Texas College Hacks Government Drone

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by hp1229

 

It has to be one of the micro UAVs. A number of articles say it was a DHS drone, but it appears that it was owned by the University of Texas, which means it was pretty small. I don't see a university having the money to buy say a Predator.

That would make more sense. Obviously folks have the tendency to blow things out of proportion in general...not just MSM

reply to post by hp1229


I love the fact that EVERY article has a picture of a Predator, Reaper, or Global Hawk as the lead in picture.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by hp1229

 

I love the fact that EVERY article has a picture of a Predator, Reaper, or Global Hawk as the lead in picture.

Gotta love MSM and Politics. There is absolutely no word on the type of drone. The rest focuses on the drone industry (domestic) thats to be inducted by many local law enforcement and/or government agencies for domestic purposes. Do we see additional funding requests?

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by GogoVicMorrow

 

They aren't going to be flying weaponized UAVs. They're talking about taking control of one and crashing it into something. That's what they did in this test, except they had a person take it back over at the last minute.

They will have weapons on them if they think they need them.
and just like the swat teams killing the wrong people you will see drone wrong kills.

why do they let people know they can be hack't?
the drones they us to attack civilians in other countries will try to hack them to!

reply to post by creepyalien


Most micro UAVs don't have the engine power to carry weapons. Hand launched UAVs have an engine that is in the 1-3 horsepower range, which isn't enough to even carry a small weapons system. A catapult launched UAV could carry small weapons, but nothing larger than a recently developed 25lb bomb system.

reply to post by hp1229


It was an off the shelf quadrotor. Here's an interesting article about it by AvWeek.

One important distinction is that the quadrotor's GPS was its sole source of position information. Although we talk about UAVs and missiles being "GPS-guided" their primary navigation system is usually inertial: the job of the GPS is to correct drift, and the algorithms that blend the two will disregard a blorp in the GPS if it disagrees profoundly with the triplicate inertial sensors.

Additionally, professional-grade UAVs have directional GPS antennas with far higher gain in the upward direction -- which means that the spoofer, radiating from the ground, has to overpower the real GPS signal by orders of magnitude.

However, this doesn't mean that GPS is out of the woods. DHS and other authorities are becoming increasingly concerned about both GPS spoofing and jamming, particularly closer to the ground. The jamming issue has arisen because of the proliferation of GPS tracking devices that can be used overtly and legitimately (by vehicle fleet operators, for instance) or covertly (by suspicious spouses, or stalkers).

AvWeek blog

reply to post by Zaphod58
Yep that explains it a lot in addition to it being a DHS version However with respect to the DOD version, there are some interesting articles with respect to the interference in frequencies. Below company filed bankruptcy (either the big phone companies raised a concern due to competition or it had legitimate technical difficulties with its services/products/equipments).

On February 17, 2011 former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bill Lynn, along with the head of the USAF Space Command, Gen. William L. Shelton, expressed concerns about potential GPS interference from the LightSquared network.

LIGHTSQUARED

reply to post by hp1229


Yeah, the whole Lightsquared debacle was interesting to follow. The big thing with military units though is that they have a backup INU if the GPS goes off. The big thing with Lightsquared was that it would interfere with JDAM and other GPS weapons.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by hp1229

 

Yeah, the whole Lightsquared debacle was interesting to follow. The big thing with military units though is that they have a backup INU if the GPS goes off. The big thing with Lightsquared was that it would interfere with JDAM and other GPS weapons.

I guess it would be cheaper to have a company file chapter 11 then to fix the JDAM and GPS based weaponry I have actually met the CEO in person back when I used to work at one of the former companies. He is a very nice down to earth kinda guy. Oh well..he has his hands in several different ventures. If not US, I'm sure he'll take his ideas someplace else. What lightsquared hoped and aimed for would have crushed the big 4 (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile) and would have definitely benefited the common consumer though. That is the sad part

reply to post by hp1229


It wasn't so much the weaponry as it was the frequency from the GPS satellites themselves from what I understand. They would have had to change the satellites software, and do a lot of expensive work to fix the problem.

reply to post by texasgirl


The reason the government has other people try to hack our systems is so they develop counter measures and make the systems more secure. It is backwards engineering from the standpoint of securing the drones. I would be more concerned if they considered there systems to infallible.

BTW the link in your OP is broken.