If we fear the loss of technology....do you ever deploy your assets operationally?

Does that mean we would never dispatch B-2's with bunker busters as both are cutting edge technology?

At some point we have to use our expensive toys or they are money poorly spent.

Implying they have to be used in anger to be cost-effective?

Like our independent nuclear deterrent, you mean?

We are using them - they are pottering about deterring.

Or at least, it is enough that our potential targets believe they are doing so.

"Like our independent nuclear deterrent, you mean? "

thats a daft argument
A nuclear threat is a latent threat which may work through intimidation.
An unarmed UAV on a recce mission is no threat. Its just an information gathering tool
Comparing the two is just stupid. It may sound a clever argument, but its total xxxx

Are we not loosing the point

The iranians claim to have hacked into the drone...... That would not require a stealth beating radar....just some big brained spotty teenagers


Knowing the location would surely come from the hack and then all sorts of permutations are possible.

Considering someone else was able to hack the iranian system with worm tech last year, which must have significant security ? The drone route might be possible.

Remember the tennage lad with aspergers, who uncle sam tried to deport last year, succesfully hacked the pentagon looking for et

I hope this is not true..... But if they can keep f14s flying and reengingeer cobras and build nuclear bombs surely we must raise our opinion of the persian empire?

and its only a few weeks since we had reports that computers at the USA command & control centre were poxed up

I have no doubt their Chinese friends have been of invaluable assistance too.

"Knowing the location would surely come from the hack and then all sorts of permutations are possible.

Considering someone else was able to hack the iranian system with worm tech last year, which must have significant security ? The drone route might be possible.

Remember the tennage lad with aspergers, who uncle sam tried to deport last year, succesfully hacked the pentagon looking for et"


Or, just maybe a single engined UAV had an engine failure?

Have you heard of Occams Razor?:confused:

Many many years ago there were conversations had about not bringing back the rpv (yes, I am that old) as the "enemy may follow it (!) leading up to "We should place explosives in it" so we can a: Dive on a too or b: Wander off at min fuel and push the big red button. Problem solved. Then along come the ah but brigade. Explosives you say, then here spend the next month reading these regs and reqs. At the end of which, with eyes bleeding, everyone went, no thanks. Plus a few little things like weight/space, etc.

When one is operating in an area where you can a: Call in the Marines (fig) to recover or b: Call in an airstrike to destroy (hopefully) then little to no attention is paid to the old charlie drake song "My boomerang won't come back".
When the little sod decides to beat feet quicker than you can dispatch something to shoot it down (and you may not know the direction it hoofed off in) and enters (violates) another country's airspace, one which you really aren't too friendly with, then many "Oh Crap, Oh Crap" recitations are heard and the options list drops to zero.
That is unfortunately the reality that uav/ucav/u whatever v bring with them.

OK, this is old news, but relevant
Suggestions that military systems can't be hacked are just gung-ho balderdash
Computer Virus Tracking US Drones

" October 08, 2011Military.com|by Bryant Jordan

Who’s watching the watchers?
That’s the question the defense officials are asking with the discovery that a computer virus has infected the U.S.-based control stations of Predator and Reaper drones, tracking every keystroke made by the pilots as they guide the vehicles on their missions.....


"he security specialists aren’t sure whether the virus and its so-called “keylogger” payload were introduced intentionally or by accident, according to Wired. The magazine’s source said it could be a common piece of malware that just happened to make its way into UAVs’ networks.
They also don’t know how far it has spread, but they believe it has reached both into classified systems at the base, meaning that some secret data may have been captured by the keylogger and relayed to someone outside the authorized chain of command, the magazine was told."

"When the little sod decides to beat feet quicker than you can dispatch something to shoot it down (and you may not know the direction it hoofed off in) and enters (violates) another country's airspace, one which you really aren't too friendly with, then many "Oh Crap, Oh Crap" recitations are heard and the options list drops to zero."


Does anybody seriously think that anybody uses a stealth UAV in their own airspace?
Does anybody seriously think that it was not supposed to be over Iran?
Can anybody give me a good reason to use such a UAV over friendly territory?

I am not a 'computah' whizz so please forgive me if this question seems daft.

Why would an operator of a UAV have his controls connected to a 'computah' that is also connected to the outside World?

I wonder how long it will be before the Chinese are churning these things out by the gross and when will they get onto Ebay?

Hacking planes
 

I am not a hacker but I am a software engineer and I am aware of the generalities.

You need something common like MS Windows with thousands of people having a go at it from many angles. Work is not done by spotty teenagers but by quite seriously skilled people who have experience and create tools. The teenagers usually use tools made by others.

Many attacks succeed because doors are left wide open for them - e.g the practise of people having administrator privileges by default means that any program you launch can start modifying the system. This is pretty basic but it has been the case for years with older versions of Windows for reasons of ease of use. Other attacks happen because known flaws are not corrected on all computers and if you simply try 1000 old tricks you eventually find one that works.

It is a lot harder to attack an unknown and rare system (surely the rq-170 doesn't run Windows?) and harder still to do it when you only have one article to attack for some limited time period.

I am more inclined to think of attacks involving jamming or signal corruption or something like that (possibly because I don't understand that area well).

Most complex systems cannot be bug free and bugs often lurk in error-handling routines because people almost never manage to test all the possible combinations of mishaps. I am wondering what drones do when something goes wrong with their communications. I can imagine triggering a failure by luck.

Espionage would help that luck a lot, of course.

In my humble experience, I would wager that you could extrapolate the square root of nothing (polite version) from such keystrokes. Guiding the vehicles around would just give a load of numbers as they changed height, heading etc. Just sayin.......

My understanding is that if it loses it's communications, then it has a set mission it would go and do, taking it home, until it got link back.

Agree with all the comments

A few points of interest

1. The us have often sent top secret stealth designs over unhospitable terrain... Remember tag board the d21 drone programme from the sixties. Bits of it are on display in china. This was mini sr71 with a single engine, ram and stealth.

2. Occams razor can also work the other way if the engine is reliable then the only other option is spotty teenagers.

3. Tehran was quite capable of adapting f14 etc without china... For all the rhetoric they have done quite well.

the infection at Creech was - allegedly - a keylogger normally found on PC networks and was normally used for obtaining user names / passwords for gaming accounts. However it could equally be used for capturing command keystrokes.
I can quite easily see how a few hours keystroke records could divulge enough information for a third party to at least disrupt control of a UAV
That doesn't explain how to break into the system itself though - that all depends on just how exposed to the world wide interweb the command and control system is.
But essentially, to anyone with the required skill, if its connected, its accessible.

What you have to understand is that virus / malware writing is not nowadays the hobby of a few spotty teens in their bedrooms. Its big business. A typical Russian post-doctorate computer scientist can earn more money writing malware for the Russian mafia than he can in industry. For someone like that, the malware industry is a real genuine career option

Agreed just using sty as an example.... If someone can hack sony, microsoft and apple i would assume defence is also more than possible.

Afterall if you can recieve the transmissions to the drone you are on your way to decoding and controlling

Nothing is totally secure....just ask ultra

Oh my god.
You have all moved into SAM territory.

"if the engine is reliable "

Do you have any idea how many normal UAVs the US and ourselves have lost in Afghanistan without any help from hackers!?

They fall out of the sky with amazing rapidity.

Why would any sane person suspect different with this one?



"equally be used for capturing command keystrokes"

Total pseudo-knowledge gibberish.

You don't know how it is commanded.
You don't know where it is commanded from.
You don't know how the datalink works.
You don't know if indeed it has a datalink!

People need to caveat their actual knowledge a bit more on here.
Perhaps headings of:

TOTAL SPECULATION

EDUCATED GUESS

I DESIGNED IT

I WAS THE TEST PILOT

I'M ON DAY RELEASE

I HAVE USED SIMILAR

I AM 12

NO IDEA BUT I AM AN EDUCATED INTELLIGENT PERSON WHO USUALLY GOES WITH OCCAM'S RAZOR


(that's me, by the way:))

Tourist
I think thats all taken for granted. No-one HAS said that the drone was hacked.
All that has been pointed out is that if anyone claims that hacking a UAV is impossible, then they are living in a fools paradise.
Its possible. What no-one knows is whether it has happened or not
NO computer system is secure if its part of a network

You really have no idea do you? Not "friendly" territory, but an area/airspace/battlespace over which you have nominal control ie: the ability to go and get the pieces or drop a guided munition on the remnants. In the past both have been employed on the same hva, for damn good reasons.
When ones toy crosses another country's borders, and you are not really sure whereabouts it ended up, things get really complicated. Especially when that country doesn't like you very much and the international repercussions/ramifications of going to find it/get it/destroy it are enormous. Remember, the days of going in guns blazing are long gone.

I am going to hibernate now. Y'all have fun, you hear.