Video: The Navy's Autonomous X-47B Warplane Makes its First East Coast Test Flight

While i can understand the merits of wanting to take our pilots out of harms way, and pushing machines further then the human body can tolerate. I can also see the huge potential for disaster with this. From a worst case scenario the US would essentially be paying for, and building a highly sophisticated weapon that could eventually be hacked and turned against the US, or any other country or target for that matter.

There is no such thing as a system that cannot be hacked. After all, hasn't it already been shown and proven that UAV's can be hacked and taken over?

What happens when one highly sophisticated nation, wants to instigate an attack against the USA by making it look like the USA has launched a preemptive attack on someone else or itself?

Didn`t Iran take down (and steal) a spy drone exactly like this one? They probably even shared it with the Chinese by now. What a failure that was.

This is still a proto type. I can't wait until they start developing the 47C. Now that will be so COOL-able!

A disappointment as a pilot to see, however a real Hunter Killer, and probably the beginning of a well imagined future. This one day will probably evolve into a machine that never needs to land except to reload.

Think of all the things you could blame on a "faulty computer"

The RQ-170 is the type of UAV that was captured in Iran.
It is most likely that the UAV malfunctioned and landed itself. Weather or not Iran caused the malfunction is up for debate. If you have evidence to the contrary please site a credible source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incident

I am also aware of Texas students spoofing the GPS signals to predator drones. While a concern, spoofing GPS is not the same as controlling the aircraft. If a manned aircraft relied exclusively on GPS for guidance, it would be vulnerable to GPS spoofing as well. A drone that used its inertial guidance to authenticate the GPS signals could not be fooled in this manner, much like a pilot can look at his magnetic compass(es) to see that the GPS is malfunctioning.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-06/researchers-hack-government-drone-1000-parts

The key difference between these aircraft is that a Predator and the RQ-170 are remotely piloted and thus depend on signals traveling to and from the aircraft to achieve their mission, and thus can be jammed. The X-47B is not remotely piloted, it flies itself according to pre-programmed instructions. So instead of relying on external instructions from a pilot, the X-47B has everything it needs conduct its mission autonomously.

You could argue that a robotic plane could be hacked while sitting on the ground, which would require physical contact with the aircraft. There is a similar danger with manned aircraft. You could bribe/coerce/brainwash a pilot to do what you want, or sneak your own pilot into the cockpit.

So, the robotic nature of this aircraft means that it is much harder to gain control of it through spoofing or jamming (assuming it is competently designed) and that it would be no easier to hijack than a manned aircraft.

"please site a credible source."
*cites Wikipedia*

For a drone that wasn't even flying in Iran to be captured intact by Iran, it's pretty obvious that Iran had some proactive plan to do it. Not like it just happened to fly out of its way and then land nicely in the 'bad guys' back yard.

@tertertert

Wikipedia has good information 95% of the time, is widely known, is usually impartial... and is infinitely more credible than comments from a random voice from the internet, with no cited sources to speak of.

@dameatman

You mention a digital threat against drones being hacking, which is true in itself. To state that human pilots are more safe are just wrong.
Human pilots have families which can be threatened, human pilots can be bribed, human pilots have their own agenda, human pilots have moral and ethics which could interfere with orders, human pilots have religion/faith which again could interfere with orders.

The same goes for drone pilots, so its important to have autonomous drones with a killswitch.

What most likely happened with the RQ-170 is that the comm / control signal was jammed, GPS was spoofed, and then shot down. The images from Iran suggest that it was damaged, ie; Not being able to see the bottom or back portion of it, the puddle of unkown fluid on the floor, and the wing seams look as if they've been reassembled poorly. Hopefully Northrup Gruman has learned from the mistakes of the RQ-170 and have implemented secondary and tertiary navigation backups.

as Eddie implied I'm blown away that a person able to profit $7977 in four weeks on the internet. did you look at this site NuttyR|ch.c0m

Sure hope the Iranians can't hack it. hijack it and use it against us.....as they managed to do it before with a "state of the art" drone. Seems they still have it!