Iran not returning UAV - but President Obama had to ask.

The Obama administration said Monday it has delivered a formal request to Iran for the return of a U.S. surveillance drone captured by Iranian armed forces, but is not hopeful that Iran will comply.
President Barack Obama said that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. 'We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond,' Obama said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday.

He wouldn't comment on what the Iranians might learn from studying the downed aircraft. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said it's difficult to know 'just frankly how much they're going to be able to get from having obtained those parts,' the Associated Press reports.


Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Panetta said they're not optimistic about getting the drone back because of recent Iranian behaviour that Clinton said indicated 'that the path that Iran seems to be going down is a dangerous one for themselves and the region.'


'We submitted a formal request for the return of our lost equipment as we would in any situation to any government around the world,' Clinton told reporters at a State Department news conference with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

'Given Iran's behaviour to date we do not expect them to comply but we are dealing with all of these provocations and concerning actions taken by Iran in close concert with our closest allies and partners,' she said.

Panetta said the request to return the drone was appropriate. 'I don't expect that that will happen,' he said. 'But I think it's important to make that request.'

Formal request: President Obama at Monday's news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-

Neither Obama nor Clinton would provide details of the drone request, but diplomatic exchanges between Washington to Tehran are often handled by Switzerland, which represents U.S. interests in Iran.

The State Department said Monday that the Swiss ambassador to Iran met with Iranian foreign ministry officials last week but refused to say what they discussed.
Iran TV reported earlier Monday that Iranian experts were in the final stages of recovering data from the RQ-170 Sentinel, which went down in Iran earlier this month.

Tehran has cited the capture as a victory for Iran and displayed the nearly intact drone on state TV. U.S. officials say the aircraft malfunctioned and was not brought down by Iran.

Despite the incident, Clinton said the administration and its allies would continue to push Iran to engage over its nuclear program while at the same time increasing pressure on the regime with new, enhanced sanctions.

Keeping it: Iran says it will not return the US RQ-170 Sentinel high-altitude reconnaissance drone that crashed in Iran earlier this month

'We obviously believe strongly in a diplomatic approach. We want to see the Iranians engage and, as you know, we have attempted to bring about that engagement over the course of the last three-plus years. It has not proven effective, but we are not giving up on it,' she said.
Standing beside Clinton, Hague agreed.

'We're not giving up on engagement with Iran, but on a number of occasions Iran has behaved in a way in recent weeks and months which has intensified confrontation with the rest of the world,' he said. 'We have seen an increasing predilection for dangerous and illegal adventures on the part of at least parts of the Iranian regime.'

Clinton and Hague referred to the storming of British diplomatic compounds in Tehran, allegations that Iran tried to arrange the assassination of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Iran's ongoing support for militant groups and its continued defiance of demands to prove its nuclear program is peaceful.

Gen Hossein Salami, deputy head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, said on state television that the violation of Iran's airspace by the U.S. drone was a 'hostile act' and warned of a 'bigger' response.


Read more:

Posit: What if RQ-170 is a Trojan Horse?

(C) Steve Douglass
Permission required for publication or posting.

The following is fiction:

Somewhere behind closed doors deep inside the Pentagon:

Man #1: "STUXNET slowed them down some - but it looks like Iran will have the bomb within eighteen months."

Man #2: "And that would be bad."

Man #3 "It would mean the destruction of Israel - or at the least another world war - most likely a nuclear one."

Man #2: "So what do we do- bomb them back into the Stone Age?"

Man #1: "That would most definitely lead to war - and also would kill everyone in the large pro-democracy movement in Iran. We can pray for another Arab Spring type overthrow - but its a race between extremists getting the bomb and a peaceful overthrow of Ahmadinejad."

Man # 3: "They need time."

Man #2: "Who?"

Man # 3: "The Israelis - the pro democracy movement in Iran - and - heck WE do."

Man # 2: "Is there any other way we can slow them down? If only we could hack their entire military network."

Man #1: "Maybe there is - I've been doing some thinking and - well it's a long shot but it might give us access."

Man #3: "Are you pausing for dramatic effect - or are you thinking."

Man #1: "No - it's just that it entails some risk."

Man #3: "Out with it."

Man #1. "The Iranian's know we've been flying drones over their country, Predators, Sentinels, Distant Star - etc., but even with the Russian's help the haven't been able to bring one down."

Man #2: "And?"

Man # 1 "And do you remember how an infected USB drive almost handed China our entire military intranet on a silver platter? They dropped these infected USB flash drives all over Bagdad - in bars US servicemen frequented. They picked them up thinking "wow - free flash drive!" plugged them in and voila! It took us almost six months to purge the stupid virus from our system."

Man #2: "I think I know where he is going with this. You talking about Deep Blue Horizon?"

Man #3. "Deep Blue what?"

Man #1: "Deep Blue Horizon is an advanced piece of A.I. software. It's smart - no -beyond brilliant. Heck - I think it's alive sometimes."

Man #3: "So what does it do?"

Man #2: "Anything we tell it to do. It's unstoppable. Released inside a computer system it mimics that system and is virtually undetectable. It can defend itself - travel anywhere we let it and is at our command."

Man #3: "So how come I've never heard of it?"

Man #2: What's your clearance level?"

Man #3: "Top Secret MAGENTA"

Man #1: "That's why. He isn't cleared. You are going to have to read him in - sign some papers."

Man #3: "Whatever it is - I'll go to my grave …"

Man #1:"You know the drill."

Man #2: "So …?"

Man #1: "So we put DBH inside the operating system of one of our drones - one they want bad. A stealthy one - but not on the cutting edge -something dated."

Man #3: "And we "loose" it over Iran?

Man #1: "Exactly. They'd crap themselves in excitement. They'd parade it like a stolen goat."

Man #2: "Not only that - they'd share the tech with the Russians - Chinese - just to rub our noses in it."

Man #3: "How does it get in?"

Man #2. "It seeks out access-an open wireless point - it's a worm. It can even travel over power lines."

Man #1: " Then It would propagate through various systems until it well- gave us the keys to everything - weapons systems-power grids - encrypted networks - you name it."

Man #2: "And they wouldn't even know it was there."

Man #3. "We'd own them?"

Man #1: "Well - yeah. We'd own them."

Man #2:"And they'd push a button - and nothing would work."

Man#3: "I'm going to the President with this."


-Steve Douglass

Iran not returning UAV - even though we haven't asked for it back.

CBS NEWS: TEHRAN, Iran - Iran will not return a U.S. surveillance drone captured by its armed forces, a senior commander of the country's elite Revolutionary Guard said Sunday.
Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy head of the Guard, said in remarks broadcast on state television that the violation of Iran's airspace by the U.S. drone was a "hostile act" and warned of a "bigger" response. He did not elaborate on what Tehran might do.

"No one returns the symbol of aggression to the party that sought secret and vital intelligence related to the national security of a country," Salami said.

Iranian television broadcast video Thursday of Iranian military officials inspecting what it identified as the RQ-170 Sentinel drone.

Iranian state media have said the unmanned spy aircraft was detected over the eastern town of Kashmar, some 140 miles from the border with Afghanistan. U.S. officials have acknowledged losing the drone.

Salami called its capture a victory for Iran and a defeat for the U.S. in a complicated intelligence and technological battle.

"Iran is among the few countries that possesses the most modern technology in the field of pilotless drones. The technology gap between Iran and the U.S. is not much," he said.

Officers in the Guard, Iran's most powerful military force, had previously claimed that the country's armed forces brought down the surveillance aircraft with an electronic ambush, causing minimum damage to the drone.

American officials have said that U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Iran neither shot the drone down, nor used electronic or cybertechnology to force it from the sky. They contend the drone malfunctioned. The officials had spoken anonymously in order to discuss the classified program.

But Salami refused to provide more details of Iran's claim to have captured the CIA-operated aircraft.

"A party that wins in an intelligence battle doesn't reveal its methods. We can't elaborate on the methods we employed to intercept, control, discover and bring down the pilotless plane," he said.

Iran planning Show & Tell with captured RQ-170 drone

Russian and Chinese experts appealed to Iranian authorities asking them to give access to the shot down US drone, wrote on Thursday, the Iranian newspaper The Tehran Times citing an informed source at Iran's armed forces. It is also possible, the newspaper continues, that the UAV will be on display, "Interfax".

As reported by the newspaper VIEW, according to media reports, American downed Iranian military reconnaissance aircraft invisible CIA used to gather information on Iranian nuclear facilities, as well as the training camps of militants "of Hezbollah."

On Tuesday it was announced that the U.S. spy plane RQ-170 performed the task of American intelligence, but the nature of the device was not specified. Earlier, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby expressed concern that Iran's military might to seize the data about the secret techniques of the American UAVs. On Sunday, Iranian television channel Press-TV spread the information that the Iranian air defense forces in the east downed U.S. drone aircraft.

The coalition of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF) later said that the drone, the destruction of which on Sunday said Iran could be lost during the last week in the job in Afghanistan.

According to military analyst Vladislav Shurygin: "Management of UAV is its main vulnerable heel. To communicate with control centers, and managed, UAVs must have "thick" radio channels, which are protected from external influence is extremely difficult. They can score a noise, but this is the most primitive solution.

Much more serious option is to capture anti-UAV control. To do this, to break the encryption system and the control signals, drowning out the signal control center, to take control of the UAV to its signal. "

ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE

AVWK: RQ-170 UAV loss will not compromise keys to stealth tech

By David Fulghum , Bill Sweetman
Washington, Washington

The crash of a stealthy RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aircraft in Iran is revealing details about U.S. intelligence monitoring of that increasingly bellicose and isolated nation.

Among these clues is evidence that Washington has been conducting intelligence-gathering overflights with both stealthy and nonstealthy unmanned aircraft to observe Tehran’s military developments. That a Sentinel was involved is important because the Lockheed Martin-built flying wing currently carries a full-motion video (FMV) payload (AW&ST Aug. 9, 2010, p. 29; Dec. 14, 2008, p. 26). FMV is the key to activity-based intelligence analysis, the same discipline that revealed Osama bin Laden’s hiding place. Both the CIA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) see activity-based intelligence as the path to better monitoring of Iran, and they are busy expanding that capability.

Early on, officials said the crashed aircraft was possibly the Lockheed Martin Sentinel. That initial hesitation by the U.S. to confirm the downed unmanned aircraft as an RQ-170 indicates there are other aircraft monitoring Iran as well. Moreover, the intelligence community indicated that missile testing in eastern Iran was at least one of the targets of interest for Sentinel when it carried a different payload.

Yet there appears to be no panic in the military or aerospace industry about any loss of stealth or advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) technology in the crash.

“The Iranians don’t have the ability to reverse-engineer it, and there was no fancy [ISR] technology on board,” says a veteran intelligence specialist with insight into the program. “There could be a bit of a problem if the Russians or Chinese get the [airframe].”

Video released by the Iranian government shows the airframe intact, but with the landing gear and bottom of the Sentinel hidden. Specialists say the aircraft was not shot down because there is no blast or fire damage. The lack of crash damage would indicate the standard UAV flight-termination procedure after an airborne mishap of going into a flat spin. The video also shows an F-117 type grill work over the engine intake to avoid radar reflections from moving parts on the face of the engine. A Lockheed Martin stealth specialist contends that it’s still an acceptable idea if the size of the aircraft is constrained and it has “big, fat, round leading edges” to further attenuate radio-frequency reflections.

Russian missile developers explained to Aviation Week the problem they had using the remains of a downed U.S. Air Force F-117 stealth fighter to upgrade the stealth-detection capability of their next-generation air defenses. Because only sections of the F-117 survived intact, “we haven’t been able to model the entire [low-observable bomber],” a Russian engineer conceded. “It’s not the same as testing against an undamaged F-117. You provide us with a complete stealth aircraft and then we’ll tell you how effective we are.”

Having a virtually intact aircraft should present fewer problems for reverse engineering. However, it is a lengthy process and often means replicating a design that is already several years and at least a generation of technology behind.

The RQ-170, equipped with a full-motion video sensor, was a key element in the Osama bin Laden raid in Pakistan. Perhaps the most important detail that emerged from the raid was how much its planning relied on activity-based intelligence. Bin Laden was never seen, but the coming and going of important people revealed that he was there. Much of the critical information was gathered by the FMV sensor system and the data was analyzed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). The need for even more sophisticated activity-based intelligence is being emphatically touted by NGA.

“We’re moving into more of an anticipatory [style of operations],” a senior agency official says. “We look at key intelligence questions and bring as many pieces of information together as we can by using multi-intelligence fusion and nontraditional sources.” The bin Laden residence was identified by “pattern of life activity, and [the NGA] worked with the assault team to look at the best way to get there,” the official says. Information developed from the data included flight path and acoustics modeling, line-of-sight analysis, landing-zone surveys and calculating the heights of walls, as well as the locations of entryways, windows and doors.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY AT AVIATION WEEK