Originally posted by my3911
I'm guessing WW III will be at our doorstep in a few months time, if not sooner. Now that the cat is out of the bag, retaliation from several non-allied countries will ensue. It's just a matter of time before one of them makes the first strike. Prepare yourself.

Got my beer and cigars....I'm ready

reply to post by dplum517

Is it just me or are they not giving a link or sharing the video? .....This is precisely the reason we have drones.

Whether they share the link or not, My concern is the United States violated another countries airspace without any justification. Can someone show me were there is justification to do so? If it were my country, it would be an act of war.

Here are a couple of documents some of you may find particularly interesting...

First, courtesy of the FAA...

A Summary of Unmanned Aircraft Accident/Incident Data: Human Factors Implications

Abstract

A review and analysis of unmanned aircraft (UA) accident data was conducted to identify important human factors issues related to their use.

UA accident data were collected from the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force. Classification of the accident data was a two-step process. In the first step, accidents were classified into the categories of human factors, maintenance, aircraft, and unknown.

Accidents could be classified into more than one category. In the second step, those accidents classified as human factors-related were classified according to specific human factors issues of alerts/alarms, display design, procedural error, skill-based error, or other.

Classification was based on the stated causal factors in the reports, the opinion of safety center personnel, and personal judgment of the author. The percentage of involvement of human factors issues varied across aircraft from 21% to 68%.

For most of the aircraft systems, electromechanical failure was more of a causal factor than human error. One critical finding from an analysis of the data is that each of the fielded systems is very different, leading to different kinds of accidents and different human factors issues.

A second finding is that many of the accidents that have occurred could have been anticipated through an analysis of the user interfaces employed and procedures implemented for their use.

This paper summarizes the various human factors issues related to the accidents.

This next paper covers many of the details under discussion and provides a wealth of solid UAV information. It was written as a case study using the Tier II+ (Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk) however the fundamentals are universal and apply to all current UAV systems....

A Study of a Reconnaissance Surveillance Vehicle





















Enjoy!

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Originally posted by hp1229

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Originally posted by hp1229
Perhaps a test to verify the defense and not necessarily the ability to Reverse Engineer

That's an interesting idea. What if the command decided to sacrifice a drone in a real test of Iranian air defense capabilities? Before it went down, it could have transmitted a lot of pretty unique info.

Well it very well could have transmitted a lot of pretty unique info since the US knows what Iran has purchased from Russia as well. Someone mentioned it before ELINT.

Ah, so it could have been a deliberate probe of Avtobaza. It actually does make sense, you know. One lost drone is well worth the info collected prior to intercept.

Well possibilities and outcomes are several. This is just one of the possibilities. Ofcourse if this is one of the case, then I'm sure the vital components were perhaps switched for inferior ones to send them off on a wild goose chase. However with several theories and speculations on this thread about the whole incident, only time will tell exactly what transpired.

reply to post by hp1229


In reality they just got a new toy.

It's an aircraft that looks like a B-2 stealth bomber. Nothing new or secret about that.
It has a jet engine in it. Nothing new about that.

Inside it has satellite comm gear. Nothing new.
Inside it probably also has the same predator drone gyro camera . You can see it on the nose
of the predator II.

I'm not too worried.

Not many replies to my comment about actual conspiracy history i.e. The Cox Report and so forth. It is as if two Bonesmen are in the same room and the subject of their common tomb, comes up. They must remain silent or leave the room.

But seems like some bloggers are doing their job, as journalists and historians of the future. We sure as hell can't trust any news rag corps anymore.

poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com...

Saturday, December 10, 2011

The Great Chinese-Iranian Stealth Reconnaissance Drone Theft Caper

[...]

This industrial sector no longer manufacturers in the USA. In fact I served as a technology advisor to a certain member of the House Committee on Science and Technology. It was during that period of time 1994-2000, that certain free trade agreements were being passed and ratified, specifically NAFTA, GATT, and membership for China within the WTO.

Al Gore Undermined National Security With His Military Electronic Component Outsourcing. In conjunction with that disastrous misguided US economic policy, the military under the direction of then Vice President Al Gore was “streamlining” US Military procurement protocols.

Mr. Gore implemented a set of policies which relaxed the stringent manufacturing and testing procedures required to pass the tight Mil-Spec 883-C2 standards for all military electronic hardware and systems.

The net result was the Pentagon could continue to buy all the weapons systems they desired but with cheaper off the shelf components.

After all, they were in many instances the same part, just made to civilian standards, not manufactured to Mil-Spec, which we were assured were just as good and please consider the cost savings.

[...]

Anyway, just wanted to keep eyes on the ball here.