US drone kills senior al-Qaida militant

NBC News and news services

WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD — A militant who acted as a senior operations organizer for al-Qaida was targeted and killed in one of two U.S. drone strikes launched against targets inside Pakistan last week, a U.S. official said.

U.S. and Pakistani sources told Reuters that the target of the attack was Aslam Awan, a Pakistani national from Abbottabad, the same town where Osama bin Laden was killed last May by a U.S. commando team. They said he was targeted in a strike by a U.S.-operated drone on Jan. 10 directed at what news reports said was a compound near the town of Miranshah in the border province of North Waziristan.

That strike broke an undeclared eight-week hiatus in attacks by the armed, unmanned drones that patrol Pakistan's tribal areas and are a key weapon in President Barack Obama's counter-terrorism strategy.

The sources described Awan, who also was known by the nom-de-guerre Abdullah Khorasani, as a significant figure in the remaining core leadership of al-Qaida, which U.S. officials say has been sharply reduced by the drone campaign. Most of the drone attacks are conducted as part of a clandestine CIA operation.

Pakistani officials could not confirm that Awan was killed in the drone attack, but the U.S. official said he was. More >>

Under Obama, an emerging global apparatus for drone killing

The Washington Post/ By Greg Miller

Abe Karem, inventor of the Predator drone, stands with the Albatross drone at Karem Air in Forest Lake, Calif. Karem built the Albatross in his garage. His work led to the invention of the Predator drone, used by military forces around the world.

Bret Hartman / For The Washington Post

The Obama administration’s counterterrorism accomplishments are most apparent in what it has been able to dismantle, including CIA prisons and entire tiers of al-Qaeda’s leadership. But what the administration has assembled, hidden from public view, may be equally consequential.

In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force­ ­cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents.

Other commanders in chief have presided over wars with far higher casualty counts. But no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals.

The rapid expansion of the drone program has blurred long-standing boundaries between the CIA and the military. Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of lethal force.

In Yemen, for instance, the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command pursue the same adversary with nearly identical aircraft. But they alternate taking the lead on strikes to exploit their separate authorities, and they maintain separate kill lists that overlap but don’t match. CIA and military strikes this fall killed three U.S. citizens, two of whom were suspected al-Qaeda operatives.

The convergence of military and intelligence resources has created blind spots in congressional oversight. Intelligence committees are briefed on CIA operations, and JSOC reports to armed services panels. As a result, no committee has a complete, unobstructed view.  More >>

Did Russia Help Iran Down Drone?

DEBKAfile/

Iran's electronic trap for snaring the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, one of the world's most secret drone programs in almost perfect condition, must be accounted a huge military and intelligence coup and a landmark in the long tussle over Tehran's nuclear program. It may have acquired the technology for its cyber attack from Pakistan, China, or even Russia.
Read more >>

Iran toughens cyber challenge to US, claims superior drones

DEBKAfile/

Iranian Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi Monday, Dec. 26, replied to Sunday's debkafile report which revealed Tehran's plan to use its big 10-day naval drill east of the Strait of Hormuz to test its vaunted cyber intelligence prowess against US warships. He said Iran has great capabilities in "all fields of national defense, including the use of intelligence drones." The Islamic Republic, he said, could employ aerial drones to counter any potential US-led covert war. But he did not refer to a full-scale war offensive. More >>

Engineer: Iran hijacked US drone

The GPS splitter prototype reportedly part of the downed drone

By Scott Peterson and Payam Faramarzi/

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Iran guided the CIA's "lost" stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according to an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone's systems inside Iran.

Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone’s stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety.

Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan.

"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian engineer told the Monitor, giving the most detailed description yet published of Iran's "electronic ambush" of the highly classified US drone. "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain."

The “spoofing” technique that the Iranians used – which took into account precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and longitudinal data – made the drone “land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center, says the engineer.

The revelations about Iran's apparent electronic prowess come as the US, Israel, and some European nations appear to be engaged in an ever-widening covert war with Iran, which has seen assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, explosions at Iran's missile and industrial facilities, and the Stuxnet computer virus that set back Iran’s nuclear program.

Now this engineer’s account of how Iran took over one of America’s most sophisticated drones suggests Tehran has found a way to hit back. The techniques were developed from reverse-engineering several less sophisticated American drones captured or shot down in recent years, the engineer says, and by taking advantage of weak, easily manipulated GPS signals, which calculate location and speed from multiple satellites. More >>

Also  “Three U.S. and four Israeli drones captured in Iran to be put on display soon”: Tehran Times says. “Downed” RQ-170 saga continues

Report: Drones being used in US for domestic law enforcement cases

A drone being used by Miami police

Another model of police drone

Read >>

How is possible US drone is undamaged?: US and Israeli intelligence shocked

DEBKAfile Special Report
Iran exhibited the top-secret US stealth drone RQ-170 Sentinel captured on Sunday, Dec. 4. Its almost perfect condition confirmed Tehran's claim that the UAV was downed by a cyber attack, meaning it was not shot down but brought in undamaged by an electronic warfare ambush.
This is a major debacle for the stealth technology the US uses in its warplanes and the drone technology developed by the US and Israel.
The state of the lost UAV refutes the US military contention that the Sentinel's systems malfunctioned. If this had happened, it would have crashed and either been wrecked or damaged. The condition of the RQ-170 intact obliges the US and Israel to make major changes in plans for a potential strike against Iran's nuclear program.
Earlier Thursday, debkafile reported:
The Obama administration's decision after internal debate not to send US commando or air units into Iran to retrieve or destroy the secret RQ-170 stealth drone which fell into Iranian hands has strengthened the hands of the Israeli faction which argues the case for striking Iran's nuclear installations without waiting for the Americans to make their move.
Senior Israeli diplomatic and security officials who followed the discussion in Washington concluded that, by failing to act, the administration has left Iran not only with the secrets of the Sentinel's stealth coating, its sensors and cameras, but also with the data stored in its computer cells on targets marked out by the US and/or Israeli for attack.
debkafile’s military sources say that this knowledge compels the US and Israel to revise their plans of attack for aborting the Iranian nuclear program.
Like every clandestine weapons system, the RQ-170 had a self-destruct mechanism to prevent its secrets spilling out to the enemy in the event of a crash or capture. This did not happen. Tehran was able to claim the spy drone was only slightly damaged when they downed it.
The NATO spokesman claimed control was lost of the US UAV and it went missing, a common occurrence for these unmanned aircraft.
The enigmas surrounding its capture continue to pile up. How did Iran know the drone had entered its airspace? How was it caused to land? Most of all, why did the craft's self-destruct mechanism which is programmed to activate automatically fail to work? And if it malfunctioned, why was it not activated by remote control?  More >>

Iran claims to have downed US drone; experts question authenticity

PhotoBlog

AP

From an AP story:

John Pike, an expert on military and intelligence technology for GlobalSecurity.org, said in an email that the drone shown on Iranian TV looked like "a parade float model of a Sentinel" rather than the high-tech robotic surveillance aircraft itself.

He said that the shape of the aircraft differed from that shown in most other photographs of the Sentinel, and that it was in better shape than would be expected after a crash. "I'm guessing this is a mock-up they have prepared for a parade," he said.

Keep in mind, this is also the country that manipulated a misslie launch image to hide
the fact that one missile had failed to fire and that is suspected of
welding 55-gallon drums together to look like S-300 launchers.

Read the full story here.

AFP - Getty Images

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

More >>

Malfunction of US unmanned spy plane?

WASHINGTON (Yahoo news) - The unmanned U.S. drone Iran said on Sunday it had captured was programmed to automatically return to base even if its data link was lost, one key reason that U.S. officials say the drone likely malfunctioned and was not downed by Iranian electronic warfare.

U.S. officials have been tight-lipped about Iranian claims that its military downed an RQ-170 unmanned spy plane, a radar-evading, wedge-shaped aircraft dubbed "the Beast of Kandahar" after its initial sighting in southern Afghanistan.

The U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan said the Iranians might be referring to an unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that disappeared on a flight in western Afghanistan late last week. But they declined to say what type of drone was involved.

A U.S. government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the plane was on a CIA mission. The CIA and Pentagon both declined to comment on the issue.

The incident came at a time of rising tensions between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear program. The United States and other Western nations tightened sanctions on Iran last week and Britain withdrew its diplomatic staff from Tehran after hard-line youths stormed two diplomatic compounds.

The United States has not ruled out military action against Iran's nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails to resolve a dispute over the program, which Washington believes is aimed at developing atomic weapons.

The RQ-170 Sentinel, built by Lockheed Martin, was first acknowledged by the U.S. Air Force in December 2009. It has a full-motion video sensor that was used this year by U.S. intelligence to monitor al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan ahead of the raid that killed him.

Former and current military officials familiar with the Sentinel said they were skeptical about Iranian media reports that Iran's military brought down one of the drones in eastern Iran, especially since Tehran has not released any pictures of the plane. More >>

Senior US official: American drone in Iranian hands

But what iranians are waiting for to show out a picture?

----------------------------------------------- 

By NBC News and wire reports

Iran's military has recovered a super-secret American stealth drone after the unmanned vehicle flew out of control and crashed inside Iran, NBC News reported Monday, citing a senior U.S. official.

According to the official, the RQ-170 drone was flying inside Afghanistan along the Iranian border, when ground commanders "lost control" of the aircraft. It took a "hard turn" into Iran and ultimately crashed, the source said.

Iranian media reported on Sunday that their country's military had shot down a U.S. reconnaissance drone in eastern Iran, but a U.S. official said there was no indication the aircraft had been shot down.

The incident comes at a time when Tehran is trying to contain foreign outrage at the storming of the British embassy on Tuesday, after London announced sanctions on Iran's central bank in connection with Iran's nuclear enrichment program.

Iran has announced several times in the past that it shot down U.S., Israeli or British drones, in incidents that did not provoke high-profile responses.

"Iran's military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran," Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam state television network on Sunday quoted a military source as saying.

"The spy drone, which has been downed with little damage, was seized by the Iranian armed forces," the source said. "The Iranian military's response to the American spy drone's violation of our airspace will not be limited to Iran's borders."

Iranian officials were not available to comment further.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said in a statement: "The UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) 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.

Former CIA General Counsel Is in the Crosshairs in Leak Probe

The Department of Justice is investigating the unauthorized disclosure of key details of the CIA’s secret drone program from a February Newsweek story crafted from an interview with John Rizzo, the CIA’s former general counsel.

News of the probe, first reported by the National Journal, was confirmed Thursday to The Daily Beast by two U.S. officials who asked not to be named. These officials say the CIA submitted what is known as a crime report after the publication of the Newsweek story to the Justice Department, noting that classified information was disclosed in the article.

Rizzo, who declined to comment for the story, told Newsweek at the time that the lawyers for the CIA’s counterterrorism center chose human targets that comprised a hit list for the agency’s program that operates the Predator unmanned aerial vehicles in Pakistan. Even though the former CIA director Leon Panetta and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, have discussed the drone program in public in the past, it is considered a covert-action program and subject to the highest levels of secrecy.More >

The Army's New Suicide Drone In Action [Video]

Image: AeroVironment

Original Video- More videos at TinyPic

Robert Johnson 

The Army has added to its fleet of drones with a batch of portable robotic devices that hold a high-explosive warhead and a camera, allowing battlefield soldiers to detonate them wherever they'd like.

The new Switchblade drone made by AeroVironment is just two feet long, fits in a backpack, and is launched from a tube by an operator that guides the plane through a handheld viewer.

One of the benefits of the new device will be to reduce collateral damage involved when calling in airstrikes or artillery fire.

The Switchblade's precision detonation system allows the controller to detonate at any distance from the target and to even deactivate the explosive before impact.

Able to operate autonomously or by controller, the drone has an electric motor than can be switched off at final approach for a completely silent strike.

Brookings points out that while the U.S. has a monopoly on the new "agile munition systems" or "suicide drones" that edge can't last and imitators will inevitably follow.

The only question that remains is how long until the weapons are in the hands of terrorists or insurgents.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/switchblade-suicide-drone-2011-10?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Business%20Insider%20Select&utm_campaign=BI%20Select%20Recurring%202011-10-19#ixzz1bGix9QuM

Drone On: Will the FAA Open U.S. Skies to Unmanned Aircraft?

 

TAKING OFF: The FAA is expected to release a proposed rule governing the use of small UAS in the national airspace system as early as December, after which there would be a comment and review process that could last a few years. Image: Courtesy of Wutthichai Meepo, via iStockphoto.com

 

Scientific American
Drone strikes have proved an effective, if controversial, weapon in the hunt for al Qaeda operatives in the Middle East and beyond. The use of such unmanned aircraft systems  (UAS) domestically for civilian jobs such as U.S. border patrol, weather research, pipeline inspection or even real estate photography has lagged, however, because of a cumbersome Federal Aviation Administration​ (FAA) case-based approval process. This could change within the next few years as the FAA considers relaxing some restrictions on certain small UAS that would allow them to share the national airspace system with manned aircraft.

The FAA is expected to release a proposed rule governing the use of small UAS domestically as early as December, after which there would be a comment and review process that could last a few years before a final rule is administered. Whereas details about the proposed rule are not publicly available, it will be based at least in part on recommendations made by the Aviation Rulemaking Committee, which the FAA chartered in 2008 to examine UAS operational and safety issues and make recommendations on how to regulate them.
More >

Tiny Drone Reveals Ancient Royal Burial Sites

 

Eyes in the skies: Researchers are using drones to help them look deep into the past in remote areas. Image: LiveScience

A miniature airborne drone has helped archaeologists capture images for creating a 3-D model of an ancient burial mound in Russia, scientists say.
Archaeological sites are often in remote and rugged areas. As such, it can be hard to reach and map them with the limited budgets archaeologists typically have. Scientists are now using drones to extend their view into these hard-to-reach spots.
"There are a lot possibilities with this method," said researcher Marijn Hendrickx, a geographer at the University of Ghent in Belgium.
The machine tested in a remote area in Russia called Tuekta was a four-propeller "quadrocopter": the battery-powered Microdrone md4-200. The fact it is small--the axis of its rotors is about 27 inches (70 cm)--and weighs about 35 ounces (1,000 grams) made it easy to transport, and researchers said it was very easy to fly, stabilizing itself constantly and keeping at a given height and position unless ordered to do otherwise. The engine also generated almost no vibrations, they added, so that photographs taken from the camera mounted under it were relatively sharp. Depending on the wind, temperature and its payload, the drone's maximum flight time is approximately 20 minutes. [Drones Gallery: Photos of Unmanned Aircraft]
Tuekta is in the Altai Mountains where Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia come together. Researchers there have discovered burial mounds 2,300 to 2,800 years old and up to 250 feet (76 meters) wide.
These burial mounds, called "kurgans," probably belonged to chiefs or princes among the Scythians, a nomadic people known for their horsemanship, who once had a rich, powerful empire. Excavations of some of these have revealed extraordinary treasures of gold and other artifacts well-preserved by permafrost.
Nearly 200 burial mounds were discovered in Tuekta, situated along the River Ursul. The site's heart appears to once have been a row of five monumental Scythian burial mounds with diameters between 140 and 250 feet (42 and 76 m). Regretfully, "in this study area, most of the burial mounds are destroyed," Hendrickx said.
The test area the researchers chose measured approximately 1,000 feet by 330 feet (300 by 100 m), including the five giant mounds and dozens of smaller structures. They flew the drone at a height of 130 feet (40 m) to study one mound in greater detail.
The lightweight nature of the microdrone was a problem at times. "In the field we had to deal with rising wind," Hendrickx recalled. "At some point we even lost the radio connection with the drone — this led to a sprint between the kurgans."
Nevertheless, the researchers gathered enough data with the drone to create a digital elevation map of the site and a 3-D model of the mound.
"The 3-D model we created gives us the possibility to calculate the volume of the kurgan," Hendrickx told LiveScience. "With this volume and its precise dimensions, the original shape of the kurgan can be reconstructed."
Archaeologists have begun to use airborne drones more often in the past decade or so, including in Peru, Austria, Spain, Turkey and Mongolia. The resulting maps can help archaeologists see the big picture of a site where up-to-date aerial or satellite images are hard to get, Hendrickx said. [10 Modern Tools for Indiana Jones]
More >

Still no solution for the Virus that Hits U.S. Military Drones

Perhaps it was inevitable: the drones the U.S. military uses have been hit by a computer virus. Worse yet, it’s a keylogger –- a piece of malware that sends every keystroke a user makes to someone else. And the virus has been doing it while soldiers were piloting their drones.
The virus was found on U.S. military computers at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, according to Wired. One mystery is how the virus got onto the computers in the first place, as they are not supposed to be connected to the Internet at all. It might well have been an accident, brought in on a removable drive or a CD. The military has restricted the use of removable media, but in order to update software or move data from one remote cockpit to the other, military personnel routinely use USB drives and CDs.
PHOTOS: Hackers' Playbook: Common Tactics

Drones -- otherwise known as unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs) -- play several roles in combat, and have become more important to the military in the last decade. That means the possibility that someone out there has important information is real. In 2009 insurgents’ computers were found that had days worth of video and audio. The breach happened because the video and audio feeds from the drones to the pilots weren’t encrypted.
It isn’t yet clear who the keylogger was sending the information to and there is also no evidence that any classified information left the system. The lack of connections between the Air Force computers and the Internet might mitigate the damage. But that’s no guarantee, as the very presence of the virus shows.
Also, removing the virus is proving to be something of a chore. Over the last few weeks, it's been resistant to efforts at removal.
BLOG: Hackers For Hire
The incident highlights the kind of security threats that viruses and malware can pose. But previously the targets have been infrastructure -- notably via Stuxnet, which targeted an Iranian nuclear enrichment facility. That was a highly sophisticated piece of software, and many experts don’t seem to think a variant is likely to appear again. While attacks on infrastructure are scary, a piece of malware taking over a control system is more complex to write than the one stealing your credit card data.
But the combination of many types of malware (keyloggers are pretty common) and plain old carelessness could now threaten military operations more directly. A sobering thought.
Via Wired

VIRUS FEARS: Key-logging bug hits US drone fighter planes

Published on Oct 8, 2011 by itnnews

US military technicians are at a loss as to how to eliminate a virulent key-logging bug which is monitoring every action of the country's drone fleet.

U.S. assembling secret drone bases in Africa, Arabian Peninsula

The Washington Post

By Craig Whitlock and Greg Miller

The Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, U.S. officials said.
One of the installations is being established in Ethi­o­pia, a U.S. ally in the fight against al-Shabab, the Somali militant group that controls much of that country. Another base is in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where a small fleet of “hunter-killer” drones resumed operations this month after an experimental mission demonstrated that the unmanned aircraft could effectively patrol Somalia from there.
Read more > 

Drones and the CIA: Can we wage a global war without troops or allies?

From  Slate Magazine

By William Saletan

Leon Panetta, left, and Gen. David PetraeusIn the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has developed an air force of drones to fight its new enemies. Faced with terrorists willing to take any life, we built machines that hunt and kill but don't bleed.

In the next decade, our reliance on drones and the spies who support them may increase for a different reason: We're losing friends.

Since Sept. 11, the U.S. drone fleet has grown from a few dozen to 7,000. The Air Force now trains more pilots to operate drones than to fly bombers or fighter jets. Spy drones have flown extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq, where we've fought ground wars. But killer drones have been particularly useful in Pakistan, where we can't send troops.

Every time U.S. ground forces have entered its territory—most recently in the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden—Pakistan has freaked out. But Pakistani leaders have tolerated U.S. drone strikes that killed nearly 2,000 insurgents in the country's frontier provinces over the past five years. In fact, since the Bin Laden raid, the drone strikes have escalated and spread.

Drones and the CIA: Can we wage a global war without troops or allies?

Helicopter lost over Libya is new US drone: officials

Helicopter lost over Libya is new US drone: officials Washington (AFP) June 21, 2011 A drone helicopter that lost radar contact with NATO over Libya is a Fire Scout, an unmanned US chopper, defense officials said Tuesday, revealing the use of the new robotic aircraft in the war. "We don't know yet" why NATO's command center in Naples, Italy lost contact with the MQ-8B Fire Scout, a US defense official told AFP on condition of anonymity. It was unclear whether the small helicopter, equipped with cameras and sensors for surveillance flights off naval ships, had been shot down or s ... read more 

Gates to Air Force: Get Used to Drones, Cargo Runs

• By Spencer Ackerman

If any cadets at the Air Force Academy joined up in the hopes of dogfighting enemy jets or going on big bombing runs, Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ lecture on Friday probably came as a disappointment.

It’s not that the future doesn’t feature fighter jets and bombers — after all, Gates is a big proponent of the Joint Strike Fighter, and his new budget kickstarts the process of building the Air Force a brand new bomber. But he warned the Air Force to “shed the nostalgia” for “air-to-air combat and strategic bombing.”

More

Gates to Air Force: Get Used to Drones, Cargo Runs