The Lost Drone

[longeyes]

I'm not arguing for more loss of American lives, I'm saying it's a way of making believe you are really solving the strategic problem when you're not.  That means what theaters of war we fight in and the lack of general citizen involvement at home.

[MicroBalrog]

Yes. Clinton didn't have drones, so he had bombers in Serbia dropping their loads at 16,000 feet to avoid US casualties. The problem was the number of civilians killed because of the lack of precision from that altitude.

And the public generally cares more about "our" soldiers than "their" civilians. So do military commanders.

[longeyes]

And therefore you believe that "the public" and "military commanders" really set the rules for who's attacked and how they are attacked?  The politicians do that, and they certainly factor in collateral damage, optics, and God knows what else in deciding who's naughty or nice and how to strike the naughty.

[MicroBalrog]

And therefore you believe that "the public" and "military commanders" really set the rules for who's attacked and how they are attacked?  The politicians do that, and they certainly factor in collateral damage, optics, and God knows what else in deciding who's naughty or nice and how to strike the naughty.

And the politicians - especially in the modern day where few things stay hidden for long - cannot stray too far from what's acceptable to the public.

[longeyes]

What is your definition of not "too far?"

I think that is the whole measure of what is currently wrong: the growing gulf between the political class and the rest of us (who care and think).

[Jamie B]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/iran-may-captured-u-stealth-drone-hacking-gps-030447469.html

Iran may have captured U.S. stealth drone by hacking its GPS

The Iranian specialists reportedly figured out that the RQ-170 Sentinel's weakest point is its GPS by examining previously downed American drones back in September. Using this knowledge, they designed a trap for one of the drones doing reconnaissance work in the country: "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain," the engineer says. The team then simply programmed it to "land on its own where [they] wanted it to." The engineer asserts that the whole process is as easy as hacking into a Google account. The attack was ultimately successful, leading the unmanned vehicle to land in Iran instead of its home base in Afghanistan.

Not good if this is true.

[dogmush]

If it is true, they probably shouldn't have told us how they did it.  I would imagine that that hole in the programming, if it existed, doesn't any more.

But I'm suspicious of the idea that these drones are that reliant on GPS.  I don't think we'd have built them with a single nav system.

[RoadKingLarry]

I don't think we'd have built them with a single nav system.

For global navigation GPS is pretty much all that's left (that we know of). Other than that you have internal inertial navigation. I'd hope they have both but I don't know.
My WAG is that with the help of ChiCom tech they managed to knock one down and pick up enough pieces to make it look good for them. I'd also guess that any salvageable tech (if any) recovered was in Beijing's control with in minutes.

[dogmush]

INS is what I was thinking of. Those are pretty small these days.  There's also good old dead reckoning.  Turn around and fly back the way you came at a set speed for a set time, and turn on the cameras, or a transponder.

Even in vehicles as low tech as HMMWV's the Army doesn't rely on solely GPS.

[Tallpine]

If it is true, they probably shouldn't have told us how they did it.  I would imagine that that hole in the programming, if it existed, doesn't any more.

But I'm suspicious of the idea that these drones are that reliant on GPS.  I don't think we'd have built them with a single nav system.

Remember that this thing was built by some government contractor 

[AJ Dual]

For global navigation GPS is pretty much all that's left (that we know of). Other than that you have internal inertial navigation. I'd hope they have both but I don't know.
My WAG is that with the help of ChiCom tech they managed to knock one down and pick up enough pieces to make it look good for them. I'd also guess that any salvageable tech (if any) recovered was in Beijing's control with in minutes.

I think it's a mock-up too. Between intel and the debris they were able to cobble together something convincing enough. However, whatever's going on with the undercarriage would give it away, hence the tarps.

Some of the parts you saw the officers who were giving the dog-n-pony show actually opening up and moving etc. may have been grafted into the mockup.

I can't imagine that the designers didn't know about GPS spoofing. And that INU's dead reckoning, altimeter readings (can the Iranians spoof air pressure?) and stuff that we can't even guess at would all come into play.

Doesn't the GPS system have a second signal with encryption? Despite the selectable error, or whatever it's called being turned off except in a war situation, so the unencrypted GPS signal is as good as military one, don't most military units still read the encrypted signal instead? Granted, the encryption scheme is probably older 90's tech, but can Russian and Chinese ELINT reproduce it on the fly?

The best my gut tells me the Iranians could do even with Russian/Chinese tech, is just full power brute force jamming, and it's other backup systems, or just it's navigational code didn't make the right judgments on the other non GPS info, and it crashed. Maybe somewhat gently. I won't give the Iranians more than 50% skill/50% blind luck in the whole incident.