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back to article Iran displays video footage of captured US spy drone

Iranian state television has shown video of what it claims is a US spy drone that was hijacked by its army's electronic warfare unit. The government has shown footage of what appears to be a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, which the Iranians claim was flown from Afghanistan over the northern city of Kashmar when it was taken …

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        1. S Watts
          Reply Icon
          Meh

          landing gear?

          "Because in all the sneaky pics taken of one in flight, the landing gear is retracted."

          I don't think that the undercarriage configuration is so secret it couldn't be mocked for something like this. In fact, the "shown footage" link in the article includes stock picture of one of these on a runway.

          Meanwhile: If this is genuine, then I wouldn't doubt that Iran _could_ have had some assistance from military advisers from "elsewhere", assuming they needed help...

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    2. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Fake for the media - probably yes

      Dunno about the other bit.

      In any case, I would not underestimate a country which which can successfully carry out an attack on a certificate authority, get fake certs and do MIM on its dissenters traffic. Did I just say that that (and other Iranian "hacker") attacks were government sponsored? Silly me...

      As far as showing to the media - I would be surprised if they show the media the real deal. Same as with USSR and the shot down Powell's U2 - the real bits of the plane were never shown. Same as with many other similar "incidents".

      In any case, if there is an unintentional (did I just say unintentional, silly me, that "incident" in Belgrade was an "honest mistake" and had nothing to do with the bits from the downed F117) pair of blockbusters dropped on the Chinese embassy in Teheran we will know who won the bidding.

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    3. MacGyver
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      IT Angle

      I agree..

      Not only would they have to find and match the signal coming in, and be able to track it, then crack and decrypt the control signal, block the real one, then in the span of 5 minutes; dissect the signal, figure out the control interface protocol, then find someone that can write the program to talk to the control interface, then find a pilot to be able to fly a tail-less remote control plane blind on a mocked-up control panel, unless we are also talking about them being able to decode and display the video data in real-time too. I think not.

      They've obviously have been watching too much CSI.

      Maybe they have just been planning this for awhile, even still, I think the CSI Miami guys would have a hard time pulling this off, and they can pull cell phone data out of phones wirelessly on their magic table without even touching the phone.

      My guess, they jammed the signal and the real one fell out of the sky, and smashed into lots of small pieces, and this is their mockup of what they think it looked like. Or, that given a situation where there is a lack of a control signal this thing is programmed to "land" on it's own (I certainly would hope not).

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      1. tonysmith
        Reply Icon

        too much CSI?

        If I remember correctly some rag tags in Iraq and maybe the flip flop cave men in Afghanistan managed to 'hack' US drones and get live video feeds which in turn allowed them to prepare for US attacks.

        The notion of Iran doing this via 'cyber warfare!' is not completely out of this world. It's most probably that sort of snooty 'they're too thick, so let us not even bother securing our high tech toys' attitude that most probably got them in the mess.

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    4. skeptical i
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      Thumb Down

      Huh, didn't know aircraft (or the footage thereof) had sexual preferences.

      Unless you're just being a bigot, in which case kindly keep it to yourself.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Protected from takeover???

    Hardly! American mentality is natorious to deploy high tech gear without protection. Feeds of spy drones is unencrypted and intercepted by Libyans and other countries for yonks. It takes off the shelf parts and a laptop and you are in.

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    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge
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      Devil

      You are in to listen

      You are not in to control.

      Only the video feeds were unencrypted. The control channel (IIRC) was not. So the bits from laptop in itself would not be enough to control it.

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  4. John Sanders
    FAIL

    Wanna bet...

    That in case of an extensive period of lost communications those thingies fry anything of value inside the unit.

    Having being said that, the thing screams: FAKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Apparently not. According to the yanks the thing is designed to go find itself a landing spot. Bizarre, but true according to them. Having said that I reckon this one is a fake.

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    2. Tom 7
      Reply Icon

      Since the Americans have admitted loosing one

      I think its unlikely someone made a fake for the publicity stunt.

      And as for extensive periods of lost communication leading to self destruction that require the humility to actually believe what you were doing could go wrong which is not likely.

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    3. Tchou
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      Thumb Up

      You might

      suffer a bad case of mixing US tv movies and actual technology.

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    4. Anonymous Coward
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      Stop

      Bad Bet

      Your self-destruct system would only cause massive financial and maybe human damage during maintenance. These systems are extremely complex, extremely expensive and (relatively) heavy. The designers don't want to screw it up with some sort of half-brained self-destruct mechanism. Neither do they want to be responsible for badly burned mechanics.

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  5. a_been

    The Americans admitted they had "lost contact" with one of these over "western Afghanistan" over a weak ago, or about 12-24 hours after the Iranians said they had managed to hack into one flying over Iran and took control of it. Reuters and AFP had several reports about it. Nice to see el Reg following the rule of "pics or it didn't happen" though.

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    1. itzman
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      Somehwat between the two positions..

      The Iranians found out what frequency hopping channels it was on, and built a broad spectrum high power jammer and aimed it at the plane.

      Lacking any control signal, it went to autopilot and landed itself, possibly frying some internal chips in the process.

      There may not BE that much secrecy in it anyway.

      What it as doing was not secret. The information it captured is known to the Iranians anyway.

      Its general shape is known. What sin;t known is the details of its encryption in the command and control areas and exactly what its built of.

      But that probably isn't of much use anyway..unless you can reproduce the same materials...

      ...and what would Iran do with its own anyway?

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      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        the details of its encryption

        easily wiped from an EEPROM or similar, at negligible cost

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  6. jake Silver badge

    My only question is ...

    Why are the Iranian authorities begging to be attacked by the UN/US?

    My gut feeling is that the PTB in Iran have enough of the last 30 years of Iran's GNP in "friendly offshore accounts" that they are ready to leave the slime-pit that they have created in what was once the "center of the world" wonder that was Persia[1] ... but they aren't culturally capable of ducking & running, because that would cause them to lose face.

    Yes, I've been there, pre & post 1979. The best-man at my wedding, and the best friend I have, was (and is) Iranian. Today's Iran is a very sad shadow of what it was even in 1975. He agrees with my assessment, BTW ...

    [1] I don't use Wiki much, but this pic describes what I'm talking about:

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Iran_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg/250px-Iran_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg.png

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    1. James Micallef Silver badge
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      Mushroom

      erm.... actually it's some people in the US and Israel who are begging to attack Iran. The politicians in the US are beholden to the Israel lobby to such an extent that most prioritise Israel's interests over US ones in the middle east. The US has no real strategic concern with Iran beyond a basic stability that keeps the strait of Hormuz open to oil tanker shipping.

      Those who REALLY want to attack Iran are the Israeli far right, partly concerned about the 'destroy Israel' rhetoric coming from Iran (which is really mostly rhetoric), but mostly because they want to stay the only nuclear-capable country in the region (which allows them pretty much a free hand in dealing with Palestine without the other Arab countries interfering).

      Sure there are some ultra-religious Islamist nuts in Iran ranting on about the great satan, executing gay people and blowing up Buddha statues, but they're no different from the ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel who are intent on permanently occupying the whole of the west bank. nor from the right-wing Christianists* in the US.

      *Christianist = Christian version of Islamists. Christians are in favour of love, peace and charity, Christianists are in favour of capital punishment, torture, war on non-Christians, and entrenching their religious prejudices in the US constitution. Since they can't execute gays in the US, they materially support this practice in places such as Uganda.

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      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        RE: James Micallef

        If the US administration is so beholden to the Isreal lobby, why was the Obumbler so quick to demand Israel stop all settlement building and heap criticism on the Israelis, whilst ignoring Palestinian failings to meet their roadmap commitments? Please go read a bit instead of just getting your views spoonfed to you.

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        1. a_been
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          Stop

          @MATT

          And yet he didn't stop a single cent of all the billions going to Israel every year from the US taxpayer. Action speaks louder than words and the Israeli government has shown by their actions that their words mean nothing.

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    2. Knochen Brittle
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Another question is ...

      ... why do you sound like a lobrau Nazi whining for Operation Barbarossa to begin?

      In any case, enjoy your personal Stalingrad ... and, BTW, well done on enrolling a token Untermensch to cheer on your glorious march to the Endsieg!

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    For the people that think it is fake...

    The US Department of Defense just confirmed it is the real deal. And more...they admitted lying when they said it "crashed" on the Iranian side. The drone is pretty much intact and there is a strong chance it was guided to a rough landing by the Iranian hackers.

    Oh well.....Americans: lying to everybody and bullying others since 1776.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      @Rombizio

      no they didn't. Does Ahmadinejad know you are on the net?

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  8. Anon-engy

    Lets see..

    Let's see, if you where planning a secret strike on an Iranian site:

    1. It would be good to know where the weak spots in the thier radar systems are to help in planning the route for a strike with stealth aircraft. (Oops we lost track of the darn thing, plausible deniability, it just happen to stray over your country.)

    2. If you knew that Iran had some jamming abilities sold to them by the Russians to use against thier "Friends the Americans" that could jam the ROV's, then fly one over Iran and monitor the transient signals coming from the ground would be able to tell you thier real capabilities, so you could design and employ counter measures.

    3. Any normal country that got thier hands on a super secret craft would take it to a one of thier own secret bases/research centers (i.e. underground where you a developing other nasty technologies). If you knew that then just send over a dumbed down version and when it gets to its final location, have it phone home, to pin point that location, which nows becomes a target of oppurtunity.

    4. If the Americans didn't use the latest stealth helicopter on the raid to get Bin Laden, as important as that was, then do you really believe they would be using the cutting edge ROV's in Afgan. for just any old willy-nilly operation to gather information about a bunch of terrorist. They won't even base the B-2's outside of the continiental USA.

    5. If you knew that if the Iranians got thier hands on it, they are like all arabs, they would sell it anybody that will help them "secretly" develop Nuclear weapons (i.e. China/Russia"). So develop a special version of it with lame backward technology and then let the Chinese and Russians spend billions trying to reverse engineer the technology that you already have figured out how to defeat.

    Just another day at the "Farm" delivering mis-information and false leads to anyone dumb enough to believe it..........

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Misinformation

      I used to know someone who worked on the drawings for Concorde. He reckoned this sort of thing was going on constantly back in the day and spies were everywhere. He said he actually felt quite sorry for his unfortunate counterparts probably holed up for weeks on end in some secret bunker trying to piece together and make sense of the rubbish they had been fed. On the other hand I think they must have got the upper hand eventually as the soviet supersonic airliner made its public début first IIRC. Amazing how much energy they were prepared to expend on a project that was really prestige value only (and almost the antitheses of the socialist ideal).

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      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Boffin

        RE: Misinformation

        "......I think they must have got the upper hand eventually as the soviet supersonic airliner made its public début first....." Yes, Corcordeski (Tu-144) flew about a year before Concorde, but represented the application of brute enginerring rather than the technical masterpiece that was Concorde. This was because the Soviets had a hard time understanding half the information they pinched (and/or were given) from the French end. Proof of this was seen at the Paris Air Show crash, where the Tu-144 prototype had a complete structural failure in a relatively low-G manouvere the Concorde could easily have survived.

        As regards self-destruction, I'm told that sensitive components in US "recce" systems have an ability to wipe themselves if they stray past a set period. This type of self-deletion doesn't pose a risk to groundcrew.

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    2. carl 10
      Reply Icon

      "they are like all arabs"

      "they are like all arabs" - except the Iranians are not actually arabs and are ethnically distinct.

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    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Flame

      Except

      ..that Iranians are not Arabs and you are a hillbilly.

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  9. Andy 97
    Happy

    Nice PR coup

    Can you imagine the Fox News out put on this?

    "You gone taken a wrroooong turnin' there boy!"

    In all honesty, the idea of the Iranians being able to crack a heavily ciphered command stream is very unlikely, but their propaganda department it genius.

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    1. ElReg!comments!Pierre
      Reply Icon

      Unlikely?

      Remember that "the biggest military hack of all time" was performed by entering the default password for a remote access program...

      Or do you reckon that the Iranian are tech-illiterate neandertals? In that case, think again. People who can't solve problems by throwing pharaonic amounts of cash at them tend to develop smarter ways, in compensation.

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  10. Stuart 25
    FAIL

    If it is real, and the yanks do admit to losing a drone over Iran, then hopefully whoever allowed it to be deployed over hostile airspace without a decent self-destruct system will soon be in a cell next to Bradley Manning.

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  11. G.H.
    FAIL

    Where's the Lewis Page rant?!

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    1. Knochen Brittle
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      Thumb Up

      Too busy ... stroking his massive Penetrator for consolation

      [with Bryant holding up the heavy end for Britain, as he stares down the barrel in anticipation of another albumin-shower]

      PS: Well done, Iran, just a quick peek at this little Xmas present should handily be worth a string of UNSC vetoes to the right people.

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  12. DrXym

    If it were a fake

    Then isn't the US coming straight out and saying its a fake? Is it really in their interest for the world to believe Iran could commandeer one of their most sophisticated spy drones and land it?

    While it's doubtful Iran did what they claimed, one wonders how they might have laid their hands on it. Maybe unusual system events cause it to enter a glide and land mode which the Iranians inadvertantly managed to cause to happen. Maybe it just ran out of fuel or got confused and Iran got lucky when it landed on their side.

    Or maybe it is a paper mache mockup, but the silence from the US is curious.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      "Is it really in their interest for the world to believe Iran could commandeer one of their most sophisticated spy drones and land it?"

      Yes. Because everyone who then thinks that these things are no longer a threat ("just listen for it and log in!") will probably cling onto that notion right up until the point one of them shoves a smart bomb up their behind without warning. I think it's known as giving your opponents a false sense of security.

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  13. Rob
    Go

    My 2 pence worth

    I reckon it's the real deal, it looks like it's been sort of bolted back together again, so if they did take control of it, they might of only got control of he flight surfaces and maybe landing gear was not an option.

    Judging by the Americans refusing to comment I think they are worried to say the least as I'm pretty sure the Chinese will end up being the highest bidder. These things would probably make a great stealthy nuke delivery system with a bit of modification.

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  14. Sean O'Connor 1

    I wonder if the drone is programmed to try and land itself automatically if it suffers a major systems/communications failure?

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    1. Peter2 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      In which case...

      All you'd need to do is jam the command frequency, which to be honest is what i'd do immediately on seeing one flying about.

      The real question is why it lands nearby instead of turning around and going home when comms are lost if that is the case.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Stop

        One should Assume

        ..that the control channel is cryptographically secured. And that loss of connection for more than 5 minutes results in "GOTO FLY_HOME_PROC".

        It appears not plausible the Iranians broke into the crypto of the command channel and sent their own commands. But who knows, maybe they have developed some elite cryptologic capability ?

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  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Was it captured, or...

    ...did it defect?

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  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    doh

    looks like something homer simpson would make. So it's probably real.

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  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    even my poor research skills (I read the article on the BBC yesterday) bring up this

    "US officials have acknowledged the loss of the unmanned plane, saying it had malfunctioned."

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  18. Ben 4
    FAIL

    Fake, dodgy model

    Surely this has to be fake? The picture in the New York Times shows a very dodgy looking model.

    The join between the body and the wing is super sloppy. Seriously doubt Lockheed are that poor at nailing one of these things together.

    And the fact that the underside isn't shown just adds to the dubious nature of this PR stunt.

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    1. Bango Skank
      Reply Icon
      Alien

      skin deep

      yeah, the guts are probably already in the Russian and Chinese hands and all that's left is the skin.

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    2. Alan Dougherty
      Reply Icon

      When flying at high altitude and fast speeds, body panels contract.

      Take a look at the SR-71.. I'ts panels wehere so badly fitting at sea-level on the runway, that it leaked fuel until it got fast and high enough.

      A sloppy join on the ground could well be deliberate.

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      1. SkippyBing
        Reply Icon

        RE:SR-71

        Not really relevant , the Blackbird flew at around Mach 3.0, the Beast of Kandahar is subsonic, you don't really want to be screaming around if you're trying to monitor one area of a country.

        Altitude is irrelevant, at 50,000' the temperature is around -56C, the heating is all from skin friction due to speed, I think Concorde got up to around 100C at Mach 2.0.

        It does look very badly put together for a Lockheed product, and the colour is odd, strangely at 50,000 you don't want to be painted the same colour as the desert as it's a long way away the finish will be to reduce the IR signature and possibly the radar signature as well. Generally some shade of gray is best.

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    3. Peter Simpson 1
      Reply Icon
      Black Helicopters

      Underside isn't shown

      Because of the hay bales holding it all up. I seriously doubt it was recovered in one piece, else it would have been shown off the day they recovered it. Plenty of Bondo, duct tape and a paint job accounts for the several days between reported recovery and display...

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  19. Timmay
    FAIL

    Skulls and stripes flag

    Come on Iran, really? Skulls and stripes flag? If you want to be taken seriously and have any hope of any respect on the international stage, you have to take the higher ground and not resort to petty gestures like displaying a US flag with the stars replaced with skulls next to this thing.

    Yes, we understand you hate the US, but you don't see other countries taking the piss or mocking flags of countries they have beef with.

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    1. RichardB
      Reply Icon

      errr... what?

      Really? Seriously?

      U mad?

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    2. Loyal Commenter Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Yeah

      Because the US NEVER mocked and demonised the hammer and sickle of the USSR.

      Yes, it;s rather childish and ficaile to mock the flag of another country, but lets not claim that Iran are the only ones ever to be so crass. Certain other nations have a reputation for crassness y'know.

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