Leon Panetta, U.S. Defense Secretary, Says Intel Operations Will Continue

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the U.S. will continue to conduct intelligence operations like the recent one that led to the loss of a drone over Iran.

Speaking at a press conference Wednesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Panetta said he would not publicly discuss the secret surveillance missions that the drone incident has highlighted. But he added that part of U.S. efforts to defend both Afghanistan and the U.S. homeland involve what he termed "important intelligence operations which we will continue to pursue."

Karzai, meanwhile, says Afghanistan doesn't want to be involved in any "adversarial relations" between the U.S. and Iran.

The RQ-170 drone – known as the Sentinel – was lost over Iran two weeks ago. Iranian state television broadcast video of Iranians inspecting the aircraft, which was largely intact.

Comments

[karim banned]

01:33 AM on 12/16/2011

"According to an Iranian engineer, electronic warfare specialists cut off US contact with the drone before reconfiguring the Sentinel's GPS coordinates and landing it in Iranian territory. 



How Iran hijacked a US stealth drone"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the engineer told the Christian Science Monitor.

"By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain."



The "spoofing" technique, said the engineer, utilized precise latitudinal and longitudinal data, "forcing the drone to land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications," from the US control center."

http://www.iranmilitaryforum.net/index.php?topic=12768.msg100388#msg100388

It is stupid move because nobody has investigated Iran's claim yet.

It is very possible that all of US drones have the same vulnerability. This is not the first time US loses a drone because of electronic warfare. I have also seen videos from Israelis drone captured by Lebanon.

There is a huge risk that US will lose even more advance drone to Iran.

It looks that US is going to attack Iran and is ready to take what ever risk it takes to spy on Iran to map the targets. After Iraq, this is insane, but the war-machine will go forward anyway with a new more devastating war that will bankrupt US.

[analyse this]

12:54 AM on 12/15/2011

US: Oh, you know that drone we've been using to Buttf--k your sovereign airspace? Could you give it back? We need to use it again...(pause for laugh track)