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.
Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Funny)
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
Getting caught and then asking to return their spying device, lol.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, it's kind of like throwing a baseball through someone's window then asking for the ball back.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Funny)
A better analogy might be a peeping tom throwing a camera through someone's window and then ringing the doorbell to ask for it back.
You'd be surprised how often that works, BTW.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, it's like parking your car on the street in front of your neighbor's house and having them tow it on to their yard and put it up on blocks.
(Well, somebody had to make the car analogy....)
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Funny)
Actually its more like flying a drone into someones airspace and having it crash, and then asking for it back.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Funny)
Actually its more like flying a drone into someones airspace and having it crash, and then asking for it back.
Actually, it's more like ... wait a minute.
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, Insightful)
Or like Law enforcement putting a tracking device on your vehicle and asking for it back when you go public with it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This analogy is definitely the winner.
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]
On the fence ? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Actually in this case, the camera would've been hiding right in the neighbor's yard.
Iran: Is this your camera? What is this camera doing here?
US: Nothing. but can we have it back?
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Well, according to the Iranians, it's more like putting a camera in your neighbors tree and them finding it and keeping it.
Given that the US has sent drones into Pakistan without telling them, it wouldn't entirely surprise me if this actually was sent into Iran's airspace.
Then again, given how bat-shit crazy Iran seems to act, I'm not sure I put a whole lot of stock in their
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:4, Informative)
Surprisingly yes. So far the claims from the US coalition have been that the drone was lost somewhere over western Afghanistan and not in Iran. The truth of that statement can be called into effect but it would be like flying a remote controlled helicopter around your yard that crashed into your neighbor's yard.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
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I never had a problem asking for the ball back.
I also never had a problem paying for the damages by working it off for them. Its called being accountable for your actions.
What did you do? Run off and hide while the poor bastards window was replaced at his expense?
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Insightful)
What a competent president would have done is sent another drone to destroy it so the technology didn't fall into the hands of every enemy state in the world.
Yeah, an act of war against a foreign nation after they shoot down your spy drone that was in their airspace sounds like a great plan. Particularly when they're one of the world's largest oil suppliers and gas would probably hit $10 a gallon.
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Forget the fact that they are one of the largest oil exports. Don't ignore the fact that they can close the Straight of Hormuz which would choke off the oil supply coming out of THE LARGEST oil supplier.
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...they can close the Straight of Hormuz...
So they are going to claim that they own the water all the way up to the shore of Oman? Unlikely.
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Yes, and no. The mail oil port on the side of Saudi Arabia is within range of coastal missile batteries fired from Iran. Hormuz is just the easiest point to secure. Iran can move batteries around and still threaten a huge swath of water. It's enough to serve as a hesitation for any ships trying to use that waterway. The US Navy cannot have ships deployed all across it to ensure that no trade vessels are susceptible to Iranian attack. Further, retaliatory strikes from the US against such shore batteries migh
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:4, Insightful)
If it is an act of war against a foreign nation... what do you call it when several helicopters full of navy seals are sent into a foreign nation to kidnap or kill an individual who is living there with the implicit permission of the host nation, killing anyone who resists, taking the body of the target out... all without notice or permission of the host nation?
Do you really want to play a game of "lets pick and choose what we call an act of war"?
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that's just a police action, there's a difference. Hell if I know what it is.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Informative)
It's a police action if the President can't get a Declaration of War out of Congress but does it anyway.
Sort of like Libya. Or the crap going down in Yemen.
Or arguably Iraq and Afghanistan (Congress told Bush he could do it, at least, though they wouldn't come through with a Declaration of War, so it's only "arguable").
Or Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, Korea (again, arguable, same reasons), Nicaragua (several times), many others through history.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Insightful)
That could be considered an act of war. But then again, some might also consider a terrorist mass-murderer, engineer of an attack killing over 3,000 civilians and some unknown number of other attacks, living in a supposedly allied country, apparently with their implicit permission, to be an act of war as well. While we're at it, allowing "protesters" to attack an embassy in your country and hold everyone inside hostage for years is also generally considered to be an act of war. So is sponsoring attacks against the armed forces of another country.
Basically, there's plenty of acts of war to go around in this area.
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Stop that. Only the US can be EVIL around this planet. It's black and white, and if the US is black, then everyone else MUST be lily white.
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If the United States military invades, occupies, or bombs your country for decades, I can see why people in Arab lands might get angry and would want to eventually fight back at some point. If you are defending yourself against attacks to your home, that is generally considered to be Good by most reasonable standards. The United States is by FAR the most aggressive military nation in the world.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Insightful)
That may be, but I don't think that the US is going to allow the Bushes, Clinton, Kissinger, Rumsfeld, etc. to be extradited. The Pakistanis, Iraqis, Indonesians, Cubans, Nicaraguans, etc. are just out of luck. Only the US and Israel are allowed to pursue revenge killings.
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Well it wouldn't be completely unprecedented, as I'm fairly sure we've blown up in-development nuclear enrichment facilities before with cruise missiles. Iran is already being threatened with a boycott of their oil by Europe, one of the main consumers of their oil. The larger problem is Iran's threat to perform live fire maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz, blocking around 17% of the world oil supply from being able to reach Europe and Africa.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:4, Insightful)
Well it wouldn't be completely unprecedented, as I'm fairly sure we've blown up in-development nuclear enrichment facilities before with cruise missiles.
Where? The closest I can remember was blowing up a pharma factory in some African nation which couldn't fight back. Sudan?
Iran is already being threatened with a boycott of their oil by Europe, one of the main consumers of their oil.
A pointless exercise, because China will be happy to buy all the oil they can get.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:4, Insightful)
A president like that would have caused the deaths of dozens, hundreds, or maybe tens of thousands of people depending on how much such an ensuing conflict would escalate to. Thank God we're not all dicks like you who think that it's worth killing people you don't know and spending collective money that you don't have because someone hurt your imaginary feelings.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly.
IF its that secret. But there are indications its not all that secret or sensitive (despite public statements to the contrary).
There is considerable speculation on the web that there is not that much secret stuff in this aircraft anyway, because it was fully expected they would have operational losses. See Here [wikipedia.org]:
The design lacks several elements common to stealth engineering, namely notched landing gear doors and sharp leading edges. It has a curved wing planform, and the exhaust is not shielded by the wing.[10] 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.
why no self-destruct? (Score:5, Insightful)
It boggles my mind that this thing didn't self-destruct for exactly this reason.
Re:why no self-destruct? (Score:5, Insightful)
These drones do have a self-destruct as well as other "things are going wrong" modes. One of them is to just circle waiting for control communications to be re-established. Another one is an automatic safe landing mode. Some people suspect that this drone may have gone into auto landing mode which would explain why it appears undamaged. For such a sensitive device leading to such horrible PR if captured, I feel perhaps the self-destruct should be the default failure mode :)
However, having it just blow up in some civilian household would probably not be good PR either.
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Auto-landing is a high suspicion. That mode would probably circle lazily to the ground and the damage to drone is at the edge of one of the wings which would be consistent with such a landing if that wing was the inner facing wing. Additionally, none of the images show the underside which would give a pretty large indication of the mode of landing. There's also some damage that suggests the wings were separated but that could have been done by Iran after getting to it in order to move it.
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These drones do have a self-destruct as well as other "things are going wrong" modes. One of them is to just circle waiting for control communications to be re-established. Another one is an automatic safe landing mode. Some people suspect that this drone may have gone into auto landing mode which would explain why it appears undamaged. For such a sensitive device leading to such horrible PR if captured, I feel perhaps the self-destruct should be the default failure mode :).
Maybe it isn't supposed to detonate yet...
I don't know about the rest of you, but I would feel VERY sketchy about standing, touching, being anywhere in the vicinity of a weapon from another super power that was "captured."
Stuxnet (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:why no self-destruct? (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't have to self-destruct at an explosive level, just fry all the electronics and you're good.
And we don't know if this didn't happen. 'Course, as usual, we don't know much at all about what really happened.
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Doubtful. The paint is only part of the puzzle and a piece that they already have. The most valuable part is probably in the firmware. If they can unencrypt it, they can understand how to better jam it's command functions and also what electronic countermeasures it has.
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Everybody knows how radar absorbent paint works. It's the same as the coatings on lenses (destructive interference, 50% reflective, paint is 50% of wavelength in thickness).
The tricky part is applying the paint in exactly the correct thickness.
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Yes, because they can scrape off a chunk, take it over to Mohammed's House of Paints and ask for a gallon with extra attention paid to color matching.
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In this day and age of readily available encryption, you don't even need that.
Hell, even the video game industry has been doing it since the 1990s - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP_System_II [wikipedia.org]
I don't think you read the entire article:
In January 2007, the encryption method was fully reverse-engineered by Andreas Naive[3] and Nicola Salmoria. It has been determined that the encryption employs two four-round Feistel ciphers with a 64-bit key.[4][5] The algorithm was thereafter implemented in this state for all known CPS-2 games in MAME.
Encryption can be broken, especially when you have physical access to the device that needs to do the decryption. There are all sorts of controls and booby-traps you can implement to restrict physical access, but a knowledgable and well funded lab can get around the controls.
Adequate physical destruction cannot be reverse engineered - once you destroy a chip with a high energy, high temperature explosion, not even all of the kings horses and all of the kings men wil
Re:why no self-destruct? (Score:4, Funny)
If they circumvent the encryption, the US can nail them under the DMCA. And if they clone it, boy are they in for a heap of trouble with IP and patent violations. No, I don't even see how they could possibly even consider doing any of that.
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Yeah, because a competent President would have started World War III rather than give up a single lousy drone.
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Dick Cheney has criticized Obama's handling of this incident, saying that he should have ordered an airstrike immediately to prevent the tech from falling into Iranian hands. Sounds pretty crazy to me.
Also, upon further reading it sounds like the designers may have purposely avoided sensitive cutting-edge technology due to the high probability of a single-engined UAV failing over enemy territory.
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I was amazed to see the resolutions that HD USB webcams go up to these days (1920x1080 upwards) along with auto-focus, digital zoom, pan and tilt. A high-resolution CCD combined with motorized focus and fisheye lens means that the camera can "look round" without having any other motors apart from the focus. If that can be done for a two-figure sum, Military drone just needs to add satellite-communications, some basic avionics and some IR optics.
Plenty of home videos of people who have stuck wireless webcams
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:4, Informative)
Actually I'm surprised that the drone didn't have a failsafe self destruct, the missile that I worked on had one; if it lost a certain classified signal for a classified length of time the warhead would detonate. One would think that with all of the classified coatings, sensors, avionics and airframe it would have been rigged to the gills.
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Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Informative)
Like the Russians asking for their MiG-25 back (they got it in boxes after much study), or the US asking China for it's EP-3 orion back (we got it and it is still flying today).
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Informative)
The MiG-25 was obtained by the West after a Russian pilot defected, aircraft and all. It had nothing to do with a Soviet aircraft being in airspace without permission.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that was just grand theft airplane.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:5, Insightful)
...But he said Please! (Score:5, Insightful)
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:...But he said Please! (Score:4, Funny)
...and when it detects Ahmadinejad's voice print nearby it goes kaboom!
Re:...But he said Please! (Score:5, Funny)
You mean the spy drone is a spy?
We need to go deeper.
Run Away! (Score:5, Funny)
Biden: Well, now, uh, Obama, Panetta, and I, wait until nightfall, and then leap out of the drone, taking the Iranians by surprise
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.
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Well, the US claims it was in Afghanistan. But I'm sure it was in Iran, just like those British sailors the Iranians abducted a couple of years ago.
I'm not American, but you have to be a complete moron to think the Iranian government is more trustworthy than the US. If it comes down to he-said/she-said, I'm willing to give the Yanks the benefit of the doubt. Iran has a history of "flexible" borders.
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Now these guys have some balls (Score:4, Insightful)
If the Iran's caused it, it would have had to been a disruption of some sort to avoid much damage to the drone. While we know that the downlink from drones tends to be unencrypted (for good reasons)
Out of curiosity, what are the good reasons for not encrypting the downlink?
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.
Yeah, and I want to clone Brittany Murphy (Score:4)
But let's face it, it just ain't happening.
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Clone on the Range (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, give me a drone where the camels all roam
Where the Sikhs and the Sunnis all pray
Where often is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are dusty all day
Clone, clone of my drone
Where the Sikhs and the Sunnis all pray
Where often is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are dusty all day
Joke's on you Iran! (Score:4, Funny)
Jesus (Score:5, Insightful)
As they should. If I found some stealthy character in my backyard looking in on my wife, an apology is the LEAST I would demand.
Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure their clone will be almost as good as mine, but probably not actually as good.
The important technology in the device is embedded in chips that are the most tamper resistant devices on the planet, they'll be utterly destroyed and unusable for reverse engineering well before they get anywhere near the tech.
The optics I'm sure are impressive, but not so much that they'll get some giant leap.
The encryption keys were worthless before the aircraft hit the ground.
The paint and fuselage material are the most important things on it that they can gather data from that isn't already something they can get their hands on through other channels.
Its just silly for anyone to think they have a snowballs chance in hell of doing anything it it. It would be hard for US to reverse engineer it, let alone Iran.
Step 2.... Step 3 profit (Score:4, Informative)
Obviously the next course of action is to air strike the shit out of it so the technology doesn't go into enemy hands.
Hey they asked nice, first.
What nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
All Ur Drones R Belong 2 Us (Score:5, Funny)
Ummm... if they clone an American drone, won't it still answer to our siren call? Cool, that would make Iran a subcontractor for the U.S. military!
Re:All Ur Drones R Belong 2 Us (Score:5, Funny)
I bet they could make them cheaper than Lockheed Martin. Might work out for us in the end.
old fortune says (Score:4, Funny)
(it was funny in the 80's)
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.
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It's possible that we deliberately downed a drone over Iran with a modern appearance but made with the wrong materials
From now on every U.S. drone should carry a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook so that anyone who finds it will most likely blow themselves up.
They already knew (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They already knew (Score:5, Informative)
Actually under international law they are supposed to return any wreckage from an aircraft that crashes in their territory. That is during peace time. Also as long as the aircraft was not "military" and not armed it is not considered an act of war.
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"So basically, according to you, the US should return the wrecks of the 9/11 planes? Do you realize now how stupid that makes you sound?"
The 9/11 planes belonged to US companies and where US registered planes... They never left the US...
As to how stupid my comment is.... Well a mirror may be in order.
Tough call (Score:5, Funny)
IANAL, but according to the precedent set by Keepers Vs. Weepers, I think the US will have a very hard time convincing the courts for the immediate return of their supposed property unless they can get their mommy and daddy involved.
Oh, this was in Iran? Well, we know where this is going. The US will just go over to Iran's house and shoot his parents in the face.
Clone (Score:3)
Plans to Clone - don't make me laugh so hard! (Score:3)
The government announced that it planned to clone and mass produce the bat-winged craft for use against its enemies.
Good luck with that. Unless you have some magical way to reverse-engineer likely 100,000+ lines of compiled source code, you'll never have more than a remote-controlled airplane with a fancy skin.
And I really expect that the software is encrypted (or possibly even destroyed). Also, with the expected levels of anti-temper built into the hardware (required by the US Government since the start of this decade), they'll have a helluva time speccing-out the hardware interfaces using test tools.
Good luck writing your own software from scratch with no idea how the hardware works!
Now, if they had performed a cyber-attack and stolen source code and hardware specs, THEN I would be concerned. The plane part is relatively easy to build.
sent a formal diplomatic request (Score:3)
Did they post it on their digital embassy's blog? :P
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When will Iran apologize to humanity? You know, for things like sentencing Salman Rushdie to death?
I used to suffer from insomnia. But Salman Rushdie has helped me achieve a better sleep. Every time I pick up one of his books, I find myself dozing off rapidly...
Re:When will Iran apologize to humanity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably the same day the U.S. apologizes for the coup that overthrew democracy in Iran and put the Shah in power in 1953.
Re:When will Iran apologize to humanity? (Score:4, Informative)
But the reason that we can trust the CIA in this matter is because it's declassified internal document logging the blackops that the CIA performed. This is their dirty laundry that they wouldn't want anyone to see.
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If you think that coup is utterly unrelated to the subsequent history of Iran and U.S./Iranian relations you're either a complete idiot or willfully deluded. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter.
Re:When will Iran apologize to humanity? (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, for things like sentencing Salman Rushdie to death?
Or like stealing the last election to prop up the Revolutionary Guard's puppet and when the people don't like it, beating the hell out of them, killing them and/or imprisoning them, even going so far as to not return bodies of the dead to their families but burying them in graves in restricted areas, where families can't visit. Cuz, you know, they RG runs Iran, not the Mullahs or Ayathollah, which are allowed to go about their business, pretending there's some actual republic when it's really all a sham and military coup by feat.
What I'd like to know is why these drones don't even have a Self Destruct on a dead-man switch, out of contact for so long and sensitive bits are fused by a burning strip of Sodium or such.
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.
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In many cases, classified technology isn't so much a matter of technological superiority as figuring out what the parameters of the problem are. Sometimes building countermeasures is just a matter of discovering what frequencies to block. Once that's known, blocking them is simple.
Its not likely that Iran will be able to build drones for use against us by examining this one. After all, how do they know whether or not our radar can see our own drones. They'd have to capture an example of our radar and exami
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.
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You're talking about a country that has to import refined oil because they lack the technical ability to refine crude oil.
There is no way in hell they're going to clone a stealth drone.
Re:Iran? Nope, China and Russia... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Iran? Nope, China and Russia... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's quite a distance between "they're all primitive camel-riders" and "they're a technological power to rival the United States."
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Considering that the crown of their air force is a copy of a plane the US developed in 1961 I doubt that they can clone the most advanced drone we have.
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Let me know when they reverse-engineer the F-14. They've had 30 years to work on it.
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"If not, whomever made the call to not have a reliable self-destruct sequence should be sacked."
They would be, but they also drafted the Sacking Protocol.
Re:I'm curious... (Score:4, Insightful)
Surely I don't have to be a fan of Iran to point out the idiocy of this statement? Iran is technologically one of the most advanced states in the region, probably only second to Israel.
Oh they're a Gulf state; they must be camel-riding barbarians who only know how to sell oil. I'm going to say it right out: this is not mere ignorance, it's outright bigotry.
Mart