CNN:More details on CIA drone loss

By Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr

A stealth US drone that crashed in Iran last week was part of a Central Intelligence Agency reconnaissance mission which involved both intelligence community and military personnel stationed in Afghanistan, two U.S. officials tell CNN. The officials said they did not believe the mission involved flying the drone directly over Iran because the reconnaissance capability of the-RQ 170 drone allows it to gather information from inside Iran while remaining on the Afghanistan side of the border. The officials also for the first time acknowledged to CNN it was an RQ-170 drone that was lost.

When the drone crashed in Iran late last week, the U.S. briefly considered all potential options for retrieving the drone or bombing the wreckage, according to a third official. But those ideas were relatively quickly discarded as impractical, the official said. There was also satellite surveillance over the site which helped confirm the location of the wreckage before the Iranians retrieved it.

All of the officials have direct knowledge of the events, but spoke on the condition of anonymity because of sensitive intelligence matters. CIA officials have declined to comment.

Indications of the intelligence community’s involvement in the drone incident emerged over the weekend when the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan issued a vaguely worded statement saying, ” "The UAV to which the Iranians are referring may be a U.S. unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status." Several coalition officials said at the time they had no direct knowledge of the incident and they were essentially ordered to put out this statement. It is significant that the statement only says “operators” of the UAV without saying which part of the military or US government might have been operating it, one coalition official said.

American officials are discounting the Iranian claim they shot the drone down and insist the crew lost flight control and the drone then entered Iranian airspace.

Secret Drone belonged to CIA

Drone belonged to CIA, officials say
Greg Miller
Monday, Dec 5, 2011
The unmanned surveillance plane lost by the United States in Iran was a stealth aircraft being used for secret missions by the CIA, U.S. officials said Monday.

The officials said Iran’s military appears to be in possession of one of the more sensitive surveillance platforms in the CIA’s fleet, an aircraft that was shaped and designed to evade enemy defenses.

The mission of the downed drone remains unclear. Iran, a longtime adversary of the United States, is believed by U.S. intelligence agencies to be pursuing the development of a nuclear weapon and is also accused of providing support to anti-coalition elements in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The RQ-170 has been used by the CIA for highly sensitive missions into other nations’ airspace, including months of surveillance of the compound in Pakistan in which Osama bin Laden was hiding before he was killed in a May raid by Special Operations forces.

A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the drone was being flown by the agency. A Pentagon spokesman, George Little, also declined to comment.

The disclosure that the drone apparently recovered by Iran was being flown by the CIA comes after previous signals from U.S. officials that had created the impression that the plane was being flown by the U.S. military on a more mundane mission over Afghanistan and had simply strayed into Iranian territory.

A statement issued by the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan on Sunday said that the downed drone “may be a U.S. unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status.”

U.S. officials insisted Monday that the statement was technically accurate, noting that it did not explicitly assert that the aircraft was being operated by ISAF or the U.S. military. Instead, the language of the statement was ambiguous about the drone’s ownership and mission. The CIA’s role in operating the plane was first reported Monday by NBC News.

Some U.S. officials began to cast doubt on the ISAF statement almost as soon as it was released. Current and former U.S. defense officials said it was unlikely that the military would be using a highly sophisticated stealth aircraft — one presumably in relatively short supply — for surveillance operations over western Afghanistan.

The statement’s suggestion that U.S. pilots lost control of the aircraft was accurate, according to U.S. officials who have disputed claims by Iran that its defense forces downed the aircraft, or that it had been felled by a sophisticated cyberattack.

Although the ISAF statement said that the drone was flying “a mission over western Afghanistan,” CIA drones are generally used to conduct surveillance as well as strikes beyond that country’s borders, most notably in Pakistan. The agency’s aircraft do take off from and land at air bases in Afghanistan, however. There is no indication that the drone lost in Iran was armed.

The RQ-170 has special coatings and a batwing shape designed to help it penetrate other nations’ air defenses undetected. The existence of the aircraft, which is made by Lockheed Martin, has been known since 2009, when a model was photographed at the main U.S. airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

millergreg@washpost.com

Staff writer Greg Jaffe contributed to this article.

Did Iran hack the secret RQ-170 drone?

It's an intriguing scenario - worth of a novel or a movie - a super secret US spy drone gets "hacked" by unfriendly forces.

It's so intriguing that this author wrote a novel based on that very premise titled; The Interceptors Club & The Secret of the Black Manta.

Then tonight came the news that Iran has claimed to have "hacked" one of the US's stealthy secret drones officially known as the RQ-170 Sentinel - or as "stealthies" have come to know it as "The Beast Of Kandahar."

I research what I write - and can say without a doubt - it may be possible - but not very probable. It would require highly compartmentalized top secret inside information and sophisticated super-computer hacking capabilities along with considerable signal intercept capabilities the likes Iran does not have.

Techies are quick to point out that a few years ago insurgents were eavesdropping on the unencrypted video feeds of Predator drones. (see link here)

In that case it was clear that US military planners underestimated the technical sophistication of the enemy, compounded by rushing Predators into service without enough encrypted satellite feeds to handle them all and (as a result) Iraqi insurgents (using a cheap piece of software called "SkyGrabber") were able to not only tell when they were being watched but could actually intercept the video and watch it live.

Technically this isn't "hacking" because it didn't allow the insurgents to get inside the UAV control system, and the video feeds were being broadcast in the clear.

However, being able to watch the Predator feeds did provide insurgents with valuable intelligence and advanced warning whenever (and wherever) the UAV were up and hunting.

Since then, sources inside the military say the fix is in - and all feeds are now encrypted. Proof is in the incredible success the US has had (this year alone) in hunting down and blowing up high-ranking terrorist insurgents - over eighty at last count.

That said - it's a given that UAV control links are also encrypted and very hard to intercept.



UAVs (even semi-autonomous ones like the RQ-170) are directed via redundant narrow-banded frequency-hoping microwave (Low Probability of Intercept) KU Band satellite links that are incredibly difficult to detect let alone capture - or for that matter hack into.

If it was at all possible to hack the UAV control path - it would require a supercomputer - or better yet - a bank of supercomputers to break the encryption - and even that night not work.

Could it be that Russia who covets Iran's oil and has helped them immensely (in their quest to acquire the bomb) may have helped Iran "hack" into the US's super stealthy spy drone control system - hijacking it or causing it to crash?

Probably not - but if there is even the slightest possibility chances are US military strategists and planners will be burning the midnight oil to find out.

But - then comes the reality check. First, the obvious question, how would Iran know when a stealthy drone is in the local airspace available to hack - when they don't show up on radar?

Iran's radar is fairly sophisticated - obtained from (who else) Russia and even as such is still not much of a threat to a stealth drone (such as the RQ-170) cruising at 90,000 feet. It is a fact - all American stealth aircraft are designed around defeating Russian military radar systems - including the dumbed-down versions they sale for export.

Not only is the RQ-170 stealthy - it is small and the chances are one was detected are incredibly slim.

But what if - and I'm just spit balling here- - Iran knew whenever a RQ-170 was flying over their country - say through some mustache twirling b-movie secret agent - an imbedded Boris - as it were- alerting them to the overflights - routes -frequencies used etc.

Could they somehow (assuming they had the technical know-how, and the flight control software and (incredibly) were able to crack the frequency hopping signals that tell the drone what to do - hijack the Beast of Kandahar?

Before launch, UAVs like the RQ-170 are set up via a direct wired connection with special authentication keys that can't be snatched out of the airwaves. When queried by the satellite link controlling the drone - all authentication keys must match with the ground/mobile station. If the authentication fails - the link is rejected. If no authenticated link can be established, the drone is programmed to fly back to it's point of origin or other landing sites under friendly control.


However, I can't help but imagine a movie scene - drone controllers at Creech AFB are pulling their hair out because they can't control their secret sky spy.

Someone frantically pushes a button to trigger a self-distruct - and nothing happens.

The drone controllers watch helplessly as their secret stealth UAV soft-lands in Iran, only to be circled by grinning Iranian military, giving Uncle Sam the middle finger and chanting "Allahu Akbar" as they dance and fire their AK-47s in celebration.

BUT IT'S PURE FICTION ...

It's easy for fiction writers to invent the perfect black box to make the hijacking of a drone seem plausible - but in reality - what most likely happened was a malfunction that resulted in a crash.

But still - could it have been shot down - as Iran claims?

Again, stealthy high flyers such as the RQ-170 are virtually invulnerable when it comes to enemy fire. Bullets won't reach and even high-flying missiles can't lock on a small stealthy UAV.

Although Iran is boasting it shot down a drone - they've been known to lie.

Iran has downed (or claimed) to have downed several Israeli drones - but the photos they have released aren't of stealthy high-flyers.

The majority of the downed drones are short-range, low altitude or hand launched mini drones - the kind vulnerable to small arms fire.

However - there is another possible way to down a high flying UAV like the RQ-170 and it doesn't require hacking or jets, bullets or bombs. What it does require is some advanced technical ability and a unique weapon - something Russia is known to have in it's arsenal.

The Russians are geniuses at building jammers.

According to a story on AFP (published in October) : "Russia has sent a set of mobile radar jammers to Iran and is negotiating future deliveries that Moscow believes do not contravene the current UN sanction regime on the Islamic state, an official said Tuesday.

The Avtobaza truck-mounted jammers are a part of a broader line of arms that Russia hopes to sell Iran despite concerns over Tehran's nuclear programme, the deputy head of the military and technical cooperation agency said.

"This is a defensive system," the agency's deputy director Konstantin Biryulin was quoted as saying by the state RIA Novosti news agency.




"We are not talking about jets, submarines or even S-300 (missile) systems. We are talking about providing security for the Iranian state."

So that's how you down a UAV.

Once you know it's up - you clear the airspace and pump the airwaves so full of radiated microwave power the UAV can't hear - goes dumb - or the microwaves overload and burn out the autonomous brain - causing the UAV to wander aimlessly, eventually running out of fuel and crashing in Iran.

To down a drone, no hacking is needed. Just blast it with radio waves.

But the worlds' media has already seized on the remote possibility that the UAVS can be "hacked" or "hijacked" because it -well - sounds cool and sinister and dredges up all kinds of scary possibilities.


NEW CYBERWARFARE!

So how about implanting a virus? Wasn't something like that in the news not too long ago?


A recent article on a virus that infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones was given more press than it deserved. It was a common type - a keystroke logger - the same type your computer can get - and has been removed.

The virus probably entered the system via an infected USB thumb drive. Once found it became clear it wasn't engineered to take over the control of a military drone and in fact was quite ineffectual.
Reaper & Predator drones aren't hooked up to the Internet so there was no-way for the virus to transmit its' acquired keystoke data to whomever engineered it.

However, it's a sexier story to imagine UAVs hijacked by an enemy uber-hacker to maybe even turned against us - plus -it gives the the media the excuse to use the new cool-sounding-term: "new cyber-warfare!"

It's catchy - but in the end the odds are that the drone that crashed- just crashed on its' own.

However, just in case - Steven Spielberg is reading this - I better start working on a movie script version of my novel.

-Steve Douglass

Military sources confirm Iran has stealth drone.

FOXNEWS:

Iran is in possession of a RQ-170 Sentinel drone that went missing over the Islamic Republic, U.S. military sources told Fox News on Monday.
The Sentinel is the same kind of stealth high tech drone that was used to monitor the compound during the raid that killed Usama bin Laden in Pakistan, the sources said.

The sources confirmed the Iranians have the drone, however, they did not say that the Iranians shot down the spy plane, as was reported by Iran's official IRNA news agency.

"An advanced RQ-170 unmanned American spy plane was shot down by Iran's armed forces. It suffered minor damage and is now in possession of Iran's armed forces," IRNA quoted an unidentified Iranian military official saying Sunday. The official also warned of strong and crushing response to any violations of the country's airspace by American drone aircraft.

Earlier, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan issued a statement saying the aircraft may have been a drone that operators lost contact with last week while it was flying a mission over neighboring western Afghanistan.
A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the incident, said the U.S. had "absolutely no indication" that the drone was shot down.

Iran is locked in a dispute with the U.S. and its allies over Tehran's disputed nuclear program, which the West believes is aimed at developing nuclear weapons. Iran denies the accusations, saying its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and that it seeks to generate electricity and produce isotopes to treat medical patients.
The RQ-170 Sentinel is made by Lockheed Martin and is equipped with stealth technology.

Iran said in January that two pilotless spy planes it had shot down over its airspace were operated by the United States and offered to put them on public display. In July, Iranian military officials showed Russian experts several U.S. drones they said were shot down in recent years.

Also in July, Iranian lawmaker Ali Aghazadeh Dafsari said Iran's Revolutionary Guard shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane that was trying to gather information on an underground uranium enrichment site.

Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., told Fox News on Monday that "it's less likely than not" that the Iranians did not shoot down the plane, but it had a mechanical or computer malfunction that caused it to go down "and then used it for propaganda purposes."
"In the past, they have claimed these shoot-downs and been unable to produce any pieces of the drone, and currently, they have not exhibited any piece of the RQ-170 yet," he said

Breaking: Iran claims they have shot down stealthy RQ-170 Sentinel drone

WSJ WASHINGTON—Iran said on Sunday that it shot down a U.S. stealth drone near the country's eastern border, but U.S. officials in Afghanistan said the craft could instead be an unmanned reconnaissance plane that veered off course and crashed last week.

Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted a military official who said Tehran had downed an RQ-170 Sentinel, the U.S. Air Force's stealth drone.

U.S. and NATO officials wouldn't say what kind of American drone had disappeared, but U.S. officials said there was no indication that the aircraft had been shot down by the Iranians. One American official said the drone likely suffered from a mechanical failure.

American officials said they believe that after the remote pilots lost control of the aircraft, the drone crashed in an unknown location.

On Sunday afternoon, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's command in Afghanistan said the Iranians may have been referring to an unmanned craft lost while flying a mission over western Afghanistan "late last week."

"The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status," said the statement released by NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

The drone "suffered minor damage and is now in possession of Iran's armed forces," IRNA quoted the military official as saying.

The news agency reported that the official also warned of a strong response if the U.S. were to violate Iranian airspace.

Iran's assertion that it had shot down the drone wasn't the first such claim it has made.

In July, it said it shot down a drone near the city of Qom. In January, Tehran said its forces shot down drones in the Gulf.

U.S. officials rebutted those claims, and Tehran produced no evidence.

The RQ-170 Sentinel was the type of stealth drone used to conduct surveillance on the compound used by Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, before the May raid by Navy SEAL commandos that killed the al Qaeda leader.

The U.S. has flown missions with the RQ-170 Sentinel from bases in Afghanistan, but most of its capabilities remain classified.

It is also known by a nickname, the "beast of Kandahar," earned when aviation enthusiasts first spotted the craft flying from Kandahar airfield in Afghanistan.

Defense analysts have speculated in the past that the Sentinel, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., was based in Afghanistan not just to conduct secret missions into Pakistan but also for surveillance of Iranian military sites.

The stealth drone was originally part of the Air Force's classified fleet and its existence was officially denied. But the service now makes available a fact sheet about the aircraft.

The drone is a wing-shaped aircraft, like the stealth bomber, a design that is supposed to make it less visible to radar.

The number of Sentinels that the Air Force operates remains a closely guarded secret.

The "RQ" designation is used for unarmed drones, such as the RQ-4 Global Hawk. But some analysts have said the U.S. might try to arm the airframe at some point in the future.

Iran claims to have its own fleet of unarmed drones, but U.S. officials question Tehran's ability to conduct even short-range reconnaissance with unmanned aircraft.

UPDATE:
Responding to the Iranian report, NATO command in Afghanistan released a terse statement Sunday: "The UAV to which the Iranians are referring may be a US unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status."

The White House declined to comment but officials did not seem unduly alarmed, suggesting that the drone's capture would not provide Iran with significant information about U.S. surveillance technology and techniques.

The RQ-170 Sentinel is a high-altitude reconnaissance drone whose existence was revealed in 2009 by specialised reviews and later confirmed by the US Air Force in 2010.

In January, Iran announced that its forces had downed two US drones after they violated Iranian-controlled airspace.

It said it would put the aircraft on display to the public, but there has been no indication it ever did so.

In June, Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Guards' aerospace unit, said Iran had shown Russian experts the US drones in its possession.

"Russian experts requested to see these drones and they looked at both the downed drones and the models made by the Guards through reverse engineering," he said.

Hajizadeh did not specify how many US drones were shown nor give any details of the copies Iran was said to have made of the aircraft.

The US military and the CIA routinely use drones to monitor military activity in the region.

They have also reportedly used them to launch missile strikes in Yemen as well as in Afghanistan and in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt.

The latest report comes as relations between Pakistan and the US have hit a new low after 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in an air strike near the Afghan-Pakistani border last month, prompting Pakistan to boycott Monday's Bonn conference on Afghanistan's future.

It also comes at a time of heightened political tension over Iran's nuclear programme, with speculation rife that Israel is mulling air strikes against Iranian atomic facilities, with or without US backing.

Iranian officials and Guards commanders, who regularly boast about Tehran's military capabilities, have warned against any such military action targeting the Islamic republic.

UPDATE: LA TIMES: Some initial reports out of Iran suggested the drone had been shot down. But the semiofficial Fars news agency, which is close to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, quoted a military official as saying that Iran's electronic-cyber warfare unit had managed to take control of the aircraft and bring it "under their possession."

The official told Fars that Iran's response "will not be limited to the country's borders."

Iranian officials identified the aircraft as an RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone, which is made by Lockheed Martin. The United States has not confirmed using the Sentinel, although at least one was reportedly monitoring Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan during the raid that killed the Al Qaeda leader in May.

Iranian news agencies did not immediately publish images of the allegedly downed craft.





UPDATE YAHOO NEWS: The United States Air Force acknowledged in October that a computer virus had infected the computer system at Creech Air Force base in Nevada that is used to remotely operate Predator and Reaper drones. In 2009, an Iraqi insurgent hacked into a U.S. drone down-link, which is not usually encrypted, cyber security expert James Lewis, a former Reagan administration official with the Center for Strategic and Institutional Studies, told Yahoo News last month.

"Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations," the Wall Street Journal's Siobhan Gorman, Yochi Dreazen and August Cole reported in December 2009.

"Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems," the Journal report said. "Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter."

The unarmed stealth drone Iran claims to have brought down, the RQ-170 Sentinel, is manufactured by Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Program, based in Palmdale, California.
Until 2009, the U.S. Air Force would say little about the model, despite reported sightings of it on the tarmac at Kandahar International Airport, Afghanistan since 2007.

A December 2009 photo of the RQ-170 posted on aviation websites, however, prompted the Air Force to at least acknowledge the plane's existence, Military Times' Michael Hoffman reported in 2009:

"For two years, the RQ-170 has been the Air Force's Bigfoot," Hoffman wrote. "Photos and drawings of the stealthy UAV, also called the 'Beast of Kandahar,' have surfaced, producing shrugs and no-comments from service officials. In early December, a clear photograph of the jet's left side appeared on aviation Web sites, perhaps prompting the Air Force to 'fess up."

However, Air Force officials have not explained what the stealth aircraft is doing in Afghanistan given the fact that the Taliban has no air force or radar, Hoffman noted.

"Experts such as Phil Finnegan, a UAV analyst at the Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm, suggest the stealth capabilities are being used to fly in nearby countries," Hoffman wrote. "Neighboring Iran has an air force and air defense system that would require stealth technology to penetrate."

The RQ-170 was also reportedly used in U.S. surveillance surrounding the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan last May.

The RQ-170 reportedly does not use the most sophisticated U.S. military technology because as a single engine UAV, it was judged to have a higher likelihood of occasionally going down.