Air Force Shoots Down Runaway Drone Over Afghanistan

Was the device jammed? If I were someone from China, Russia, etc., and I wanted to test out a system for jamming US drones, then Afghanistan would be the first place to start (except for the fact that the Taliban might not want to help me out in that endeavor).

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www.anamericanlion.com/

SERIOUSLY!!! im no professional proggramer...and I KNOW that I could make a snippet of about a dozen lines of code to act as a failsafe.....in essence:
if UAV does not recieve "pass code" from facility that operates it for a certain amount of time....a minute lets say...it overrides everything (like russians might be telling it to do since they dont have the "pass code")...it goes into default....(circle in one spot...go back to base automaticaly ect.)
every 10 min the "pass code" can be changed, all without any human actions, hacks, errors ect. SO THAT the russians have no time to crack the code

ALL WITH A DOZEN LINES OF CODE

THIS IS INSANE, HOW MUCH THEY SPENT TO BUILD IT, THAT THEY MISSED SOMETHING SO OBVIOUS!!!!!!

I am concerned that these weapons platforms could be brought down with relative ease. Thankfully they do not have common access to the high accuracy, high velocity rifles we do. Then there is the vulnerability to cyber hijacking and jamming techniques. Or that they are subject to misdirection and trickery by low-tech operators. Seems to me that getting one of these to drop ordinance on decoy targets of their choice would not be difficult, especially when you consider how often we have been decoyed so far. As for wiping the software, half the battle for a hacker is won by getting their hands on the hardware where they learn our code structure as it applies to bit placement, DMA, and Interrupts. As in the past, any strength can be used as a weakness by a smart determined enemy, and we are foolish to think ourselves safer through this technology at this time.

I'm with quasi44. I saw something like this coming a mile away. Ironically this isn't the first time and it won't be the last time. Each time will probably be more terrifying than the others.

I just wish I coulda been the pilot to shoot that drone down.

"Welcome! to the Federation Starship SS Buttcrack!!!"

Why would Russia or China care about these things (except to reverse engineer them)?

These things are toys to manned aircraft and are not built for air to air combat.

They are useless to most developed anti-air technology.

By the time you are flying these drones over an area, it is for suppression, search and destroy, and survalience.

Our entry strategies for any country would not change: cruise missile to supress air/anti-air, followed by manned air missions, followed by land advancement. Nothing new there.

Not to mention, these things require a secure local airfield for takeoff and landing. Secure enough not to have to worry about power outages. Any real military threat would put the airfield under too much pressure to use these.

The real tragedy here is how much of my money just went off the chain and had to be blown up (with more of my money).

I see no problem with any of this. No 2nd world country is going to need to reverse engineer these just for the 2 hellfire missiles they carry. These are controlled from the west coast (US) via satellite, so for another country to make something similar and control it from the ground would limit its range drastically. Our only competition for drones like this would be countries with sat.s already in place that can communicate with them.

Technofreakface, cool your jets there cowboy. A bunch of things can go wrong with any aircraft, including total system failure. Any number of code lines would not help that.

And for those of you worrying that your pocketbooks are lighter, this thing is way cheaper than any manned fighter in the inventory and there's no downed pilot for SAR to find and put even more men at risk.

It's a machine. Machines fail. And machines fail even with pilots aboard. It why manned aircraft include very expensive life support and ejection systems...things a UAV doesn't need.

techno did you even read the article, if the drone loses contact it flies in a circle, and after a certain amount of time without a link it automatically flies back to whichever airbase it was launched from. Also do you really think they put these drones out there without any sort of encryption? Take the time to actually read the article before you make your inflated egotistical remarks.

OMG...TechnoFreakFace

Almost every comment you make is about how "you could make it better even though you're not an expert..." lol.

That's so typical of someone who doesn't fully understand what he's talking about yet thinks he's capable of duplicating or surpassing results with barely any knowledge of the field.

Firstly, Russia couldn't tell the drone what to do at all because the transmissions are all encrypted. You don't just "beam" out orders to the drones in a language anyone and everyone can see...that's just moronic. Even if they can't control the drone with a "pass key", they can still view its orders to see what you've told it what to do (not that this is how is works, because it's not--but for argument's sake). It's encrypted, so any bits of data that the enemy can intercept would look like gibberish to their machines anyway. So unless the Russians also have broken our encryption used to communicate and control the drones, they wouldn't be able to control it or see what its orders are either.

Your assumption that that's what they do to control the drones is flawed because of what I just described.

Secondly, the drone may have lost contact with the pilot while it also suffered a malfunction in it's sensors that tell the drone its current location, heading, speed, etc. Without knowing where it is, the drone is effectively blind and cannot fly in a circle or go back home because it wouldn't know which way is up or down, left or right. That, or a malfunction in the flight control systems or the flight surfaces themselves could've put the drone on its wayward path, making it impossible for the onboard system to fly the aircraft to where it should be. There is really no way to tell, as the Air Force isn't going to tell us. That, and the secret nature of the hardware especially makes it difficult to hypothesize any problems that might have risen up since we don't really know what is inside a drone that makes it work in the first place. So everything will just be speculation.

If anything, I know that manned aircraft are capable of receiving satellite data links. Why not use the manned aircraft that intercepted the little lost drone to "patch" a connection back to the satellite? Instead of shooting it down, the manned aircraft sent to destroy it can first try to re-establish the drone's connection to its operators on the ground by relaying the signal to it. Sort of like a wifi signal repeater, the F-16 or whatever aircraft gets sent can resend the signal, maybe amplify it as well, to see if the drone responds. If not, the pilot can have the option to shoot it down if necessary.

And while they're doing that, the drone can send the manned aircraft a diagnostic report of what happened to cause it to lose connection, or if there are mechanical or software malfunctions that would make it impossible for the ground operators to re-establish control.

TechnoFreakFace,

1975 called to let you know the cold war is over. Russians? Really?

That reminds me of the thinking that made Condoleezza Rice the Secretary of State because she was an expert on the Soviet Union.

wow.

the real story here is that the drone actually fought back and destoyed 2 fighter jets before the 3rd one was able to take it down. the air force won't tell you that one!

Well this seems a bit scary to me. Since the Global Hawk is the first unmanned drone that can file its own flight plane with the FAA with no prior notice or monitoring, and it is authorized to operate in Civilian air corridors in the United States, it represents a potential threat to all commercial aviation flying in North America. Are we not in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting wars because Al-Quadea caused 3 of our airliners to crash on 9-11? We could get the same or similar effect now, blame it on a computer glitch, and have no one to blame but our-selves. Whats next? Computer software that corrupts itself and then spawns a series of viruses and trojans, leaving no person responsible, just millions of dollars damage? Brilliant achievement. Usually it takes an act of the U.S. Congress, assisted directly by the President himself, to screw up things up this badly. For all we know Usammma Bin Laden himself might have taken control of one of our armed fighting drones from the comfort of his underground cave. Russia and China? They have their own militants to worry about, without having to borrow any terrorists from the West. What's next? Atomic Weapons that we have no human fail safe and accountability on? Who you gonna call? "Bill Gates?"

Well this seems a bit scary to me. Since the Global Hawk is the first unmanned drone that can file its own flight plane with the FAA with no prior notice or monitoring, and it is authorized to operate in Civilian air corridors in the United States, it represents a potential threat to all commercial aviation flying in North America. Are we not in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting wars because Al-Quadea caused 3 of our airliners to crash on 9-11? We could get the same or similar effect now, blame it on a computer glitch, and have no one to blame but our-selves. Whats next? Computer software that corrupts itself and then spawns a series of viruses and Trojans, leaving no person responsible, just millions of dollars damage? Brilliant achievement. Usually it takes an act of the U.S. Congress, assisted directly by the President himself, to screw up things this badly. For all we know Usammma Bin Laden himself might have taken control of one of our armed fighting drones from the comfort of his underground cave. Russia and China? They have their own militants to worry about, without having to borrow any terrorists from the West. What's next? Atomic Weapons that we have no human fail safe included on and accountability for? Who you gonna call? "Bill Gates?"

zev
Really? A reaper shot down 2 airforce fighter jets before a third one got it.
How dumb do you have to be...

i doubtr it fought back, and the real lie is that 9/11 was all a setup so we could go over there to profit from the war we are in, just like every single other war weve been in. (go to zeitgeistmovie.com and watch both the videos, then you will get it)