Why Can't Drones Self-Destruct?

[Bellwood1030]

So the Iranians got to the drone that crashed before we could get in there and keep sensitive, high-tech equipment out of their hands. Since drones are (often) operated remotely, why can't the sensitive equipment be set up so it could be destroyed by remote control?

Seems like it would forestall potential problems. Then again, if it were that simple, we'd already be doing it, right?

[LSLGuy]

It's all about design tradeoffs.

Somebody decided that as between carrying X pounds of self-destruct gear & running the Y% risk of it going off at the wrong time (including while your men are refueling & maintaining the airplane) versus carrying X pounds more fuel & munitions & sensors but having Z% risk of stuff falling into enemy hands, they chose door #2.

It's not that self-destruct couldn't be accomplished. It's that it wasn't deemed worth the other things you have to give up to get it.

Whether that was a wise decision is a separate question.

[Lemur866]

And "self destruct" isn't like what you see in Science Fiction movies, where the giant starship is reduced to a cloud of hot gas. A real-life self destruct is just a bomb strapped inside the device, and if you press the button the bomb goes off. A drone that fails is going to crash into the ground, how much more destroyed is it going to be if a bomb goes off inside it? A bomb isn't going to turn a drone into tiny splinters, it's just going to blow a hole in the drone, and then the drone crashes.

[carnivorousplant]

A real-life self destruct is just a bomb strapped inside the device, and if you press the button the bomb goes off.

Or perhaps when you take it apart. :)

[The Great Sun Jester]

Seems like the electronics could be manufactured in such a way, as to be incomprehensible to anyone who should happen to find it (fully embedded in ceramic?) and the software encrypted/formatted in such a way as to make the collected data inaccessible. That's what I'd do if someone asked me.

Besides, only supervillains include a self-destruct button in their creations.

[mhendo]

According to this article (http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/us-drone-that-went-down-in-iran-was-high-tech-intel-tool-officials-say/249562/):The drones are thought to be equipped with self-destruct capabilities in the event that they lose contact with their controllers, which is why the U.S. was initially skeptical of Iran's claim to have the drone in custody. The officials didn't say if they knew for certain that the fallen drone had managed to self-destruct.

[Alka Seltzer]

All planes already have a fairly effective self-destruct feature, called the ground. I wonder what happens if one of these drones suffers a complete communication failure or terminal error? It might try to navigate back to a known location, or it might even crash itself in some circumstances.

[brewha]

Another thing to consider is what is causing us to lose the drone. They aren't going to crash unless there's an equipment malfunction, outside interference like hostile fire, or loss of signal. And any all of those cases there's a good chance that pushing your self destruct button isn't going to work.

Also, there's a huge added risk to the personnel handling the drone. What if it lands too hard? What if the button gets bumped while we have our guys fueling it?

There's just too much risk to justify the small chance of any reward.

That, and the payload issues mentioned upthread.

[thirdname]

Isn't it unwise to send an aircraft carrying explosives into another country, and to possibly detonate those explosives? Could that be seen as an act of war?

[Machine Elf]

The information held in the drone's computers is no doubt set to automatically erase in the event of a catastrophe (or in the event of third parties trying to extract said info).

Destroying the airframe so as to effectively forestall reverse engineering is next to impossible. Leave behind a square inch of skin, and that's enough for the bad guys to analyze the radar-absorbing materials; leave behind an intact panel, and that's enough for them to start assessing radar-deflecting geometries. The amount of explosive required (and its attendant cost, safety, and performance ramifications) in order to truly obliterate the airframe makes this an unattractive option.

[sitchensis]

Depending on what you needed destroyed, a shotgun shell or a blasting cap would both be pretty stable, removable, easily worked on and replaced, they would also be light and effective. You don’t need 5 lbs of C4.

[Lemur866]

If you just want to destroy the computer, then sure. Make sure to scrag the hard drive, if you have one. I recall that the spy-plane that was captured by the Chinese had a destruct mechanism for the computer, which consisted of a hammer.

But making the whole plane explode like they do in the movies is impossible. Even a system that sets the fuel tanks on fire won't make the plane explode, because you'd need an oxidizer for the fuel. Those big explosions you see in the movies are very tricky to create because you need to mix the fuel with air.

[The Great Sun Jester]

The information held in the drone's computers is no doubt set to automatically erase in the event of a catastrophe (or in the event of third parties trying to extract said info).

Destroying the airframe so as to effectively forestall reverse engineering is next to impossible. Leave behind a square inch of skin, and that's enough for the bad guys to analyze the radar-absorbing materials; leave behind an intact panel, and that's enough for them to start assessing radar-deflecting geometries. The amount of explosive required (and its attendant cost, safety, and performance ramifications) in order to truly obliterate the airframe makes this an unattractive option.

You could make the skin/airframe out of a lightweight, rigid explosive with detonation requirements like those of C4, or perhapse requiring a stiff electrical jolt. It wouldn't have to be a powerful explosive, just something that vaporizes on command.

[mhendo]

Depending on what you needed destroyed, a shotgun shell or a blasting cap would both be pretty stable, removable, easily worked on and replaced, they would also be light and effective. You don’t need 5 lbs of C4.But this isn't some handheld model airplane. According to Aviation Week (http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post:649e3cf4-8c07-4739-82cf-322c6c56ccd5&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest), this drone appears to have a wingspan of about 65 feet. It also has a rather fat body, and it seems to me that there is probably a shitload of complicated and secret technology in that cavity. I'm not sure a shotgun shell or a blasting cap are going to do the job.

[Bridget Burke]

According to this article (http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/us-drone-that-went-down-in-iran-was-high-tech-intel-tool-officials-say/249562/):

So maybe there was a self-destruct feature--at least for the most sensitive equipment.

But it's secret!

[carnivorousplant]

Isn't it unwise to send an aircraft carrying explosives into another country, and to possibly detonate those explosives? Could that be seen as an act of war?

You're whoosing us, right?
So is firing hellfire missiles at folks on the ground. :)

[Lemur866]

You could make the skin/airframe out of a lightweight, rigid explosive with detonation requirements like those of C4, or perhapse requiring a stiff electrical jolt. It wouldn't have to be a powerful explosive, just something that vaporizes on command.

Why not just make the whole plane out of the stuff they make the black box out of?

If you have a candidate lightweight, rigid explosive material they could build an airframe out of, I'd like to hear what it is. Note that we're talking "lightweight" and "rigid" in the same ballpark as steel and aluminum.

[aceplace57]

Supposedly, diplomatic pouches destroy their contents if they aren't opened correctly. At least that's what the spy novels tell us. ;)

I would think a vial of HCL would be very useful in destroying sensitive chips in a drone. A electronic lock could trigger something to crack the vial if the wrong security code is entered multiple times.

[The Great Sun Jester]

If you have a candidate lightweight, rigid explosive material they could build an airframe out of, I'd like to hear what it is. Note that we're talking "lightweight" and "rigid" in the same ballpark as steel and aluminum.Hey, I'm an ideas guy, not a scientist. Wave a $40 million bounty in front of the Dupont execs and I'm sure their boys could whip up something involving a molecular C4-esque fiber encased in a carbon nanotube, spun into filaments, woven into a fabric and bonded with a whipped resin slightly denser than air at sea level.

Or something.

[Der Trihs]

And "self destruct" isn't like what you see in Science Fiction movies, where the giant starship is reduced to a cloud of hot gas. A real-life self destruct is just a bomb strapped inside the device, and if you press the button the bomb goes off. A drone that fails is going to crash into the ground, how much more destroyed is it going to be if a bomb goes off inside it? A bomb isn't going to turn a drone into tiny splinters, it's just going to blow a hole in the drone, and then the drone crashes.It seems to me that what you would want is something like thermite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite), not an explosive. Explosions leave a lot behind that can be reconstructed; thermite reduces material to slag, not fragments.

And running into the ground generally won't do that, unless it's molten lava. :)

[kanicbird]

As pointed out above a liquid, perhaps even a corrosive gas can be used to destroy the electronics and perhaps part of the plane structure without a explosive. And you may be able to just destroy the computer software, basically have a 'format C:' command which wipes everything.

[carnivorousplant]

I would think a vial of HCL would be very useful in destroying sensitive chips in a drone.

I wonder how difficult it would be to reverse engineer if the ICs had no markings.

[Lemur866]

As pointed out above a liquid, perhaps even a corrosive gas can be used to destroy the electronics and perhaps part of the plane structure without a explosive. And you may be able to just destroy the computer software, basically have a 'format C:' command which wipes everything.

A hard drive can be forensically recovered from a formatting. Formatting doesn't erase anything, it just marks the whole disk as available for writing. Even rewriting the drive with random numbers doesn't completely wipe the disk. If we're talking about everyday criminals who just want your credit card, then yes, just formatting your drive will work. Against national governments who want the data you need to physically destroy the disk. Of course, a computer on a spy plane should have everything encrypted 27 ways from Sunday, so even if the black hats have physical access to the disk they shouldn't get anything out of it anyway.

[Al Bundy]

Who is to say it was not capable of self destruction? They said it was lost and beyond control. No control means no remote control too. It crashed when it ran out of fuel.

[Lemur866]

Right, but even if it was outside control it could still have some destruct functionality under local control. Obviously, slamming into the ground when you run out of fuel is going to create most of your self-destruction.

[Chronos]

The drone already carries missiles, right? Just tell the missiles to attack a target 0 meters from the launch point.

[Derleth]

It's entirely possible drones don't actually contain any sensitive material, or at least no material that's still sensitive after we've lost contact with that specific drone.

Here's how I would do it:

Cameras, computers, and communications gear is consumer or, at best, professional grade stuff that is likely made in China or South Korea anyway. We lose that, we lose the money, sure, but Iran doesn't learn anything new about our technology. This isn't Vietnam; you don't need high-tech cutting-edge equipment to take color video and radio it back home anymore, even if you use a satellite to do it. You mainly need what TV news mobile units have had for years now.

Encryption is done using standard public key algorithms. If they can break them in a month, good for them; the information they're protecting is utterly stale and worthless a few hours after it's been transmitted. They can look over the software and get nothing from it they couldn't get from downloading the latest version of GPG (http://www.gnupg.org/).

The drone has two encryption keys: The public key of its specific command channel and the private key of its specific video transmission channel. If the drone is lost, both keypairs are marked as compromised and never re-used. If you don't understand the idea of "public key cryptography", you can look it up for yourself or ask me to explain it; my point is, we can easily generate ten times as many keypairs as we'll ever use even if we blacken the sky above Iran with our little birdies.

So, what have I missed? What vital information is being leaked by one of my drones falling unharmed into enemy hands?

[SirRay]

Hey, I'm an ideas guy, not a scientist. Wave a $40 million bounty in front of the Dupont execs and I'm sure their boys could whip up something involving a molecular C4-esque fiber encased in a carbon nanotube, spun into filaments, woven into a fabric and bonded with a whipped resin slightly denser than air at sea level.
C4? Just get Mythbusters Adam and Jamie on the case...

[The Great Sun Jester]

C4? Just get Mythbusters Adam and Jamie on the case...They'd just use it as an opportunity for a gratuitous rocket sled test to demonstrate it wouldn't just detonate on impact.

And they would be right to do so. Rocket sled tests are the business.

[Evil Jon]

According to a senior U.S. military source with intimate knowledge of the Sentinel drone, the aircraft likely "wandered" into Iranian air space after losing contact with its handlers and is presumed to be intact since it is programmed to fly level and find a place to land, rather than crashing. Site (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/06/drone-lost-in-iran-was-joint-cia-military-reconnaissance-plane)

So not only is it not programmed to self destruct, but instead programmed to serve itself up on a platter. I've always assumed they have thermite on all the sensitive electronics but maybe not.:smack:

[coremelt]

So, what have I missed? What vital information is being leaked by one of my drones falling unharmed into enemy hands?

It's a stealth drone, the airframe shape and skin, and details of engine design to mask the emissions are all confidential. And the sensors are not going to be consumer grade video cameras. Presumably the RQ-170 has various infrared, radar, lidar, antennas for monitoring cell and radio traffic etc etc.

[beowulff]

I wonder how difficult it would be to reverse engineer if the ICs had no markings.

There's a whole industry devoted to reverse-engineering ICs. Having the marking on the package probably wouldn't even help, since the interesting ICs would all be custom. Anyway, there are people who de-cap the chip, and then use electron microscopes, x-rays, focused ion beam probes and other esoteric gear to reveal the design layer-by-layer. If the technology is interesting enough, the only way to be sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands is to be sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands...

[carnivorousplant]

Site (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/06/drone-lost-in-iran-was-joint-cia-military-reconnaissance-plane)

So not only is it not programmed to self destruct, but instead programmed to serve itself up on a platter. I've always assumed they have thermite on all the sensitive electronics but maybe not.:smack:

Didn't you guys watch Nikita? (http://www.tv-links.eu/tv-shows/La-Femme-Nikita_406/season_4/episode_16/)

[Derleth]

It's a stealth drone, the airframe shape and skin, and details of engine design to mask the emissions are all confidential. And the sensors are not going to be consumer grade video cameras. Presumably the RQ-170 has various infrared, radar, lidar, antennas for monitoring cell and radio traffic etc etc.I wonder how necessary all that is. Trying to keep big secrets like that is, long-term, impossible; you rotate passwords for the same reason: After a while, you must assume the enemy knows everything you are not changing on a regular basis.

[si_blakely]

It's a stealth drone, the airframe shape and skin, and details of engine design to mask the emissions are all confidential. And the sensors are not going to be consumer grade video cameras. Presumably the RQ-170 has various infrared, radar, lidar, antennas for monitoring cell and radio traffic etc etc.The wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RQ-170#Design) indicates that experts believe that the RQ-170 does not contain any sensitive stealth design features or reconnaissance tech due to the likelyhood of loss over enemy territory (single engine design). The RQ-170 also does not carry any weapons, and would not likely be used for a mission over a sensitive defended target like Iran - the US have better and stealthier assets for such jobs. It sound like a UAV suffered a comms failure over western Afghanistan and wandered into Iran and crashed. No biggie.

Si

[coremelt]

The wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RQ-170#Design) indicates that experts believe that the RQ-170 does not contain any sensitive stealth design features or reconnaissance tech due to the likelyhood of loss over enemy territory (single engine design). The RQ-170 .... would not likely be used for a mission over a sensitive defended target like Iran - the US have better and stealthier assets for such jobs.
Si

Read the same wiki page further down and claimed that the RQ-170 has previously been used over Iran, North Korea and Pakistan. Of course the US would claim "no big deal" that they've got something better whether that was true or not.

[VunderBob]

I work on a drone program. Mine does have a self destruct, but the destruction is for the avionic memory, not the airframe. The intent is to deprive the enemy of knowledge of any intelligence gathered. The military doesn't give a rat's ass about the airframe, because you can buy it on the open commercial market.

[coremelt]

The military doesn't give a rat's ass about the airframe, because you can buy it on the open commercial market.

You can't buy an RQ-170 airframe, and although the Air Force acknowledged the existence of the RQ-170 in Feb 2010, they haven't released any official images of it, or allowed them to be taken at close range.

All the other UAV's listed here have photos.
http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=16001

To me that seems pretty suggestive that the actual exact shape of the airframe is still classified, the 3D mockups that people are making from the few real photos vary widely in the details of where the wings meet the body.

[VunderBob]

You can't buy an RQ-170 airframe, and although the Air Force acknowledged the existence of the RQ-170 in Feb 2010, they haven't released any official images of it, or allowed them to be taken at close range.

I never claimed to work the RQ-170 program. I was speaking to my aircraft.

[VunderBob]

So, what have I missed? What vital information is being leaked by one of my drones falling unharmed into enemy hands?

The two biggies are the actual intel gathered, and the encryption key used. If a data link radio can be captured still under power, the key can be extracted. The radios are designed with extremely volatile memory so that a loss of power obliterates the key and the frequency plan.

Imaging data goes into a ruggedized hard drive. That can be recovered regardless of power condition.

ETA: Derleth, I'm discussing real life. Your hypothetical is reasonable, except for the public key encryption.

[Derleth]

If a data link radio can be captured still under power, the key can be extracted.So? They key is part of a key pair which is discarded if the drone is lost or presumed lost. It is never reused.

Imaging data goes into a ruggedized hard drive. That can be recovered regardless of power condition.Not a problem if the data is encrypted with the video channel's public key before it's written to the hard drive.

[friedo]

The drone already carries missiles, right?

Only if it's an attack drone. Most are surveillance drones.


Just tell the missiles to attack a target 0 meters from the launch point.



MISSILES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY

[yoyodyne]

MISSILES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY
The warhead could certainly be command detonated while it's still on the wing.

[Lemur866]

The thing about anti-aircraft missles and so on is that they don't make the target explode into a giant fireball like in the movies. Instead, the goal is to damage the target to make it unflyable, and let the ground do the work of smashing the target into tiny bits.

So telling the autopilot to auger at into the ground is a lot more effective method of self destruction than detonating missiles on their rails, since all that will do is blow a hole in the wing, and all that will do is cause the drone to crash.

[Leo Bloom]

There's a whole industry devoted to reverse-engineering ICs. Having the marking on the package probably wouldn't even help, since the interesting ICs would all be custom. Anyway, there are people who de-cap the chip, and then use electron microscopes, x-rays, focused ion beam probes and other esoteric gear to reveal the design layer-by-layer...But Iran surely does not have the chops for this. They trade it to China, North Korea, Russia...?

[beowulff]

But Iran surely does not have the chops for this. They trade it to China, North Korea, Russia...?

Of course.
The problems of living in a global economy...

[ralph124c]

Suppose the Iranians copy the memroy in the drone's computer-could it infect their computers?
There have been several mysterious explosions at Iranian military facilities-could this be another phase in a cyber war?

[beowulff]

Suppose the Iranians copy the memroy in the drone's computer-could it infect their computers?
There have been several mysterious explosions at Iranian military facilities-could this be another phase in a cyber war?

You must watch too much TV...

[Mr. Excellent]

Site (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/06/drone-lost-in-iran-was-joint-cia-military-reconnaissance-plane)

So not only is it not programmed to self destruct, but instead programmed to serve itself up on a platter.

Well, consider the alternative. These drones are not small machines. Having a drone, with its load of AV gas, slam into an inhabited area is a Bad Thing. Japan figured out in WW2 that the distinction between a missile and an airplane is slim at best. If you lose control of a drone, you really *don't* want it to turn into a missile that fires itself at a random target.

[AndrewL]

Suppose the Iranians copy the memroy in the drone's computer-could it infect their computers?
There have been several mysterious explosions at Iranian military facilities-could this be another phase in a cyber war?

Seems like an awfully expensive way to go about it, when history suggests that all you need to do is leave a few infected USB flash drives scattered in parking lots and public spaces.

[Indian]

How come iranian video shows an intact drone? Was it a smooth landing?:dubious:

[Francis Vaughan]

The Iranians are claiming that they commandeered the control signal and flew the craft to a soft landing themselves. Short of their having previously obtained significant (and obviously classified) documentation about the craft's systems this isn't credible. We all assume that the control signals were encrypted, and even without encryption it is hard to imagine that they knew how to command it to do their bidding. If the US had lost craft previously we might believe some reverse engineering was possible.

I do wonder how the plane would react to a totally jammed GPS signal. It may not have a useful backup nav system, and it might end up aimlessly flying about until it ran out of fuel. Given that the US has already said that they assumed that such drones were at risk, they may well not have included a P channel GPS receiver, so it is possible the the drone could have had its GPS signal spoofed rather than just jammed. That could raise all sorts of interesting possibilities as to how you could effectively take command. Much would depend upon how autonomous its operations are. (I'm assuming that spoofing the P channel is still infeasible - this may no longer be true.)

The video doesn't show the bottom of the craft, indeed it is rather carefully covered up. A lot of this is quite a game, so it would not surprise me if they have reconstructed it from a crashed plane, and shown this off to stir things up. The goal will be to make the US stop flying drones over Iran, believing them to be now at risk. These games always involve subterfuge and bluff.

[coremelt]

The Iranians are claiming that they commandeered the control signal and flew the craft to a soft landing themselves. Short of their having previously obtained significant (and obviously classified) documentation about the craft's systems this isn't credible.

Why? Can't it be assumed that both China and Russia would have an interest in knowing how to Jam or take control of american drones and would supply personnel and equipment in order to study this. They've had 3 or 4 years of drone operations over Iran to eavesdrop on the signals and try and decrypt them and the real possibility of getting human intel from Lockheed-Martin employees or contractors as well.

[Francis Vaughan]

That is why I wrote "short of" - it really assumes that level of application of intelligence operations - and indeed help from other powers. Still makes breaking the encryption a problem. Modern encryption systems are really really hard to crack. But if they did manage to reverse out the private key of the command channel it could be possible to take command. That would imply lax procedures on the part of the plane's controllers (by not changing keys) - but that is exactly the sort of thing that code breakers look for. So I would agree that there is a possibility.

There remains a real chance that some, or all, of the control systems used are derived from off the self, and even off the self commercial, equipment. In which case things would be much easier, once any encryption was broken.

[anson2995]

Site (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/06/drone-lost-in-iran-was-joint-cia-military-reconnaissance-plane)

So not only is it not programmed to self destruct, but instead programmed to serve itself up on a platter.

Other sources have widely reported this differently, that the drones are programmed to return to base if they lose radio contact. (Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/07/us-iran-usa-drone-idUSTRE7B60BP20111207), Associated Press (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/iranian-state-tv-broadcasts-video-of-captured-us-drone/2011/12/08/gIQAli9XfO_story.html), etc.)

[lieu]

From what's been said I don't see much sense in including any mechanism for destroying the hard elements (design, materials, etc) of a surveillance drone. But for all the sensitive electronics coding, couldn't that include scripting that would erase or leave unintelligable everything if it didn't continue to receive authorized inputs within short, reasonable periods of time?

[GiantRat]

TWe all assume that the control signals were encrypted, and even without encryption it is hard to imagine that they knew how to command it to do their bidding.

We do NOT all assume that. Unencrypted comms is a multi-platform platform, with this (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/12/not-just-drones-militants-can-snoop-on-most-us-warplanes/) being just an example.

Crypto functions place fairly high demands on comms hardware. For most data transmission, it's not too big a deal. But if comms are broken or compromise detected, session re-negotiation can cause a lot of things to go wrong. Think about it this way, if your PC/MAC loses its association with a wireless AP with crypto protection, there's a good chance you've got to restart the router to perform re-negotiation of the keys (as well as DHCP, etc). No big deal - you can run to wherever the router is and kickstart the box. Tougher to do when the box is 10,000 miles away.

[Leo Bloom]

... But if they did manage to reverse out the private key of the command channel it could be possible to take command. That would imply lax procedures on the part of the plane's controllers (by not changing keys) ....


I would think changing key pairs (which I surely do not understand well) would be done automatically in millisecond intervals.

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

If you can set off a self-destruct device, then somebody else can hack your system, & set off a self-destruct device.


BTW--bets the Iranians used a virus to get control of a drone?:smack:

[Bellwood1030]

The danger seems to lie not so much on what's on the devices inside the drone as on the devices themselves. This is an AP article that I found on an Israeli news site:

Experts said the drone probably carried an advanced radar system as well as other specialized sensors, including detectors for monitoring nuclear sites. If those were reverse-engineered by Iran, they could give insights into how to hide its nuclear facilities from the US surveillance.

Russia, China, North Korea and others may be interested in examining the Sentinel. For example, US drones have advanced engines that allow them to remain patrolling an area for days. China is thought to be struggling to master this technology.

Singer said it would be difficult for any country to exploit the technological bonanza of a downed Sentinel, but having one to pull apart will give them a start.

“Bottom line, it’s never easy to reverse-engineer anything, let alone something like a radar, but having a working or even damaged system in hand to study up close makes it a heck of a lot easier,” he said.

Here's the site: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4159628,00.html

I also read a Wall Street Journal article last Wednesday that said US officials considered using covert operations to destroy the drone; possibilities included sending in a team to blow up the drone, sending in a team to retrieve the drone, or targeting the drone with air strikes.

Thanks for the many interesting and informative answers. The US military could use you guys; they apparently didn't think of any of this stuff beforehand.

[Francis Vaughan]

session re-negotiation can cause a lot of things to go wrong.

Good point that.

I was wondering how autonomous these craft are. They are not like the Predator, that needs active control to perform its role. They could be programmed to fly a mission and return. External control could be limited to commands that modify the mission. However we don't and probably never will know.

[Bisected8]

BTW--bets the Iranians used a virus to get control of a drone?:smack:

COMPUTER VIRUSES DON'T WORK THAT WAY!

Good night.

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

COMPUTER VIRUSES DON'T WORK THAT WAY!

Good night.
But Trojans can.:dubious:

[Bisected8]

But Trojans can.:dubious:

No they cannot. Malicious software is still software. It must run like any other application to do anything. More importantly, even if one could for some bizare reason load data onto the UAV there's no reason it would be able to launch an application like a PC would.

In order to infect the UAV Iran would have to;


Already know the architecture of the device in question; unlikely.
Be targeting a UAV which (for no apparent reason) was able to run on software which could be changed like a PC's could (which makes no sense, given that all devices with microprocessors, military hardware included, run code from read only mass produced chips for so many reasons I won't bother listing them); well, maybe one of their contractors was high.
Have a way to upload the virus and make the UAV run it (which is a bit like sending someone a letter with instructions and making them follow it. With someone else reading their mail); not going to happen.


In other words, trying to infect the UAV with a virus would be about as possible as changing the filling of a freshly baked pie.

[Naxos]

...why can't the sensitive equipment be set up so it could be destroyed by remote control?

Blame software programmers' stupidity.

Hardware or software engineers are good at coming up with ways to calculate solutions, but in all else they're incompetent and stupid.

That's why Apple has such a strong market, by the way... they put the UI design ahead of the engineering know-how when designing gadgets.

[Francis Vaughan]

Blame software programmers' stupidity.
I think the issue with remote destruction has been well addressed previously. Given that unless there is additional physical componentry - up to and including explosives - added to the hardware design of the device there is no known mechanism by which software can damage the hardware, the idea that this is a software problem is more than a little naive. We also don't know what self destruct there was present. All we have seen is a video of the upper half of the hull of the craft, apparently intact, a week after the craft was lost. It could easily be a fibreglass mockup built after the crashed drone was recovered, displayed for the purpose of annoying the US. Something the Iranians would no doubt delight in doing.

Further, it ignores the manner in which systems are actually designed and built. Software engineers are not given a simple task to "go write a remote control system". Especially not for a military system. There will be a phone-book thick set of requirements that details in very precise ways exactly what is expected of every part of the drone, and for software components these will be very very detailed. Including excruciatingly precise process by which the software is written and tested. Further, these requirements will be checked off as a part of contract fulfilment. If the arm of the defence department that specified the drone considered that a self destruct capability was worth the added risk, they would have specified it. And there would have been another phone-book thick set of documentation that precisely detailed how that capability requirement had been met.

Everything about the drone's specification, is a compromise of risk. For a sensitive device like this the risk that one is eventually lost and falls into the hands of another government will have been weighted up. It seems likely that these drones were specified with the expectation that one would eventually be lost. Although probably with the expectation that it would crash. So the risks are weighted up carefully. The risk of adding a dangerous self destruct capability that is probably just as likely to kill one of your ground crew as it is to protect any valuable knowledge about the craft is likely to be viewed dimly.

[Bellwood1030]

The risk of adding a dangerous self destruct capability that is probably just as likely to kill one of your ground crew as it is to protect any valuable knowledge about the craft is likely to be viewed dimly.

So to the military, the loss of sensitive technology is less important than the safety of the ground crew? That seems oddly humane.

[ralph124c]

Instead of an on-board bomb, why not just program the flight control to have the thing crash after a high speed dive?
The picture that the Iranians have released looks fake-it looks like they made up a mocked-up copy, perhaps with pieces of the drone.
They are obviously looking to make as much hay with this as they can.
It reminds me of how Kruschev handled the crash of FG Power's U-2 spyplane-releasing bits and pieces at a time-till they revealed the real prize (the live pilot).
If the Iranians follow this script, we will see much more.
Stay tuned.

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

No they cannot. Malicious software is still software. It must run like any other application to do anything. More importantly, even if one could for some bizare reason load data onto the UAV there's no reason it would be able to launch an application like a PC would.

In order to infect the UAV Iran would have to;


Already know the architecture of the device in question; unlikely.
Be targeting a UAV which (for no apparent reason) was able to run on software which could be changed like a PC's could (which makes no sense, given that all devices with microprocessors, military hardware included, run code from read only mass produced chips for so many reasons I won't bother listing them); well, maybe one of their contractors was high.
Have a way to upload the virus and make the UAV run it (which is a bit like sending someone a letter with instructions and making them follow it. With someone else reading their mail); not going to happen.


In other words, trying to infect the UAV with a virus would be about as possible as changing the filling of a freshly baked pie.

Even thought there have been news reports of infected drones for weeks now?

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-12-08/news/30489464_1_creech-air-force-drone-computer-virus

[Francis Vaughan]

Even thought there have been news reports of infected drones for weeks now?
The article does not mention a drone virus. At all. It mentions a pretty ordinary keylogger virus that got into some base PCs. Something that whilst embarrassing is totally removed from the idea of infecting the drone systems. The real world simply does not work like the alien computers in Independence Day.

Connecting the idea of the keylogger virus with commandeering the drones makes about as much sense as claiming that I could take control of your car with a virus on your home PC.

[dzero]

I didn't read most of the posts besides the OP, so did anyone mention the idea that this was a deliberate disinformation exercise? Certainly the drone could have been destroyed. If the military is even hinting otherwise, it is probably to allay the suspicions of the Iranians. I think it is possible if not likely that at the very least, this was intended to spread some sort of infection such as the stuxnet virus.

[coremelt]

The article does not mention a drone virus. At all. It mentions a pretty ordinary keylogger virus that got into some base PCs.

The original story in Wired is here:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/

it claims that the virus was on the actual GCS (ground control station) PC's which are controlling the drones. The virus was a keylogger, it could have been used to help get access to sensitive information about the control system to a spy.

That intel could then have helped to develop a method of jamming and overriding the drones locally.

[Bellwood1030]

I didn't read most of the posts besides the OP, so did anyone mention the idea that this was a deliberate disinformation exercise? Certainly the drone could have been destroyed. If the military is even hinting otherwise, it is probably to allay the suspicions of the Iranians. I think it is possible if not likely that at the very least, this was intended to spread some sort of infection such as the stuxnet virus.

Every news story I've read in the past three days says that US experts are saying the drone did go down (US military has confirmed this) and that the object the Iranians are displaying is, in fact, that missing drone.

[AaronX]

Isn't it easy to make self erasing computer chips? I know there were programmable chips erased by uv light, they could make some that used visible light. Or exposure to oxygen. Or room temperature or something.

[carnivorousplant]

Every news story I've read in the past three days says that US experts are saying the drone did go down (US military has confirmed this) and that the object the Iranians are displaying is, in fact, that missing drone.

Yes, but when they take a certain panel off, they will see seven segment displays counting down in seconds from ten to zero. :)

[Francis Vaughan]

As the Wired article says, there is an airgap between the GCS computers and the rest of the world. To get the logged data out would require that the next time a disk is attached to the computer the virus knows to load the logged data onto that, and then assumes that there is yet another specially infected computer that that disk will be attached, and that an additional virus will read the data off the disk and then send it to the Iranians. This is not a conventional known keylogger virus, but something specifically crafted for purpose, and would require significant knowledge of base operations to effect. Worse, the virus would have a different signature to any known keyloggers - it would contain significantly different code and be clearly new. From the article it is clear that the virus was identified as a known keylogger. It still isn't a credible mechanism for access to information related to the drones control.

The presence of the virus is evidence of incomplete security issues, and thus is evidence that their could be another, as yet undetected virus. But the obstacle course of issues that it would need to go through to actually work makes it very hard to believe that this is what occurred.

Personally I suspect that the video is showing a reconstructed drone that is as much fibreglass and filler as real drone.
This assumes that the

[Sailboat]

Personally I suspect that the video is showing a reconstructed drone that is as much fibreglass and filler as real drone.
This assumes that the

Francis Vaughan? Francis Vaughan?

Oh god, they got to him! Everybody get underneath cover, the Drone Lords rule the skies!