The Iranian Air Force has recovered operations data from the downed RQ-170 Sentinel drone that crashed in eastern Iran in early December, according to officials, and provided some of the details of the Sentinel’s service history, including maintenance schedules to prove the point. The drone apparently also flew over Osama bin Laden’s house in Abbotabad, Pakistan at some point.
The recovery of the data opens up the possibility of Iran acquiring operation codes and other sensitive information during the reverse engineering process, and could compromise other drones used against Iran in the future.
However the real goal of their study of the drone, according to Gen. Amir Ali Hajzadeh, is to fully reverse engineer the design and to create their own “copies” of it. He claimed that scientists have “full understanding” of the components.
US officials dismissed the claims as “bluster,” saying they didn’t believe Iran had the capability of recreating the drone, one of the most advanced in America’s fleet. Images showing that the existing drone was virtually undamaged when it was downed, apparently by Iranian countermeasures, suggest quite a bit of proprietary information could well be culled from it.
Send it to China, they can copy everything.
Already done. Russians, too. And the deal is "We'll share this prize with you, then you must share every bit of technological know-how that you extract from it."
This is just the first, and probably the least problematic aspect of the now open Pandora's box of drone warfare wonderfullness.
What a thought! The Iranians flying their version of the RQ-170 up Maryland Avenue taking a sharp left in front of the US Capitol into Pennsylvania Avenue, performing a victory roll in front of the White House before landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport. Painted on the side would be the words "A gift to the American people from the Iranian people" and somewhere inside would be a label saying "Made in China".
"US officials dismissed the claims as “bluster,” saying they didn’t believe Iran had the capability of recreating the drone, one of the most advanced in America’s fleet."
Those ragheads couldn't possibly be smart enough to understand Western technology. They're all about camels, and tents, and hummus, and dirkas, not electricity and heavier-than-air flying machines.
Riiiiiiiight!
"Pride goeth before a fall."
US official denial of anything is Doublespeak</> for confirmation of the very thing they're denying.
Hopefully, Iran will figure out a way to infect the software with a bug that causes those damn things to turn into Boomerangs. That would be sweeeeet!
As far as RQ-170 claims and counter-claims originating from Iran or the US are concerned; there is little doubt that Iranian assertions so far have proved to be consistent and reliable compared to the haphazard and contradictory statements American officials have put out.
He end is nigh when the word of a “rogue nation” comes to weigh more than the utterances of world’s only superpower.
What a pity! What a disgrace!