US Stealth UAV RQ-170 downed in IRAN

[poseidon]

You're right, I hope Iran first study this drone, then allow them to visit it instead of receiving some more valuable technologies.

Of course, Iran will just show it to them to prove they have it, then when russian or china asks for the tech, Iran should show them the finger.

 

[helia]

sorry to interrupt, its been a long time i read things on this forum, but just now decided to press register button!
im half persian born and raised in uk, and am cool with all nations! xD

what Gambit says sounds way more rational than sci-fic theories others claim (though ofc i dont deny that they have a chance to be true too, though its not much)

and talking about "how she mother was when ..." is too rude from anyone to say here, we all joines here to learn things and discuss the "facts" and not "ideas". im an engineer for years but i learn new things everyday. how some people claim they are right and others arent isnt the way scientists think. we always leave some probabilities to things we are not sure of now.

in the matter at hand, due respect to Gambit, it IS possible for iran to hack the drone (theoretically), but if they did it the way they claim (and yet i havent read anything from iranian army officials about how they downed it. Gambit ur discussing about how people here think it was done, not the way iran claims. please correct it) we have no proof to acknowledge or deny iran capabilities, 'cause iran is doing her things always in secret, unlike some show-off countries. though i really doubt it they COULD take control over the drone, but well its not impossible.

sorry for writing a lot, girls cant help it xD

 

[poseidon]

sorry to interrupt, its been a long time i read things on this forum, but just now decided to press register button!
im half persian born and raised in uk, and am cool with all nations! xD

what Gambit says sounds way more rational than sci-fic theories others claim (though ofc i dont deny that they have a chance to be true too, though its not much)

and talking about "how she mother was when ..." is too rude from anyone to say here, we all joines here to learn things and discuss the "facts" and not "ideas". im an engineer for years but i learn new things everyday. how some people claim they are right and others arent isnt the way scientists think. we always leave some probabilities to things we are not sure of now.

in the matter at hand, due respect to Gambit, it IS possible for iran to hack the drone (theoretically), but if they did it the way they claim (and yet i havent read anything from iranian army officials about how they downed it. Gambit ur discussing about how people here think it was done, not the way iran claims. please correct it) we have no proof to acknowledge or deny iran capabilities, 'cause iran is doing her things always in secret, unlike some show-off countries. though i really doubt it they COULD take control over the drone, but well its not impossible.

sorry for writing a lot, girls cant help it xD

Well come here
Also As i said before we need to wait to see if a similar incident happens to judge whether they really have the tech.

 

[Russel]

Between the REMOTE pilot and aircraft, where is the weakest link? The communication link that replaced the pilot's hands and feet and eyes in the cockpit. So if such a weak link does exist, what would be a 'default' position should that link be lost?

- Continue on current heading.
- Enter an orbit.
- Self destruct.
This is my first reply in this forum.

There is another option for a drone which is return back to predefined bases.

 

[longbrained]

Between the REMOTE pilot and aircraft, where is the weakest link? The communication link that replaced the pilot's hands and feet and eyes in the cockpit. So if such a weak link does exist, what would be a 'default' position should that link be lost?

- Continue on current heading.
- Enter an orbit.
- Self destruct.
This is my first reply in this forum.

There is another option for a drone which is return back to predefined bases.

First of all a warm welcome to you and helia for coming here.

Regarding your logical options, here is what happens:

- Continue on current heading => Drone runs out of fuel and crashes in a nose dive from 50,000 ft

- Enter an orbit=> Drone runs out of fuel and crashes in a nose dive from 50,000 ft

- Self destruct=> Drone explodes in midair and pieces crash to earth

All those options produce debris and not an intact drone. While in this case drone is intact as has been confirmed by both Iranian and US officials.

This leaves us with your last option of flying to a pre-determined base after any problem. But why would a military officer in employment of United States government enter an Iranian base as one of those pre-determined bases? Is that even logical to think about it? Is it not an act of treason to make the most super secret drone land in a hostile territory?

But there is another options. Iranians created a virus like Stuxnet and penetrated US control system and put an Iranian base as that pre-determined base in Drone's computer. Then Iranians jam the drone and the drone by default goes and lands safely in Iranian base. This the only logical solution. The only possibility. Is there any indication for this being the case? Yes, there is. Few months back there was report of a virus having infected US control systems for drones. Even DARPA was called in to investigate but they could not remove the virus. Now this happens.

 

[Arman-Shahr]

Well come here
Also As i said before we need to wait to see if a similar incident happens to judge whether they really have the tech.

It is interesting to see US officials send a RQ-4 to test Iranian claims. but I guess American officials no longer send their drone near Iran's border.

 

[helia]

tnx!

Well come here
Also As i said before we need to wait to see if a similar incident happens to judge whether they really have the tech.

indeedy. but there are two possibilities to prevent that from happening.

1- US stops using drones over iran borders for a while. u cant bring someone that isnt flying xD
2- iran stops downing them on purpose to give US false ideas. as we know being doubtful is worse than knowing something terrible. it makes US not know what exactly had happened earlier to their precious UAV

 

[Russel]

This leaves us with your last option of flying to a pre-determined base after any problem. But why would a military officer in employment of United States government enter an Iranian base as one of those pre-determined bases? Is that even logical to think about it? Is it not an act of treason to make the most super secret drone land in a hostile territory?

Entering Iranian bases as predeterming bases is not worth of debating. It is desperate attempt of some US expert to save face.

But there is another options. Iranians created a virus like Stuxnet and penetrated US control system and put an Iranian base as that pre-determined base in Drone's computer. Then Iranians jam the drone and the drone by default goes and lands safely in Iranian base. This the only logical solution. The only possibility. Is there any indication for this being the case? Yes, there is. Few months back there was report of a virus having infected US control systems for drones. Even DARPA was called in to investigate but they could not remove the virus. Now this happens.[]

I was thinking about another possibility based on some news in news website though i am not going to post those link as i have to search for those news. Iranian may jamm the incoming control signal of the drone. Then the drone may loiter for some time then start returning to predefined bases based on GPS signal. As iran claimed in different new that they can guide missiles to their desired location, i think they can do it by giving false GPS signal. They can give false GPS signal which may lead the UAV to think that it is landing in predefinded bases in Afganistan whet it is landing actually in Iran.

Besides US expressed that it was not shoot down at the very begining of this news. But never said anything officially that it was not jammed or taken control by Iran. How do they now that it was not shoot down? Because they were receiving the incoming video feed from the drone but could not control it. These are my thoughts. Thanks.

 

[IranZamin]

^^ Irans electronic unit deployed near the borders took it down. But that doesnt matter, what matters is that after complete studies the drone will be made into a public toilet for Iranian military officers

 

[Russel]

Few months back, i read a news regarding US lost control of one of their drone in Afganistan and that drone was heading to Iran. Then they shoot it down. I was searching for this news in the web but returning with news of this current drone. Had anyone read that news?

 

[Sina]

what would be a 'default' position should that link be lost?

- Continue on current heading.
- Enter an orbit.
- Self destruct.

Nope. Here is how it should be handled:

- On "link lose" Return to Base
- If unable to RTB then find the closest safe place and Land
- If can't get to a safe place, wait until you have got fuel and then self destruct


Beyond that, there must be an independent onboard module checking the sanity of drone's decisions/actions.
That module must include an override routine similar to this:

- If a "Land" instruction has been issued and we are in hostile territory then
- Contact and get confirmation from Base
- If can't contact base then Cancel the "Land" instruction.
- If can't cancel the Land instruction, then self destruct.
- If can't "self destruct" either, then send a message to the control room: "we are screwed".


Why couldn't it RTB?
Even for some reason it can't have GPS localization at that time, it must have some secondary less accurate localization mechanism (like bearing-only SLAM) to fall back to. It just has to go back close to the base. It's much more likely to find a non-hostile territory there to land.


However, this drone somehow landed in hostile territory.
So it's designers have been super stupid and the drone lands as soon as it loses link?
So from now on, whenever Iran detects an RQ-170 it has just to Jam it and it lands neatly without making a whim! Is that what you are telling us?

If you can't believe that the designers were SO STUPID, then it must be that, Iranians had somehow overridden the default routines of the drone.

 

[Arman-Shahr]

Few months back, i read a news regarding US lost control of one of their drone in Afganistan and that drone was heading to Iran. Then they shoot it down. I was searching for this news in the web but returning with news of this current drone. Had anyone read that news?

If I remember properly, I have read about a RQ-4 that was heading to Tajikistan. Wikileaks published the story of it.

---
This image shows how Iran downed US drone:

 

[longbrained]

I was thinking about another possibility based on some news in news website though i am not going to post those link as i have to search for those news. Iranian may jamm the incoming control signal of the drone. Then the drone may loiter for some time then start returning to predefined bases based on GPS signal. As iran claimed in different new that they can guide missiles to their desired location, i think they can do it by giving false GPS signal. They can give false GPS signal which may lead the UAV to think that it is landing in predefinded bases in Afganistan whet it is landing actually in Iran.

Besides US expressed that it was not shoot down at the very begining of this news. But never said anything officially that it was not jammed or taken control by Iran. How do they now that it was not shoot down? Because they were receiving the incoming video feed from the drone but could not control it. These are my thoughts. Thanks.

You have put here a very interesting argument. It is certainly possible for such a thing having happened and this scenario would not even need a virus to explain it. It made me think about it for a while just to make a counter argument for its sake. Though I still think your argument is very good unlike the ones put out by gambit. So here is my counter argument:

Stealth planes usually never emit any radio signal since it beats the purpose of being stealth. All stealth missions have to be done under strict radio silence for this obvious reason that the enemy forces can then triangulate on the signal and use it as a kind of passive radar. Besides all stealth missions are flown in night, taking off at night and coming back before dawn. Though I am not sure if this is how stealth drones operate but internet literature on F-22 and B-2 mentions this as a requirement of stealth. They only send any radio signal if there is a real emergency for example when the air craft is going to crash.

We already know Iran has radio direction finding capability so for the argument's sake we assume this stealth drone mission was also highly automated with onboard computer capable of carrying out the entire mission on its own from take off to landing, since advanced direction finding equipment can even detect radio transmissions from very far away so even take off and landing has to be automated. With that assumption we can see the drone could not broadcast anything but it could receive some one way commands and other operational info. In this situation the drone is to go in Iran and perform a certain mission and come back to a certain base in Afghanistan. US controllers can send some signals telling it to change its mission or to land in a different air base in Afghanistan eg. for a simple reason of a bad weather at original base. But the controllers had no way to confirm this as drone was in complete radio silence. In this scenario there is no way for Iran to jam the drone signal except perhaps for the incoming signals.

Also lets assume such a sophisticated drone also has other nav equipment onboard in addition to GPS for example astronomical navigation, gyroscopic etc. So hacking the GPS signal would not do the trick either. So how come such an automated drone made a mistake? Simple. Again it is because of the virus. Iranians had penetrated the US systems with a super-virus similar to Stuxnet and the virus was of a smart variety. It searched for all the drones it could find and infected the most valuable to Iran in this case it would be Global Hawk or Sentential. The virus remained dormant in drone computer just like Stuxnet, telling the operators every thing was ok and deceiving them but its core code had instructions to check for the position of drone all the time accessing onboard nav equipment of the drone.

Once drone was near or inside Iranian territory virus took over the drone computer and directed it to a predetermined Iranian air base for a landing and just before doing so it sent an encrypted triple DES signal to Iranians that their virus is coming home. Iranians prepared for its landing after receiving the signal and sent a brigade of their army to the air base for the arrival of the drone. They did not even need to jam anything. Just a simple jamming would have done. And in theory they did not even have to do that either.

The US operators did not know anything since there is radio silence. They were just waiting for the drone to come back all this time. Standing beside the runway. Dawn came and Americans got worried. Then they calculated the amount of fuel was onboard and waited for a bit longer to see if the drone comes back. When it did not and they had not received any emergency signal indicating that a crash was eminent. So they started to get worried until Iran announced that they have the drone. Besides the virus has been confirmed to be there already infecting US control systems.

 

[Safriz]

Iran says US spy drone was flying deep inside its airspace when it was downed - The Washington Post

TEHRAN, Iran — The unmanned U.S. spy plane was deep inside Iran’s airspace, flying over an eastern town famous for Persian carpets and saffron when it was downed by Iranian armed forces, state radio reported Wednesday.

The report said the stealth-version of the RQ-170 drone was detected by Iranian forces over the eastern town of Kashmar, some 140 miles (225 kilometers) from the border with Afghanistan.

The radio added that Iran will “soon” broadcast video footage of the downed drone.

 

[Harry_Thomason]

How can something that size have so many things? this probably is the f-22 raptor of the drone world, without weapons of course, Iran will probably make a version of this with weapons, but in about a few years as reverse engineering this is not piece of cake.

US officials say RQ-170 is a platform, you can add to it anything you want, - missiles, bombs, etc. Of course this is a gold mine for many years to come, I dont think Iranians will employ anything from it for at least a year or two, however learning how to track US stealth aircrafts will be much faster, within months Iranians will be able to tune their radars better.