Iran Wants To Clone Downed US Drone 663
PolygamousRanchKid sends this quote from the LA Times:
"The Obama administration has sent a formal diplomatic request asking Iran to return the radar-evading drone aircraft that crashed on a CIA spying mission this month, but U.S. officials say they don't expect Iran will comply. 'We have asked for it back,' Obama said Monday at a news conference in Washington with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki. 'We'll see how the Iranians respond.' His comments marked the first public confirmation that the RQ-170 Sentinel drone now in Iranian hands is a U.S. aircraft, though U.S. officials privately acknowledged that in recent days. Iran has claimed it downed the stealthy surveillance drone, but U.S. officials say it malfunctioned. Capture of the futuristic-looking unmanned spy plane has provided Tehran with a propaganda windfall. The government announced that it planned to clone and mass produce the bat-winged craft for use against its enemies."
Iran has also demanded an apology from the U.S. for the drone flight in its airspace.
Iran? Nope, China and Russia... (Score:2, Interesting)
Iran simply does not have the ability - the technical knowledge and manufacturing ability - to "clone" these aircraft.
More likely is that China and / or Russia have already sent a team to take it apart and learn its secrets.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it's possible... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's possible that we deliberately downed a drone over Iran with a modern appearance but made with the wrong materials, and with old sensors and electronics generally — or maybe with electronics deeply flawed in a subtle way — with the intent of having Russia and China get their hands on it and then underestimate our capabilities. It's possible, that is, that this is actually an intelligence coup of the highest order.
Knowing our government from inside experience, though, I'm voting for the assclown theory as the survivor of Occam's razor.
Re:Iran? Nope, China and Russia... (Score:4, Interesting)
Aviation Week postulates that these elements suggest the designers have avoided 'highly sensitive technologies' due to the near certainty of eventual operational loss inherent with a single engine design and a desire to avoid the risk of compromising leading edge technology.
(quote was from well before this loss, BTW). Most of the tech Iran doesn't have is likely to be in the electronics, and those are not easy to reverse engineer (things like the AESA radar system). China and Russia already have most of those. They might wanna take a look just for any new ideas or design differences, but it's not like these things are F-22s or anything.
Re:...But he said Please! (Score:5, Interesting)
That's EXACTLY what I was thinking. Like a Trojan horse, the Iranians are parading the thing around all their secret facilities.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:3, Interesting)
This analogy is definitely the winner.
Re:Iran? Nope, China and Russia... (Score:5, Interesting)
Your post denotes a big ignorance about Iran's manufacturing base. Those guys make their own cars, reverse engineered the F-14 and the Cobra during a war with Iraq and I have seen their technology up-close. They might not be a powerhouse but they are not some crappy middle east country either. Their drone production is actually better than China and Russia. Look up for the Ababil, Mohajer and others so you get a picture of how old their programs are and how advanced they are compared to China and Russia.
Re:why no self-destruct? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:...But he said Please! (Score:4, Interesting)
What I find the most hilarious, is that their secret facility appears to be a basketball court/high school gym (see the markings on the floor):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16098250 [bbc.co.uk]
Or maybe they decided to house it in a school gymnasium so if the USA does decide to launch an attach against it, Iran gets to parade around video of the USA destroying a school.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:2, Interesting)
A President with balls would never have asked for it back. He would have said "You have 6 hours to return the drone intact. If you don't, it will turn into a smoldering crater."
They'll never close the Straits of Hormuz because it'd piss off not just the US but the entire world.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:4, Interesting)
didn't look very crashed to me.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Interesting)
As the other poster noted, when you have a downlink that's shooting out live video feeds, the people on the ground need to have access to that data in near real time and you're not going to run every soldier that -might- be using the link through a SECRET/TOP SECRET security clearance check before allowing them to have access to it. Then you have to redistribute the keys to all those soldiers whenever they get swapped out. It's a logistical nightmare that doesn't net you much of a benefit in light of the below...
What the US is observing in real time is of limited usage. Without knowing the location of the observer, a top down view of a place can be very difficult to make useful, especially depending on how close the view is. Without readily discernible landmarks identifying buildings from other buildings it can be extremely difficult to discern where you're looking. As an example, get someone to pick a point in the city you live on the closest zoom level on Google Maps. Don't use any street names. Now try to ID where you're looking at. Further, just seeing what is being observed isn't 100% indicative of the intentions of the observer's actions and knowing that they view the streams has potential applications in the realms of disinformation. For instance, if we knew some insurgents were monitoring the downlink and were holed up in a building we could station a net around the build then use the drone to watch the building and wait for them to flee into more open terrain and be caught by the net.
Link to the referenced story (Score:5, Interesting)
Link to the referenced story:
http://gizmodo.com/5658661/fbi-gets-caught-tracking-mans-car-wants-its-gps-device-back [gizmodo.com]