Iran military downs US RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone

sublight is back said:
I'm curious, why don't they use some kind of astro navigational backup and barometric altimeter to verify the GPS from time to time?
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Both cost and payload considerations, apparently.
 
Grey Havoc said:
sublight is back said:
I'm curious, why don't they use some kind of astro navigational backup and barometric altimeter to verify the GPS from time to time?
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Both cost and payload considerations, apparently.
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I cant comment on the barometric altimeter, but the CCD/CMOS sensor needed for astro nav would be dime sized and microscopically priced. The code would run in the navigational software and not on the CCD/CMOS unit. I'm willing to bet future platforms will have this as standard.
 
Stargazer said:
Access to all of these is described as "Forbidden" to me.
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There's an easy fix for that. Click one of the links, it'll tell you that it's forbidden. But then put your cursor behind the web address in the address bar at the op of your browser, click in there, and hit "Enter." Brings the picture right up. It's only forbidden to hotlink; the actual file is available.
 
sublight is back said:
I'm curious, why don't they use some kind of astro navigational backup and barometric altimeter to verify the GPS from time to time?
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They do. It's the GPS that's the backup.
 
Do we have any evidence that it was hijacked and the emergency landing was not just the result of a unfortunate chain of events?

I find it highly unlikely that a classified military drone with a sophisticated inertial navigation system incl. encrypted data links and GPS gets easily misled. That´s for sure no problem with a "drone" that one can buy in a hobby shop ;)

BR Michael
 
quellish said:
sublight is back said:
I'm curious, why don't they use some kind of astro navigational backup and barometric altimeter to verify the GPS from time to time?
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They do. It's the GPS that's the backup.
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Well then it makes the downing of the Sentinel a bit puzzling. I thought it was via GPS spoofing.
 
These were not in the above link.
 

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A 'nightmare becoming reality'? Iran unveils American drone replica.
By Scott Peterson

Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/nightmare-becoming-reality-iran-unveils-american-drone-replica-200251022.html

Iran has unveiled its own copy of an American stealth drone it captured in late 2011, claiming to have cracked the “secrets” of the bat-wing craft and added weapons capabilities.

Today, Fars News Agency reported that while Iran’s duplicate of the US RQ-170 Sentinel drone was smaller, it also had a “bombing capability to attack the US warships in any possible battle.” The story in Persian was headlined: “America’s nightmare has become reality.” State television showed footage on Sunday it said was of a US aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf filmed by an Iranian drone.

The drone replica was unveiled at an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) exhibition on Sunday, where Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was briefed on how the drone, its systems, and structure had been reverse-engineered. He called it a “sweet day.”

The stealth replica would “soon take a test flight,” an IRGC officer said on Sunday. Aerospace chief Amir Ali Hajijadeh said today that they are working on two more models of the replica drone.

PROVING ITS PROWESS

Engineers with the IRGC were ordered to reverse engineer the captured US drone, which was on a CIA mission to spy on nuclear and military sites in Iran when it was brought down in Iran largely intact. Iran reacted with euphoria, trumpeting the capture in an “electronic ambush” showed Iran’s technical prowess.

“And thus the Iranian-RQ [project] was designated,” said an IRGC aerospace officer, according to Fars News. “To achieve this, considering the difficulties and flight dynamics, we designed a bird with a smaller size that would be cheaper and simpler, and that we have done now. We have done ground tests already, and after this fair, we will do air tests too.”

“Here we didn’t know what type of information we were looking for. There was an issue of encoding and passwords, which thanks to God’s help we have overcome,” said the officer. He said data included video and advanced imaging and was “completely recovered.”

US officials said Iran was incapable of replicating the drone’s sophisticated radar-evading skin and shape, its aerodynamics, and top-of-the-line surveillance equipment, though it might be able to do so with the help of Russia or China. Iran has often made claims of cutting-edge military advances that later did not prove accurate, and it is not clear today what capabilities the replica has.

Khamenei said the lesson of the exhibition – which included unveiling a new cruise missile called “Ya Ali” with a 700 km range, among other new military hardware – was to show that Iranian engineers are capable.

“[It] gives the message of our internal power and capabilities … and declares that: ‘We can',” said Khamenei.

An Iranian engineer tasked with decoding the drone’s memory told The Christian Science Monitor in December 2011 that Iran had incrementally “spoofed” the drone’s GPS system, causing it to land in Iran instead of its home base in western Afghanistan. Just months before, the US military had approved two $47 million contracts to find ways to replace vulnerable military GPS systems.

The US government and intelligence community claim that the RQ-170 drone was not electronically “hijacked” by Iran, and say it crash-landed instead. The stealth drone’s existence was never officially acknowledged until Iran exhibited it on television, largely intact.

Iranian engineers had decoded two hard drives and determined that the US drone had made 13 missions over Pakistan and Afghanistan. They did not mention any visual or other data that might have pertained to Iran. Iran has previously made public video footage it said was taken from the drone’s memory, of a landing at Kandahar airport in Afghanistan.

Official images released Sunday showed the undercarriage of the American drone for the first time, with little apparent damage to the housing of the sensors and camera section, or the landing gear. When the drone was first shown on television 2-1/2 years ago, those elements were hidden by anti-American banners and camouflage material.
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Handiwork looks so crude on the replica (the junction between wing and fuselage for instance) that I don't think it will pose any serious threat to American forces...
 
It's not a replica, but original RQ-170 standing next to copycat
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNNkOlued-Q
 
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Very nice mockup. Wonder if they'll have any video of an RC plane for this one "flying?"
 
At least we can say the Iranian aerospace industry is getting better at doing mockups...
I wonder if they made the mockup tooling using the RQ-170 as a male mold. That'd be easy enough.
 
ALCON,


Just to add some mystery to the "mock-up" debate, some interesting close-ups of the mock-up's engine intake show something that looks suspiciously like..and engine!


Now, it's not unheard of for a mock-up to have an mock-up of the engine included, IIRC, it's fairly unusual.
 

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https://www.youtube.com/embed/sMajic_DlrQ
 
Ready for surveillance, combat and other missions with a wingspan of a meter or two?

Edit: Some rough analysis on Reddit suggests that it may be in the ballpark of 15-20ft in wingspan, in which case it could actually have some reasonable reconnaissance ability, although surely this is just a sub-scale model of their ~1:1 airframe?
 

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If we assume the centre line white stripe in the first picture is about 6 inches wide, than 1 to 2 metres span seems reasonable. More of an RC model than an operational aircraft.
 
Your guess why RQ-170 is missing?
Mine - people doesn't show up how long bird is around.
 

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Polecat is there, but is this official? (As a MACK concept is shown for ACCA & UCLASS), SUNTAN is there but never built (or at least 'completed'?)...
 
Excellent question. It does look to be "son of RATTLRS", or they reused the artwork.
 
Well, it's clearly an illustration the supersonic LRASM-B part of the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile program, and that does seem to be somehow related to RATTLRS. What's weird is that searches for PARRLRS consistently return hits for LRASM without the other acronym being anywhere on the page.
 
Mr London 24/7 said:
Polecat is there, but is this official? (As a MACK concept is shown for ACCA & UCLASS), SUNTAN is there but never built (or at least 'completed'?)...
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It's from LMSW page at LM site. MACK was BWB. ACCA is shown as scaled down AMC-X (after that, AJACS) demonstrator (once for some time this configuration was known as Meduza inside LM), real-size AMC -X mistakenly shown as UCLASS.
 
Is the MQ-X still an active requirement as I thought the Avenger filled that slot?
 
Flyaway said:
Is the MQ-X still an active requirement as I thought the Avenger filled that slot?
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That parrot is definitely deceased. DoD don't like Avenger either.
 
Flyaway said:
Is the MQ-X still an active requirement as I thought the Avenger filled that slot?
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MQ-X was closed in 2011/2012. USAF decided that it made more sense to upgrade the Reaper fleet rather than procure new start aircraft.
 
TomS said:
Well, it's clearly an illustration the supersonic LRASM-B part of the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile program, and that does seem to be somehow related to RATTLRS. What's weird is that searches for PARRLRS consistently return hits for LRASM without the other acronym being anywhere on the page.
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Precision Attack Rapid Response Long Range Strike - totally made that up but bet I'm close :D
 
TomS said:
Well, it's clearly an illustration the supersonic LRASM-B part of the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile program, and that does seem to be somehow related to RATTLRS. What's weird is that searches for PARRLRS consistently return hits for LRASM without the other acronym being anywhere on the page.
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I don't know where you are getting "clearly" from, because that is not LRASM-B. LRASM-B was based on ASALM and looked like the picture attached below. LM's RATTLRS work as at times depicted work on a "Long Rang Anti-Ship Missile" but that is separate from the DARPA LRASM program.
 

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quellish said:
Flyaway said:
Is the MQ-X still an active requirement as I thought the Avenger filled that slot?
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MQ-X was closed in 2011/2012. USAF decided that it made more sense to upgrade the Reaper fleet rather than procure new start aircraft.
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I take it GA is just using the existing Avengers for testing in-house? (Thinking of the laser in the news a week or two ago.)
 
quellish said:
Flyaway said:
Is the MQ-X still an active requirement as I thought the Avenger filled that slot?
Click to expand...


MQ-X was closed in 2011/2012. USAF decided that it made more sense to upgrade the Reaper fleet rather than procure new start aircraft.
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Thanks. Wonder why it's still on that chart.
 
>>ALCON, Just to add some mystery to the "mock-up" debate, some interesting close-ups of the mock-up's engine intake show something that looks suspiciously like..and engine! Now, it's not unheard of for a mock-up to have an mock-up of the engine included, IIRC, it's fairly unusual.

Looks like a prop rather than a real engine. At least compared to the RQ that was captured. The profile of the original is quite a bit larger in an enhanced image.

Sentinal3d.jpg
 
You're right, I messed up. Say the Acronym and assumed the illustration fit. I think the program in the chart is meant to be the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile program, but the picture isn't the same missile shown elsewhere for LRASM-B.


If this program isn't the antiship missile, I'm not sure what it is. And I'm at a total loss for how Google would be connecting the two.
 

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