US Stealth UAV RQ-170 downed in IRAN

[poseidon]

Fars News Agency published some information about RQ-170, I don't know have these information already been available about this drone or these are published for the first time by Iranians.

according to Fars, this drone is equipped to a system that in the case of facing danger automatically return to its original control center or will be exploded, but Iranian experts prevented it from returning and explosion.

Max take off weight of it is 3850 kg
range of it is 1500 km and it can be remote controlled and guided from inside of USA.

It is equipped with advanced lenses , eavesdropping equipments and other sensors and can detect radioactive materials.

According to Fars article the only operator of this drone in the US is CIA.

The russian and chinese are gonna beg Iran for this tech.

 

[Hussein]

I am not saying that the viruses mentioned in these reports did something to the drones. But these reports point to weak computer security. And an adversary that can write advanced malware could exploit the same weaknesses to install rootkits (which actually can be looked at as eyes and ears and remote control inside the target network).

Would that be complicated? I don't know, but there have been reports of some pretty complicated viruses being made. One example is the stuxnet virus which Iran was the victim of, widely believed to be written by US or Israeli organizations (if malware was used here this could be considered a payback by Iran for stuxnet ).

It is correct that you point out that these reports do not mention the RQ-170 but I find that hardly surprising. US has been very tight lipped about the RQ-170 and I am not sure they would authorize mentioning of their secret spy drone in these media reports.

Thank you for permitting me to insult gambit, this was not what I intended but he has difficulties grasping things. For example, when longbrain pointed out that drones may have to be under radio silence to not give away their position, he responded that this would not do anything to give the drones position away! It is correct that this does not add to radar signature but thinking that radio communication does not give away position is just ... misleading. This is not at all the first time he has "misunderstood" things, I assumed this was because he had difficulties understanding things. I can't take the guy seriously.

about the stuxnet virus
it is not so hard to enter a virus when the security is not good from external data safety; some people come with their hard drives and they connect it . that is what happened in Iran.
The fact is they say in your article a virus infected the program. This virus was accessing it at the constructor/implementation service company place.

I have one question: when in Afghanistan the guys are programming the drone.... i guess there is no disk to connect... how they do it? it is everything implemented in the drone: the hardware and software and no external data come connect?

But if there was no virus ... how to hack it?
i know the field of black boxs for the banks for the encrypted keys that they cannot be accessed by exterior and it detects the waves . from now nobody could attack it. I am surprised this drone could be attacked if it was nto from the beginning implemented to go in Iran.

The most reasonable answer still i believe is Gambit idea: the malfunction but it means as well there is something wrong to implement to land instead of explode.

Anyway i read the fars news article above: there is nothing in it. they don't say anything else than everyone knows.

 

[helia]

As you have studied materials, you know that a composite is merely a mixture of diverse elements, concrete and plywood are composites. So composites by definition are never absorbers. I doubt that the entire aircraft is constructed out of absorber. Composite? Yes, and this would be for weight reduction purposes. Radar absorbers are composites but they must be constructed to contain an electrical conductor such as ferrite particles in a structure that exploit that conductive property. The deeper and longer the conduction/electrical path inside this material, the less energy that can escape and/or reflected off the aircraft, contributing to its radar cross section (RCS).

indeedy. there are lots of composites, with metal,ceramic,polymer and wood at matrix. you can reinforce it using fibre or clay or even filler, and they can be metal, ceramic,...
there are two probabilities ii am not aware of:
1- they used composite for lightweight
2- they used composite to absorb as much as possible
if 1 is true, they could use all sort of materials, which mostly can save the body (here is drone) from impact. but if 2 is the answer, there are not all sort of composites which absorb energies (including radar beams!) you just can go after elastomer based ones (i'm sure you are familiar with elastomers, a group of polymers, just like thermoplasts and thermosets) which would easily can be deformed by impact (like falling from 50,000ft) or you can use ceramic based ones, that are too expensive to use in a drone, no matter how important it was.

and about the next part (sorry i'm too newbie to add another quote!) i just said there are probabilities, and i dont think all of them worth the same. i've worked in england high-tech institutes (and i'm sure US is better than us) and if i ever learned anything is that it's way TOO hard to do such a thing.

though if they publish photos, we can guess more certainly.

 

[500]

What a joke. Israeli news media are running rampant 24/7 about Iran's nuclear program....and there have been polls that show almost half of Israeli's support a strike.

And as for the Arabs, well there's a huge difference of opinions between leaders and people. You go on the street and you will not find a single Arab citizen against Iran nuclear programme, they are very enthusiastic to even see Iran get a nuclear bomb, I've personally never met an Arab that was against Iran getting a nuke yet alone a peaceful nuclear program.

The puppet Arab regimes are eroding and they have no credibility so I wouldn't look too much into what they think, their time is almost up.

OK, I'll explain once again. Israel is interested in political pressure and isolation of Iran. Thats why Israel must say that nuclear program of Iran is a danger. Because if Israel wont say that, then other Western countries will say: look , even Israel dont think its dangerous then why we should care.

On the other hand Arab countries publicly pretend its not dangerous, but in reality they very afraid. Many Muslim countries have large Shia minorities and they fear a lot of growing Iranian influence.

So Israel publicly expresses concern but in reality it does not give a damn, while for Arabs its the opposite: they publicly say its fine but in real fear and beg US to bomb Iran.

 

[gambit]

Thank you for permitting me to insult gambit, this was not what I intended but he has difficulties grasping things. For example, when longbrain pointed out that drones may have to be under radio silence to not give away their position, he responded that this would not do anything to give the drones position away! It is correct that this does not add to radar signature but thinking that radio communication does not give away position is just ... misleading. This is not at all the first time he has "misunderstood" things, I assumed this was because he had difficulties understanding things. I can't take the guy seriously.

No, what I explained was not 'misleading'. You failed to understand what he erroneously said and my rebuttal to it. To locate an airborne transmitter is not as easy as the entertainment industry made it out to be of compressing an endeavor into a a couple of hours for the sake of story telling. To give you and the readers an idea of the difficulty involved, we go back to WW II...

Direction finding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Location of illegal, secret or hostile transmitters - SIGINT

In WW2 considerable effort was expended on identifying secret transmitters in the United Kingdom (UK) by direction finding. The work was undertaken by the Radio Security Service (RSS also MI8). Initially three U Adcock HF DF stations were set up in 1939 by the General Post Office but with the declaration of war, MI5 and RSS developed this into a larger network. One of the problems with providing coverage of an area the size of the UK was installing sufficient DF stations to cover the entire area to receive skywave signals reflected back from the ionised layers in the upper atmosphere. Even with the expanded network, some areas were not adequately covered and for this reason up to 1700 voluntary interceptors (radio amateurs) were recruited to detect illicit transmissions by ground wave. In addition to the fixed stations RSS ran a fleet of mobile DF vehicles around the UK. If a transmitter was identified by the fixed DF stations or voluntary interceptors, the mobile units were sent to the area to home in on the source. The mobile units were HF Adcock systems.

With modern technology, detectors dedicated to locating transmitters are more sophisticated but so are the transmitters themselves, especially when they are deliberately designed to be directional, low power yet with high data integrity, and can transmit in bursts, making triangulation extremely difficult.

As for SIGINT...

1N5X1 - ELECTRONIC SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE EXPLOITATION

1N5X1 - ELECTRONIC SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE EXPLOITATION

Conducts signals intelligence (SIGINT) activities and operations. Performs operator and analyst duties to exploit electronic intelligence (ELINT), foreign instrumentation signals intelligence (FISINT), and PROFORMA activities. Employs signals exploitation activities to support electronic warfare (EW) operations.

Yeah...I know about it. I was doing it before the career field was formalized by the USAF.

So let me see something from you that I can take you seriously here. So far the Iranians have failed to impress.

 

[gambit]

about the stuxnet virus
it is not so hard to enter a virus when the security is not good from external data safety; some people come with their hard drives and they connect it . that is what happened in Iran.
The fact is they say in your article a virus infected the program. This virus was accessing it at the constructor/implementation service company place.

I have one question: when in Afghanistan the guys are programming the drone.... i guess there is no disk to connect... how they do it? it is everything implemented in the drone: the hardware and software and no external data come connect?

But if there was no virus ... how to hack it?
i know the field of black boxs for the banks for the encrypted keys that they cannot be accessed by exterior and it detects the waves . from now nobody could attack it. I am surprised this drone could be attacked if it was nto from the beginning implemented to go in Iran.

The most reasonable answer still i believe is Gambit idea: the malfunction but it means as well there is something wrong to implement to land instead of explode.

Anyway i read the fars news article above: there is nothing in it. they don't say anything else than everyone knows.

You are correct. No discs are involved in mission planning. I hated the phrases 'Let me assure you' or 'Trust me about this' so am not going to use them. I will just tell you that from me, no discs are involved in daily mission planning.

 

[yahya07]

OK, I'll explain once again. Israel is interested in political pressure and isolation of Iran. Thats why Israel must say that nuclear program of Iran is a danger. Because if Israel wont say that, then other Western countries will say: look , even Israel dont think its dangerous then why we should care.

On the other hand Arab countries publicly pretend its not dangerous, but in reality they very afraid. Many Muslim countries have large Shia minorities and they fear a lot of growing Iranian influence.

So Israel publicly expresses concern but in reality it does not give a damn, while for Arabs its the opposite: they publicly say its fine but in real fear and beg US to bomb Iran.

Dude that is absolute rubbish. Netanyahu really believes in his heart that Iran is "Germany in 1939" and that he is Winston Churchill warning the world of an upcoming apocalyptic regime with nukes that is hell bent on mass destruction, martyrdom and national suicide. Israel is obsessed with Iran also for strategic reasons since they want to keep their nuclear monopoly in the region and be able to do anything they want with very little consequences. Your claim that Israel does "not care" about Iran is just ludicrous, absolute nonsense devoid of any reality and what is actually happening.

 

[gambit]

indeedy. there are lots of composites, with metal,ceramic,polymer and wood at matrix. you can reinforce it using fibre or clay or even filler, and they can be metal, ceramic,...
there are two probabilities ii am not aware of:
1- they used composite for lightweight
2- they used composite to absorb as much as possible
if 1 is true, they could use all sort of materials, which mostly can save the body (here is drone) from impact. but if 2 is the answer, there are not all sort of composites which absorb energies (including radar beams!) you just can go after elastomer based ones (i'm sure you are familiar with elastomers, a group of polymers, just like thermoplasts and thermosets) which would easily can be deformed by impact (like falling from 50,000ft) or you can use ceramic based ones, that are too expensive to use in a drone, no matter how important it was.

and about the next part (sorry i'm too newbie to add another quote!) i just said there are probabilities, and i dont think all of them worth the same. i've worked in england high-tech institutes (and i'm sure US is better than us) and if i ever learned anything is that it's way TOO hard to do such a thing.

though if they publish photos, we can guess more certainly.

The most important thing you should understand about aviation is that: Weight is a penalty. For example...Airliners do not always fly with a full load of fuel but only with what point A to B require, plus a few percentage extra for unexpected delays. So for what we are talking about, composite would definitely reduce this weight penalty. But also for what we are talking about, radar absorber as a composite have unique problems and the main one is strength. So far, the best absorber happened to be far less robust than what we demand for a highly stressful environment like an aircraft.

Keep in mind...A composite is not an absorber while an absorber is a composite.

A radome is a structural composite and an absorber. The radome is a structure that must pass through outgoing radar transmissions. But the material used in building the radome is only as strong enough for the radome, not for something more like an internal strut or spar or any compressive load bearing structure inside the aircraft. What this mean is that in designing an aircraft, be it a jet fighter or an unmanned drone or an ICBM, we use only materials that are strong enough in dimensions that are just sized enough to serve our purposes. No more.

For radar low observability, surface reflections can be reduced by sheet type absorber...

The above is a reasonably accurate visual representation of what happens inside the absorber. The thicker the sheet or liquid applique to have higher bandwidth of absorption, the greater the weigh penalty. So that leave us with shaping as the best technique so far of reducing radar signature and add absorber where strategically needed, such as leading/trailing edges of the flight control surfaces and the engine intakes.

So if this wayward drone actually crashed, depending on the impact mode, there may not be much left of the drone. If it sort of glide in of a crash, then the Iranians would have a much greater field day examining and exploring something new and beyond their current capability.

 

[lt.fridz]

about the stuxnet virus
it is not so hard to enter a virus when the security is not good from external data safety; some people come with their hard drives and they connect it . that is what happened in Iran.
The fact is they say in your article a virus infected the program. This virus was accessing it at the constructor/implementation service company place.

I have one question: when in Afghanistan the guys are programming the drone.... i guess there is no disk to connect... how they do it? it is everything implemented in the drone: the hardware and software and no external data come connect?

But if there was no virus ... how to hack it?
i know the field of black boxs for the banks for the encrypted keys that they cannot be accessed by exterior and it detects the waves . from now nobody could attack it. I am surprised this drone could be attacked if it was nto from the beginning implemented to go in Iran.

The most reasonable answer still i believe is Gambit idea: the malfunction but it means as well there is something wrong to implement to land instead of explode.

Anyway i read the fars news article above: there is nothing in it. they don't say anything else than everyone knows.

This is of course all speculations but what these media reports say that the drones are being flown from the US, from Creech Air Force Base to be exact. This would mean all the controls lie there and the stuff in airfields in Afghanistan is just controlled there. That means that setup and piloting of the drones is done there in the US but not at the airfields that they take off from in Afghanistan.

This would suggest that setting up home bases is something done by or through equipment at bases such as Creech Air Force Base. Surely you are not suggesting that the mission they fly, especially for the CIA are planned in Afghanistan? I would think it more likely that they are planned in the US. And if they are planned in the US, they probably have some automatic means of setting their drones up from the US. By setting up, I mean where to fly, what to do, where to land, what to do in case of datalink failure...

Supposing the computer network at such a control center is wide open to an adversary, setting the landing site to be "Kashmar Iran" instead of the original take of base, might be possible.

If you had asked me before I saw the media reports on Creech Air Force Base Computer security, I would have said this was impossible. The US military would not leave their control centers computer network wide open to malware infiltration from outside sources. I would think they are more professional than that. But these reports demonstrate that such a thing is entirely conveivable and even likely given the facts we see reported today.

 

[lt.fridz]

No, what I explained was not 'misleading'. You failed to understand what he erroneously said and my rebuttal to it. To locate an airborne transmitter is not as easy as the entertainment industry made it out to be of compressing an endeavor into a a couple of hours for the sake of story telling. To give you and the readers an idea of the difficulty involved, we go back to WW II...

You are hillarous. Your logic is, it was difficult to locate airborne transmitters in WW II, therefore this is not possible today

 

[IranZamin]

Iranian media said the authorities have moved the drone into a secret location in Iran and soon a video report will be out

 

[HongWu]

The russian and chinese are gonna beg Iran for this tech.

China would be interested in learning more about its capabilities but we already have a stealth UAV program.

 

[Arman-Shahr]

Dude that is absolute rubbish. Netanyahu really believes in his heart that Iran is "Germany in 1939" and that he is Winston Churchill warning the world of an upcoming apocalyptic regime with nukes that is hell bent on mass destruction, martyrdom and national suicide. Israel is obsessed with Iran also for strategic reasons since they want to keep their nuclear monopoly in the region and be able to do anything they want with very little consequences. Your claim that Israel does "not care" about Iran is just ludicrous, absolute nonsense devoid of any reality and what is actually happening.

I think he is right, both US or Israel know Iran don't seek nuclear weapons.
They fear of Iran, but don't fear from Iran's weapons.
They fear Iran becomes a Model for other Islamic nations, So use the pretext of nuclear weapons to impose technological and economical sanctions on Iran to prevent economical, technological and political development of Iran and increasing influence of Iran on other Islamic nations.
They fear to see a powerful Islamic country that isn't dependent on them and isn't their puppet.

In fact They don't fear of Iran, They fear of Islamic Ideology. They fear of Islamic government on Islamic countries. Because Islam doesn't allow Muslims to be silent against occupying land of other Muslims and straying them.

 

[gambit]

You are hillarous. Your logic is, it was difficult to locate airborne transmitters in WW II, therefore this is not possible today

Now THAT is truly hilarious. I said nothing of the sort but it is YOU who made the leap from difficult to not possible. I know it is tough for a Euro to be challenged by an American, but do try to maintain some semblance of sanity in your frustration.

 

[poseidon]

China would be interested in learning more about its capabilities but we already have a stealth UAV program.

I doubt Iran will let you get your hand on this tech, they are not stupid, they will be the only country other than usa to have this drone, also china or russia are not friends to Iran, Iranians should remember how you supported sanctions against them.