Breaking: Syria shoots down Turkish F-4

BBC:

Turkey's government has called an emergency security meeting amid reports that one of its fighter jets was shot down by Syrian security forces.

The Turkish military lost contact with an F-4 Phantom over the Mediterranean Sea, south-west of Hatay province.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has told a news conference there is still no confirmation of what brought the jet down, nor of the fate of its two crew.

He was earlier quoted as saying: "The other side have expressed regret".

Relations between Turkey and Syria, once close allies, have deteriorated sharply since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011.

'Syrian waters'

Continue reading the main storyThe Syrian coast guard was helping the Turkish coast guard, navy and air force search for the two crew members and the plane, NTV reported.

Witnesses in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia meanwhile told BBC Arabic that Syrian air defences had shot down an unidentified aircraft near the town of Ras al-Basit.

Lebanon's al-Manar television channel - controlled by Lebanon's Shia Hezbollah movement, an ally of the Syrian government - also reported that Syrian security sources had said that "Syrian air defences shot down a Turkish warplane and hit another in Syrian airspace".

Another Jet Blue wild ride - but due to mechanical problems not the pilot

FOXNEWS: A mechanical failure sent a JetBlue plane like this one careening wildly through the skies, sparking panic among the 155 people aboard the Las Vegas to New York flight, passengers told The Post yesterday.

"It was four hours of hell," said Travis McGhie, who described how the plane kept lurching from side to side and going into steep turns when its hydraulic system failed Sunday.

"People were getting sick. Some people were throwing up. There were a lot of people getting nauseous," said another passenger, Tom Mizer.

The crew did everything they could to prevent panic. One flight attendant walked down the aisle saying: "Look at me — I’m smiling. If I was scared, you would know it. If I’m not scared, you don’t need to be," Mizer said.

There was no screaming, but "there were definitely people reacting out loud," said McGhie.

Mizer and McGhie, both Brooklyn residents, realized something was wrong as soon as the full Airbus lifted off from the Vegas airport.

"You could hear a screeching — an obvious mechanical screeching," said Mizer. "We were bouncing around a lot.”

One of the pilots declared an emergency and radioed Las Vegas controllers that they were dealing with "quite a few things, but the initial thing is . . . we’ve lost two hydraulic systems."

The plane was loaded with five hours' worth of fuel. Because the A320 is incapable of dumping excess fuel, the pilots circled the area south of the Vegas Strip until they’d burned enough to allow the crippled plane to land safely.

"People on board got a little freaked. People were upset. Nobody was crazy, but everyone was upset. It became a long, sort of very tense waiting game," Mizer said.

McGhie added, "The plane kind of felt out of control. It wasn’t able to balance itself, and the air was choppy," said McGhie.

"Flame" virus joint project of NSA & Israel

Washington Post:

The United States and Israel jointly developed a sophisticated computer virus nicknamed Flame that collected critical intelligence in preparation for cyber-sabotage attacks aimed at slowing Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, according to Western officials with knowledge of the effort.

The massive piece of malware was designed to secretly map Iran’s computer networks and monitor the computers of Iranian officials, sending back a steady stream of intelligence used to enable an ongoing cyberwarfare campaign, according to the officials.

The effort, involving the National Security Agency, the CIA and Israel’s military, has included the use of destructive software such as the so-called Stuxnet virus to cause malfunctions in Iran’s nuclear enrichment equipment.

The emerging details about Flame provide new clues about what is believed to be the first sustained campaign of cyber-sabotage against an adversary of the United States.

“This is about preparing the battlefield for another type of covert action,” said one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official, who added that Flame and Stuxnet were elements of a broader assault that continues today. “Cyber collection against the Iranian program is way further down the road than this.”

Flame came to light last month after Iran detected a series of cyberattacks on its oil industry. The disruption was directed by Israel in a unilateral operation that apparently caught its U.S. partners off guard, according to several U.S. and Western officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

There had been speculation that the United States had a role in developing Flame, but the collaboration on the virus between Washington and Israel has not been previously confirmed. Commercial security researchers last week reported that Flame contained some of the same code as Stuxnet. Experts described the overlap as DNA-like evidence that the two sets of malware were parallel projects run by the same entity.

Spokespersons for the CIA, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as the Israeli Embassy in Washington, declined to comment.

The virus is among the most sophisticated and subversive pieces of malware exposed to date. Experts said the program was designed to replicate across even highly secure networks, then control everyday computer functions to send a flow of secrets back to its creators. The code could activate computer microphones and cameras, log keyboard strokes, take computer screen shots, extract geolocation data from images and send and receive commands and data through Bluetooth wireless technology.

Flame was designed to do all this while masquerading as a routine Microsoft software update, evading detection for several years by using a sophisticated program to crack an encryption algorithm.

“This is not something that most security researchers have the skills or resources to do,” said Tom Parker, chief technology officer for Fusion X, a security firm specializing in simulating state-sponsored cyberattacks, who does not know who was behind the virus. “You’d expect that of only the most advanced cryptomathematicians, such as those working at NSA.”

Read the rest of the story HERE at the Washington Post 

Commercial satellite catches secret drone at Lockheed Palmdale Plant

Got a note today from a stealth chaser who noticed what looks like a secret UAV (possibly RQ-170 Sentinel) in open storage at the Lockheed Palmdale Plant. The image was captured by a commercial imaging satellite on December 4th of last year - ironically on the same day a RQ-170 crashed in Iran.

The drone - parked next to an F-16 - looks like its wearing some sort of protective covering - a form fitting tarp.



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-Steve Douglass

Secret Space Plane X-37B returns

By Mike Wall

updated 6/16/2012 12:59:45 PM ET

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Air Force officials announced the X-37B space plane's successful landing in a brief statement posted on the Vandenberg website and emailed to reporters.

"Team Vandenberg has put in over a year's worth of hard work in preparation for this landing and today we were able to see the fruits of our labor," said Col. Nina Armagno, 30th Space Wing commander at Vandenberg. "I am so proud of our team for coming together to execute this landing operation safely and successfully.

"The U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane finally returned to Earth Saturday (June 16), wrapping up a mysterious mission that lasted more than year in orbit. The unmanned X-37B spacecraft, also known as Orbital Test Vehicle-2 (OTV-2), glided back to Earth on autopilot, touching down at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base at 5:48 a.m. PDT (8:48 a.m. EDT, 1248 GMT). The landing brought to an end the X-37B program's second-ever spaceflight, a mission that lasted more than 15 months with objectives that remain shrouded in secrecy.
READ THE FULL STORY HERE AT SPACE.COM