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Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone’s stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety. Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan.
There was some post on ATS a few months ago about these very drones were experiencing some software (virus) problems described as key-loggers.
Because of the very small amount of damage to the drone I suspected that they might have hacked into it mid flight and forced a landing.
Originally posted by Aim64C
The drones, themselves, are designed to assume a downward spiral with all of their control surfaces flush and neutral. It's a pattern designed to minimize damage to the aircraft in case it loses power, control, or what-have-you. The airframe, itself, is made largely of composites and would be perfectly capable of ditching into sand or even gravel with very little in the way of damage.
Its going to need those control surfaces to maintain the turn, otherwise its just going to go straight ahead (or wherever its going to go based on cross winds etc).
A comment made by an RAF tech with regard to their drones might be relevant here
Originally posted by Aim64C
Quite unlikely.
I can't get into the details regarding the differences between civilian and military GPS systems - for this very reason, but suffice it to say that the story they successfully hijacked the drone is quite unlikely.
.
What, more than likely, happened was their attempt to hijack the drone and spoof its GPS and/or Datalink receivers, they triggered a fail safe self-destruct sequence (designed to eliminate sensitive components and prevent a scenario where the drone could be hijacked - better it be destroyed prematurely than be under enemy control).
December 17, 2009
By Mike Mount and Elaine Quijano,
CNN
Insurgents were able to use a mass-market software program to view live feeds from U.S. military Predator drones monitoring targets in Iraq, a U.S. official indicated to CNN Thursday. The breach by Iranian-backed Shiite militants was discovered late last year, according to U.S. military and defense officials. The story was first reported in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. The U.S. official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss the information, said no U.S. troops or combat missions had been compromised because of the intrusion.
Originally posted by Aim64C
And has nothing to do with the idea this Iranian source in the article is talking about - which involves using GPS jamming technology to spoof receivers into believing they are some place other than where they are. The military uses a special GPS system that is far more difficult to spoof (we have weapons that rely on it... bad idea to let the enemies bomb us at our own expense) - borderline impossible (I say borderline because I consider no task genuinely impossible).
What, more than likely, happened was their attempt to hijack the drone and spoof its GPS and/or Datalink receivers, they triggered a fail safe self-destruct sequence (designed to eliminate sensitive components and prevent a scenario where the drone could be hijacked - better it be destroyed prematurely than be under enemy control).
Originally posted by RichardPrice
Originally posted by Aim64C
The drones, themselves, are designed to assume a downward spiral with all of their control surfaces flush and neutral. It's a pattern designed to minimize damage to the aircraft in case it loses power, control, or what-have-you. The airframe, itself, is made largely of composites and would be perfectly capable of ditching into sand or even gravel with very little in the way of damage.
I do wonder how a drone is supposed to maintain a "downward spiral" if all of their control surfaces are "flush and neutral"...
Its going to need those control surfaces to maintain the turn, otherwise its just going to go straight ahead (or wherever its going to go based on cross winds etc).
Originally posted by mbkennel
Probably the drone didn't have any self-destruct because the loss-of-datalink was something that might happen---or happened---often in normal use due to all kinds of glitches. Such a self-destruct might end up costing them a huge amount of money in ruined electronics and so wouldn't activate/include it. Anything more violent than that could be dangerous to ground crew.
edit on 29-12-2011 by mbkennel because: (no reason given)