Iran and US Drone, you decide

[ATOMonkey]

If you've seen the pictures of this thing, several questions obviously come to mind.

So, who buys the story that it "crash landed" all in one piece?

Here's my wild speculation.

1) Iran got pictures off the web and made a model out of fiberglass.

2) Iran is really really really good at gluing things back together.

3) They hacked the drone and brought it in under control.

Nothing falls out of the sky and looks that good when it's all said and done. The government needs to come up with better cover stories. We're not as dumb as they seem to think we are.

 

[! twitty]

We're not as dumb as they seem to think we are.

I am not sure I can say that about most of the sheeple.

 

[BBill]

I don't know but-how long do you think it'll be before the chinese either have it or detailed pics and drawings of it?

 

[ATOMonkey]

I do reverse engineering for a living, and unless you have a good understanding of how that thing works, knowing how big it is won't do you a damn bit of good.

Having said that, I won't assume that Iran, China, Russia, are devoid of intelligent people.

 

[Arm America]

Any comments from Washington should be suspect,
the facts regarding the downed drone will be revised.
(at least 3-times)

Just like Fast & Furious and the killing of Bin Laden.

 

[jblomenberg16]

I don't think they hacked it. I'm certain they have people and technology smart enough to do it, but seems like pulling that off would require:

a) Them to know where the "stealth" drone was in order to target the hacking. Seems to me the whole point of a stealth drone is so the other guy doesn't know you are spying on him. So how did they find it in order to hack it, unless our stealth technology really sucks, or Iran has already learned how to bust it after we lost that stealth helo in Pakistan...

b) Enough prior knowledge of how it flies to then be able guide it to a controllable landing. Flying wing designs like this one and the B2 don't glide very well on their own, so flight would have definitely needed to have been controlled, and they needed to be able to comand it to do certain things including land.



There is clearly a lot of misinformation out right now. I honestly think we screwed up and just lost control of it for any number of reasons. There is probably a safety feature built into it that if it loses control signal from its operator, that it goes into some sort of mode to land or otherwise control decent so that the aircraft can be salvaged.

It probably did then land in Iran, where locals found it, alerted the government, and they cam and picked it up. The fact that we apparently thought about going after it or blowing it up says that we knew where it was. If it were hacked I'd have to think that we wouldn't know where it was.



Who knows, maybe it is a "Trojan Horse" of sorts and we're hoping it will throw them off of what we're really doing. Maybe we let it get lost to take some heat off of Israel. Maybe this is a big stunt to grab the media's attention on military actions, while we quietly and covertly do something else.

 

[ATOMonkey]

I don't think they hacked it. I'm certain they have people and technology smart enough to do it, but seems like pulling that off would require:

a) Them to know where the "stealth" drone was in order to target the hacking. Seems to me the whole point of a stealth drone is so the other guy doesn't know you are spying on him. So how did they find it in order to hack it, unless our stealth technology really sucks, or Iran has already learned how to bust it after we lost that stealth helo in Pakistan...

b) Enough prior knowledge of how it flies to then be able guide it to a controllable landing. Flying wing designs like this one and the B2 don't glide very well on their own, so flight would have definitely needed to have been controlled, and they needed to be able to comand it to do certain things including land.



There is clearly a lot of misinformation out right now. I honestly think we screwed up and just lost control of it for any number of reasons. There is probably a safety feature built into it that if it loses control signal from its operator, that it goes into some sort of mode to land or otherwise control decent so that the aircraft can be salvaged.

It probably did then land in Iran, where locals found it, alerted the government, and they cam and picked it up. The fact that we apparently thought about going after it or blowing it up says that we knew where it was. If it were hacked I'd have to think that we wouldn't know where it was.



Who knows, maybe it is a "Trojan Horse" of sorts and we're hoping it will throw them off of what we're really doing. Maybe we let it get lost to take some heat off of Israel. Maybe this is a big stunt to grab the media's attention on military actions, while we quietly and covertly do something else.

Stealth only reduces your radar cross section, or reduces the detectable range.

If you program your display to show small cross sections, and then the drone flies near the radar, it will light up. Nothing is "radar proof". Just less detectable.

I suppose it's possible for it to land "safely" on some kind of limp home mode, but the odds of that happening are pretty much zero.

Any kind of uncontrolled landing turns airplanes or helicopters into lots of little airplanes and helicopters.

Even if it landed and only broke into a couple of big pieces that would be equally amazing.

We probably had a global hawk tracking it so we knew where it went down.

I would not discount the enemy hacking into the signal. Especially if they had the time to study it, which it seems like they did.

 

[Blackhawk2001]

If you've seen the pictures of this thing, several questions obviously come to mind.

So, who buys the story that it "crash landed" all in one piece?

Here's my wild speculation.

1) Iran got pictures off the web and made a model out of fiberglass.

2) Iran is really really really good at gluing things back together.

3) They hacked the drone and brought it in under control.

Nothing falls out of the sky and looks that good when it's all said and done. The government needs to come up with better cover stories. We're not as dumb as they seem to think we are.

I hate to burst your bubble, but, while I don't know the truth of the situation, it's perfectly possible for a fixed-wing aircraft to have a mechanical failure and still manage to autonomously crash-land in a level attitude; it's happened to several jet aircraft over the years. In fact, it's what happened to the A-7 that crashed into the Ramada in here in Indy in the 1980s. It's also happened at Edwards AFB several times over the years.

 

[KG1]

I hate to burst your bubble, but, while I don't know the truth of the situation, it's perfectly possible for a fixed-wing aircraft to have a mechanical failure and still manage to autonomously crash-land in a level attitude; it's happened to several jet aircraft over the years. In fact, it's what happened to the A-7 that crashed into the Ramada in here in Indy in the 1980s. It's also happened at Edwards AFB several times over the years.

According to a a statement in this article that is quite possible. Drone Lost In Iran Was Joint CIA-Military Reconnaissance Plane

According to a senior U.S. military source with intimate knowledge of the Sentinel drone, the aircraft likely "wandered" into Iranian air space after losing contact with its handlers and is presumed to be intact since it is programmed to fly level and find a place to land, rather than crashing.

 

[Sylvain]

The chinese probably have their own drones anyway, they dont need to get their hands on a US drone to copy it.
They have the money (probably even more than the US can spend on it) and the technology (they have a space programm, so how hard could it be to build a simple drone for them?).
The US drones are probably built with "made in china" parts like most computers anyway.

 

[Airborne33]

I've read that if this particular model loses connectivity with it's controllers it will find level ground to land on. It doesn't seem out of the question that this is exactly what happened. If it was shot down at it's working altitude it would be in hundreds of pieces. If there was a malfunction I would still think that the on board programming would still have it attempt to land with minimal damage.

 

[spec4]

Wonder why it doesn't have a self destruct built in that could deploy when control is lost.

 

[longbow]

Did Iran repaint it? I've never seen a military plane that color. But I do remember reading pink is hard to see high up/

 

[CombatRex]

Something about the photos and video bugs me. I've never seen in recent years an aircraft painted tan....usually they are shades of gray. Also seemsthe wings, close to the fuselage had big weld marks that do not show on pic ofthe real thing. Also I have not seen a pic with a grill across the intakebefore. So maybe it is a fake of theirs to try and embarrass us, or perhapslike somebody mentioned, it's a CIA Trojan horse.

I would really hate to think they hacked it......that would be bad news.

 

[jblomenberg16]

Wonder why it doesn't have a self destruct built in that could deploy when control is lost.

So it doesn't self destruct the ground crew by accident.

 

[9lock]

If you've seen the pictures of this thing, several questions obviously come to mind.

So, who buys the story that it "crash landed" all in one piece?

Here's my wild speculation.

1) Iran got pictures off the web and made a model out of fiberglass.

2) Iran is really really really good at gluing things back together.

3) They hacked the drone and brought it in under control.

Nothing falls out of the sky and looks that good when it's all said and done. The government needs to come up with better cover stories. We're not as dumb as they seem to think we are.

I do reverse engineering for a living

YES! WE CAN TELL!

 

[88GT]

I suppose it's possible for it to land "safely" on some kind of limp home mode, but the odds of that happening are pretty much zero.

Wonder why it doesn't have a self destruct built in that could deploy when control is lost.

Physical capabilities notwithstanding, why would they want it to land safely? Wouldn't most of the flight time once it's deployed be above foreign (and therefore potentially hostile--at least to the idea of fly-over spy drones) nations? I would think the risk of having it fall intact into anybody's hands would be a tactical and strategical blunder of enormous magnitude.

Does anybody have links to the pics/videos?

 

[grube555]

Wonder why it doesn't have a self destruct built in that could deploy when control is lost.

I agree! I seems like there would be a fail safe option that if connectivity was lost it would go straight up into the air and explode. We tried to blow up the tail rotor of the chopper that crashed on the Bin Laden raid right? Why would we just let a spy plane land where ever it wanted? Even if we did not want to pack it with C4 or something like that, you could send it into a high altitude flight pattern until a F-16 could intercept and terminate it. Seems like there are a bunch of options other than let it land in Iran! I hope we were not that reckless!!!!

 

[Blackhawk2001]

It's a complicated piece of machinery with a lot of computer support. Anyone who has dealt with complicated machinery can tell you that computer-controlled stuff will do the darnedest things at the worst times. It's also possible that UAV technology has been so "bombproof" thus far that no one gave sufficient thought to what would happen if control communications were lost.

 

[KG1]

Physical capabilities notwithstanding, why would they want it to land safely? Wouldn't most of the flight time once it's deployed be above foreign (and therefore potentially hostile--at least to the idea of fly-over spy drones) nations? I would think the risk of having it fall intact into anybody's hands would be a tactical and strategical blunder of enormous magnitude.

Does anybody have links to the pics/videos?

Here is an article with a picture. While they don't have any way built in for self destruction I guess they do have a way for the drone to corrupt it's software if control and communication are lost in an attempt to thwart anyone from gaining knowledge on how the systems actually function and what they are programmed to do but they are concerned that China could provide assistance to the Iranians and help them cypher the encryption code that's built into the software.

Several software packages on board are programmed to corrupt themselves if the Sentinel’s communications nodes are not properly interrogated at certain points, but U.S. officials don’t know which are intact and which aren’t.

What worries the U.S. more than the stealth capabilities themselves is the possibility that China will help Iran access the software and figure out how to break the encryption used to protect it. Though codes can be changed, a knowledge of the underlying software logic could jeopardize other sensitive technical collection systems.

Officials: Navigation System Failure Probable Cause of Drone Crash