The Iranian drone
August 22, 2010 - 1:02pm
Iran has unveiled an unmanned, long-distance bomber drone described by the country's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as "an ambassador of death" to Tehran's enemies.
At a ceremony today, Ahmadinejad said the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) – named Karrar, meaning "striker" in Persian – had "a main message of peace and friendship" but was intended to deter aggression "and keep the enemy paralysed in his bases".
This stuff isn't hard to do. I imagine the main problem would be communictions, and the ability to disrupt the command of the vehicle through jamming.
I wonder if it's like Scud beer.
Goes down easy and never hits the spot.
The Karrar seems like a capable vehicle, I would if the Russians had any involvement in its development?
There are some interesting videos of the UAV on the net.
I don't think the basic elements of this technology is so advanced. One has been able to buy remote control model aicraft toys for years. But one has to remember that the American drone systems are integrated into a global communications and tracking system that is very secure. It is having this kind of infrastructure that is essential for this kind of system to be effective on today's battlefield.
Depends on how it is used. Just having a drone loaded down with some missiles, or even packed with explosives, is sufficient if your aim is to, say, kill one person, a room of people, or terrorize a civilian population. In fact, so far, the use of drones have really only demonstrated their value with regard to the latter as far as I can tell.
Sure. I am thinking about a general military conflict in the Persian Gulf between Israel/USA and Iran. These will not be useful to Iran, in that case.
This is political eye candy designed to give Iranians the sense that they can be competative with the superior military forces that might come after them, for propaganda purposes only
The Karrar seems like a capable vehicle, I would if the Russians had any involvement in its development?
There are some interesting videos of the UAV on the net.
I don't think the basic elements of this technology is so advanced. One has been able to buy remote control model aicraft toys for years. But one has to remember that the American drone systems are integrated into a global communications and tracking system that is very secure. It is having this kind of infrastructure that is essential for this kind of system to be effective on today's battlefield.
I think the American UAVs use satellite GPS navigation. The Russians have had satellites in orbit since the late 1950s and developed their own GPS some time ago.
http://users.skynet.be/fa926657/files/B29.wmv
This aircraft runs on four chainsaw engines.
My intent was not to show the Iranians as a 2nd or 3rd rate military. Their capabilities surpass Canada in many areas, this is one area especially in my view.
I was only interested if the Russians aided or co-developed this UAV.
I disn't think you were. I was simply pointing out the flaws in the utility of the vehicle in terms of a combat situation with the most likely contenders, and relating that to the agitprop being put out by Amedinejad.
I have no stake in the quality of the Iranian military. My only wish is that Israel and the United States would attack Iran so that the Iranians can shut down 40% of the worlds oil supply.
Good planning? Yes, since the criminal regime of Bill Clinton. The US Mil has been stockpiling advanced weapons since 2003 and shoring up prior plans to attack those nations representing threats to the
GermanAmerican people.First Iraq, then Iran. USCENTCOM, http://www.milnet.com/milnet/pentagon/centcom/chap1/stratgic.htm#USPolic..., link no longer active, archived at http://tinyurl.com/37gafu9
A drone is only as good as it's signal connection. These drones seem to be intended for a mass attack on a per designated target and not for the "search and destroy" mode most US predator drones are used for.
Did Iranian engineer hack US Military drone and land it safely in pristine condition in Iran?
What the Wired.com nerds forget to mention is that the ideology has allowed Pentagon capitalists to offshore a considerable amount of U.S. weapons production, components and parts etc. Some U.S. military secrets are not so secret anymore, and warfiteers have insisted on that new-er policy themselves. Neoliberal ideology bites them in the ass in new and strange ways all the time.
Yeah but then I've always thought "drone" in this case was airplane speak for expendable. Who cares if they "captured" it? I'm sure it's replacement is already there or on the way (with a more secure signal system).
I don't believe the Iranians. They are full of BS as much as any other country. First they said they "shot it down" then they say they hacked it. It just doesn't make sense if you think about it: if they really hacked into the signal net of the drone why would they say they did it and give away their secret? For all the USA knew it malfunctioned in some way; letting the USA know it wasn't a malfunction isn't a mistake Iran would make in my opinion. You can bet that "weakness" is now being fixed as we type these messages.
GPS is the weakest point. I think the Iranians inserted noise into the signal. IOW's, they jammed the satellite signal. After that a techie could hack the bird's brain lickity split. And there they are with full remote control of "the beast of Kandahar", the RQ-170 Sentinel and allegedly one of if not the most high tech UAV in the world. And now it's a piece of junk apparently.
The fix will be to pawn-off the junk to countries like Canada for full asking price. And there will be a lot more junk where that came from.
That's the problem with corporate welfare programs and military. The sales people tend to wear too many hats as private lobbyists for the contractors, military people, and shareholders all at the same time. Problems arise for them when they start believing their own bs. They need transparency and accountability. This doling billions in taxpayer handouts to privateers without any strings attached provides little incentive for them to do the job right. They've put soldiers' lives in grave danger before with tech untested in the battlefield. At least now they are only violating sovereign air space and creating "collateral damage"/murdering innocent civilians with "smart" drones, smart bombs and the like. It could be worse with US pilots brought down with the aerodynamically engineered scrap material. Total waste of taxpayers money if you ask me. And they know how to waste money for sure. They've been frittering it away to their friends in "private enterprise" toughing it out in the "free market" for a long time. They don't care if it's junk as long they are made filthy rich in the meantime.
Sorry, I don't really give crap want Iran does with the drone they have... I reallly don't. Good job Iranians... you got one.
Put christmas lights on it, fuck it, I don't care.
Its a drone...
The US has lost two "stealth" aircraft in the past year, one helicopter in Pakistan and now the UAV in Iran. Generally speaking the stealthiness of UAVs is less than that of manned aircraft simply because they are expendable, and the negative propaganda value of a downed pilot would be enormous. The electronics can yield some goodies but at the rate technology is evolving it's doubtful that it will provide any advantage to an adversary.
As for the GPS jamming it's probably not a factor in the downing of the UAV over Iran simply because there's also a backup (or complementary) Inertial Navigational Unit installed. Modern navigation systems rarely rely on just one system; in a UAV a blended nav solution is created by combining the GPS solution with the onboard and self-contained INU solution. If the GPS is jammed or spoofed the aircraft will use just the INU for navigation.
The Iranians hacking into the UAV's control system and commanding it to crash land is also doubtful. If they could do that they could have had it land on a runway or road and avoid all that hidden damage to the underside.
It probably suffered the equivalent of a computer hard drive failure and crashed after it ran out of fuel.
That's a possibility, CDN_FORCES. They crashed an MQ-9 "Reaper" in the Seychelles earlier this month.
The rumor is that they had Russian radar jamming equipment and forced the drone to an unencrypted redundancy channel, and then spoofed it. I think the largest vulnerability besides spoofability is the fact that GPS signals from multiple satellites are easily jammed rendering the UAV navigationally blind.
The only option for them that I can see is the solution apparently used for the B2 "radar-proof" bomber. It isn't actually radar-proof as they've discovered. The B2 is only radar-proof when flying in the company of a number of radar-jamming support aircraft.
But we can be sure that private contractors will propose solution after solution for these built-in design defficiencies. Lots. It's called job security and many year's worth. They should prolly outsource it to India, or re-seed the work to someone outside the favoured group of privateers not delivering the goods. And that could be a security issue if it isn't already. The problem with doling out billions in socialism for private contractors/friends of long-time embedded bureaucrats in government is that socialism and capitalism are not meant to work together. Not WRT military purposes. It's a sign of decay and rot from within imo.