The RQ-170 drone now in Iran's possession was "detected, hacked, and downed by the Islamic Republic of Iran's Armed Forces over the eastern town of Kashmar, some 225 kilometers (140 miles) from the border with Afghanistan on Sunday, December 4, 2011," IRNA reported Saturday.[1] -- Iran's Gen. Hossein Salami said in discussing the matter "that Iran had already downed other drones in its airspace but they were not that important and so, they were not declared" but that he "had to avoid getting into details so that the technology used to down the plane is not revealed." -- "He said Iran has drones which cannot be detected by radar and are able to fly tens of hours and have complicated software." -- "In intelligence and cyber wars, we are not hand-tied, but our enemies do not have a deep understanding of our capabilities and I advise them to think more on it," he said. -- A typically snide Russia Today clip showing Iranian footage of the RQ-170 claimed that the same drone was used to eavesdrop on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, had been operating in the area since 2010, and was nicknamed (by whom, it did not say) as the "Beast of Kandahar."[2] -- In the Iranian film, the RQ-170 appeared to be almost perfectly intact in extensive Iranian video, with only a hand-sized dent on the left side of its cream-colored exterior. -- Reuters reported that the drone had "crashed" and that an anonymous U.S. official said that it was "believed to have crashed because of a malfunction and not from being shot down or computer-hacked by the Iranians."[3] -- But Bloomberg Businessweek reported another official said that Iranian claims of hacking the drone "might be true."[4] -- "[T]he RQ-170 is part of a Secret Compartmented Intelligence (SCI) program, a classification higher than Top Secret," John Walcott said. -- For three years the CIA "has been flying two types of unmanned surveillance missions over Iran and along the Afghanistan-Iran border from a 9,200-foot runway at a former Soviet airbase in Shindand in western Afghanistan’s Herat province," Walcott said, again from anonymous sources....
1.
OFFICIAL: IRAN AMONG FEW COUNTRIES POSSESSING DRONE TECHNOLOGY
Islamic Republic News Agency
December 11, 2011
http://www.irna.ir/ENNewsShow.aspx?NID=30704893
TEHRAN -- Deputy Commander of Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Hossein Salami said Iran is among few countries which possess technology of unmanned aerial vehicle with scanning and reconnaissance systems.
Speaking with Iranian TV Channel 2 on Saturday evening, General Salami said the drone which had violated Iranian airspace and was downed by Iran’s aerospace technology is an American spy plane which shows U.S. modern intelligence technology in all respects.
He was talking about Stealth-version of the RQ-170 drone of U.S. on a CIA spy mission which was detected, hacked, and downed by the Islamic Republic of Iran's Armed Forces over the eastern town of Kashmar, some 225 kilometers (140 miles) from the border with Afghanistan on Sunday, December 4, 2011.
Elaborating on some technical specifications of the spy plane, General Salami added that he had to avoid getting into details so that the technology used to down the plane is not revealed.
He said Iran has drones which cannot be detected by radar and are able to fly tens of hours and have complicated software, however, as a matter of expedience, they have not been displayed completely in public.
Referring to the downed plane, Salami said these planes have some specifications that include all informational and technological advances and are very valuable for us and the downing of the U.S. drone is a victory for us and a defeat for our enemies.
“As far as technology is concerned, the gap between us and the U.S. or the Zionist regime and other developed countries is not so wide that having this drone is a dream for us but other countries may consider is as something astonishing,” said General Salami.
“In intelligence and cyber wars, we are not hand-tied, but our enemies do not have a deep understanding of our capabilities and I advise them to think more on it,” he added.
He said the U.S. drone was working for Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its violation of Iranian airspace is considered a hostile action which is a crime.
On media reports about U.S. concerns over the fact that Russia and China may access the advanced technology of this plane, General Salami said the two countries have not demanded anything so far but added that countries which are in intelligence war with U.S. are eager to know the slightest thing about the drone.
He said Iran had already downed other drones in its airspace but they were not that important and so, they were not declared.
He emphasized that Iran airspace is quite insecure for U.S. drones and Americans will lose information rather gather it if they repeat the action.
2.
IRAN SHOWS INTERCEPTED CIA DRONE UNSCATHED
By NeedToAwaken
YouTube
December 8, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRt5lMcPaWk
From: Russia Today
Iran shows intercepted CIA drone unscathed (VIDEO)
Published: 08 December, 2011, 22:41
Days after the Pentagon first denied and then admitted that it lost touch with a high-tech drone aircraft, authorities in Iran are now saying that they have the plane — and its condition is pristine. [NOTE: Actually, significant damage can be seen at 0:43. --R.T.]
3.
DRONE CRASH UNMASKS U.S. SPY EFFORT IN IRAN
By Tabassum Zakaria and Phil Stewart
Reuters
December 9, 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/09/us-iran-usa-idUSTRE7B826I20111209
WASHINGTON -- The crash of a CIA drone in Iran has brought into the open what U.S. intelligence agencies would prefer kept secret: intense spying efforts in a country where the United States has no official presence.
Iran on Thursday aired with great flourish footage of the captured drone, which appeared largely intact. Pentagon and CIA spokesmen would not comment on whether it was the missing U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aircraft.
A person familiar with the situation confirmed that the drone that crashed was on a surveillance mission over Iran.
It is believed to have crashed because of a malfunction and not from being shot down or computer-hacked by the Iranians, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
Although there are risks that Iran could attempt to reverse engineer the technology, or sell it to other countries, like China, U.S. officials believe that Iran will not be able to mine the drone's computer systems to learn details of the U.S. surveillance mission.
U.S. surveillance of Iran through various means has been going on for years, U.S. officials and others with direct knowledge of the situation say.
A private U.S. defense expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that when he visited the command center at a U.S. military base in the Gulf region in 2008, it was clear that the installation was receiving multiple feeds of electronic surveillance information from inside Iran.
Some of the information appeared to be transmitted from high-altitude aircraft and some from electronic sensors which the United States had somehow installed on the ground in Iran, the expert said.
The United States has no official presence in Iran so it is difficult to determine exactly what is going on inside its borders. One recent incident has yet to be fully unraveled.
EXPLOSION IN ISFAHAN
On November 28, there were contradictory reports out of Iran on whether an explosion had occurred in the city of Isfahan, which is also home to a major nuclear site.
David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said he has been studying imagery of that area and no damage was detected at the Isfahan nuclear site. But, he said, "it is credible there was an explosion, but not at the nuclear site."
He said it was puzzling that Iranians clearly said an explosion at a missile depot two weeks earlier had been an accident, but did not provide similar clarity about Isfahan. "We're trying to figure out what actually happened," he said.
"Explosions are happening in Iran, and Iran is not making a big deal out of them. They are either calling them accidents or saying they didn't happen, and therefore when these things continue to happen it could be because intelligence agencies are actually now playing sabotage," Albright said.
In the earlier November 12 incident, Iran said a massive blast at a military base west of Tehran killed 17 members of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, including the head of its missile program, in an accident while weapons were being moved.
When unexplained events occur that appear to be aimed against Iran's nuclear program, experts often question whether U.S. and Israeli intelligence services were at work.
Iran also has had alleged covert operations against the West come to light. Recently, the United States arrested a man accused of being involved in a plot by Iranian agents to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington.
The U.S. government also accuses Iran of arming and funding Iraqi militias responsible for attacking American troops in Iraq.
U.S. officials do not appear to be the least bit disturbed about mishaps to Iran's nuclear and missile programs that include the Stuxnet computer virus that attacked centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear site.
"Whether it's due to technical difficulties, incompetence, or other reasons, some setbacks to Iran's activities are welcome," a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball; Writing by Tabassum Zakaria; Editing by Warren Strobel)
4.
IRAN SHOWS DOWNED SPY DRONE AS U.S. ASSESSES TECHNOLOGY LOSS
By John Walcott
Bloomberg Businessweek
December 9, 2011
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-10/iran-shows-downed-spy-drone-as-u-s-assesses-technology-loss.html
(Updates with Schwartz beginning in seventh paragraph, adds China report beginning in 10th paragraph.)
The unmanned RQ-170 Sentinel is still highly classified, yet since one came down in Iran five days ago, it’s a lot less secret.
Three U.S. defense officials said the plane the Iranians displayed on television yesterday appears to be the Lockheed Martin Corp. RQ-170 that controllers lost contact with on Dec. 4. The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have declined to comment on the matter.
Three U.S. intelligence officials said the greatest concern now is that the Iranians will give Russian or Chinese scientists access to the aircraft, which is designed to be virtually invisible to radar and carries advanced communications and surveillance gear.
Studying it may give two technologically sophisticated potential adversaries insight into the unmanned spy plane’s flight controls, communications gear, video equipment, and self-destruct, holding pattern, or return-to-base mechanisms, officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the RQ-170 is part of a Secret Compartmented Intelligence (SCI) program [sic -- SCI actually stands for Sensitive Compartmented Information program], a classification higher than Top Secret, and because the investigation into the loss of the drone is also classified.
REVERSE ENGINEERING
In addition, they said, the remains of the RQ-170 could help the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, or others develop Infrared Surveillance and Targeting (IRST) or Doppler radar technology that under some conditions are capable of detecting stealth aircraft such as drones and the new Lockheed Martin F-35s.
There also is a danger that the fallen Sentinel’s shape, special coatings, control surfaces, engine inlet, and other unique qualities could help other countries develop or improve their own radar-evading aircraft, such as China’s J-20 stealth fighter.
“There is the potential for reverse engineering, clearly,” Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz said yesterday during a taping of the television show “This Week in Defense News,” according to *Air Force Times*. “Ideally, one would want to maintain the American advantage. That certainly is in our minds.”
If the jet “comes into the possession of a sophisticated adversary, there’s not much the U.S. could do about it,” he said.
The intelligence officials said that Chinese or Russian access to the drone is a greater concern than a possible Iranian effort to reverse-engineer the RQ-170, which they said is unlikely given the drone’s special coatings and other materials.
STEALING SECRETS
“Buy, Build or Steal: China’s Quest for Advanced Military Aviation Technologies,” a new report from the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, says that stealth technology is a high priority for Beijing since “few things differentiate the lethality of an air force more than the level of technology in its most advanced aircraft.”
“China will likely rely more heavily on espionage to acquire those critical military aviation technologies it cannot acquire legitimately from foreign suppliers or develop on its own,” the report concludes.
Nevertheless, the Obama administration didn’t seriously consider bombing the wreckage or sending special operations forces into Iran to destroy or retrieve it because either would be an act of war, two U.S. officials said.
HACKING CLAIM
Reverse engineering the Sentinel or its components would be difficult and time consuming, the intelligence officials said. The most troubling prospect is that the Iranians’ second claim about how they brought it down -- by hacking into its controls and landing it themselves -- might be true, said one of the intelligence officials .
The official said the possibility that the Iranians, perhaps with help from China or Russia, hacked into the drone’s satellite communications is doubly alarming because it would mean that Iranian or other cyber-warfare officers were able to disable the Sentinel’s automatic self-destruct, holding pattern, and return-to-base mechanisms.
Those are intended to prevent the plane’s secret flight control, optical, radar, surveillance, and communications technology from falling into the wrong hands if its controllers at Creech Lake Air Force Base or the Tonopah Test Range, both in Nevada, lose contact with it.
TARGETING COMPUTER NETWORKS
In recent years, one of the officials said, computer hackers thought to be part of extensive Chinese or Russian cyber espionage efforts have attacked the computer networks of numerous defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin; broken into two satellite ground stations and planted keystroke logging software in some military computers -- including some that are used to control some U.S. drones.
It isn’t known whether that malware has been found in RQ-170 computers, or only in those used to control less advanced drones such as the Predator and Reaper, made by General Atomics Aeronautical of San Diego, that are used by the Air Force and CIA in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere.
Two U.S. intelligence officials said that while the drones’ and other military and intelligence computer networks are kept separate from the public Internet, investigators have uncovered what they said are numerous instances when thumb drives containing Chinese and other malware have infected classified networks. Often, they said, such infections have spread quickly and proved very difficult to eradicate.
TELEVISION DEBUT
The drone made a 2-1/2 minute television debut yesterday on Iran’s state-owned Press TV channel. Two U.S. officials with knowledge of the RQ-170 program said that some details, including the seams on the drone’s fuselage, its access ports, and its unusual air intake, appear to confirm that it’s genuine.
The official Iranian Republic News Agency reported that the Foreign Ministry protested the “violation of Iran’s airspace by a U.S. spy drone on Dec. 4,” the day Iranian forces claimed to have shot down the aircraft 140 miles inside the Iranian border from Afghanistan.
The RQ-170 was flying a reconnaissance mission inside Iranian airspace when its controllers lost contact with it, U.S. officials said.
The officials said that for three years the U.S. has been flying two types of unmanned surveillance missions over Iran and along the Afghanistan-Iran border from a 9,200-foot runway at a former Soviet airbase in Shindand in western Afghanistan’s Herat province.
In addition to monitoring construction and other activity at suspected Iranian nuclear facilities from high altitudes, the officials said, the CIA has been using drones to monitor cross-border traffic and Iranian support for insurgents.
The CIA, not the Air Force, flies the missions inside Iran so they are covert operations that the U.S. government can deny.
--Editors: Terry Atlas, Jim Rubin.
To contact the reporter on this story: John Walcott in Washington at
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To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at
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