It's known, drones are privileged vehicles for reconnaissance and attacks, technology has achieved level of excellence and their use is largely diffused, that's why defense companies are providing new solution to make them increasingly effective.
But the incredible amount of technological components could be itself a point of weakness, last year in fact an U.S. stealthy RQ-170 Sentinel drone was captured by Iranian military near the city of Kashmar.
The vehicle was used in reconnaissance mission, it took off from near Afghanistan, exactly from Kandahar airfield.
In this hours government of Teheran has announced to have captured a new drone, Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy Commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi reported that on Dec. 5th Iranian defense has captured a Scan Eagle drone that violated the fly zone over the Persian Gulf, around Kharg Island, in southern Iran. The zone is a strategic area, the place provides a sea port for the export of oil and extends Iranian territorial sea claims into the Persian Gulf, on April an instance of the virus was used to attack the control systems of Kharg Island.
The violation of Iranian airspace are very frequent, in many cases the Iranian defense try to shoot down the intruders, as happened last month with U.S. MQ-1 Predator in the same area.
Immediately is started the media battle, IRGC proposed images of the captured drone that appears to be good conditions, eventuality that suggest a possible hijack of the vehicle as declared by Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Aerospace Division of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).
US forces denied the event, a spokesman for US Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrainm, Jason Salata, declared:
"The US Navy has fully accounted for all unmanned air vehicles operating in the Middle East region."
"Our operations in the Gulf are confined to internationally recognized water and air space."
"We have no record that we have lost any Scan Eagles recently."
The ScanEagle drone is tiny and versatile vehicle having a reduced cost designed by the subsidiary of Boeing Insitu.
The Aviationist blog reported:
"It [The ScanEagle drone] can stay aloft for more than 20 hours, at a cruising speed of 60 knots. It is equipped with a stabilized turret system containing elector-optical and IR (Infra-red) cameras that can provide real time video feeds to operators in a ground control stations within a range exceeding 100 km.
It is runway independent and it can be catapulted from ships. Indeed, it can be launched autonomously via a pneumatic wedge catapult launcher and flies per-programmed or operator-initiated missions guided by GPS and its on board flight-control system.
At the end of the mission, it is retrieved using a "Skyhook" system in which the UAV catches a rope hanging from a 50-foot high pole with a wingtip hook. "
"It [The ScanEagle drone] can stay aloft for more than 20 hours, at a cruising speed of 60 knots. It is equipped with a stabilized turret system containing elector-optical and IR (Infra-red) cameras that can provide real time video feeds to operators in a ground control stations within a range exceeding 100 km.
It is runway independent and it can be catapulted from ships. Indeed, it can be launched autonomously via a pneumatic wedge catapult launcher and flies per-programmed or operator-initiated missions guided by GPS and its on board flight-control system.
At the end of the mission, it is retrieved using a "Skyhook" system in which the UAV catches a rope hanging from a 50-foot high pole with a wingtip hook. "
The "soft" capture of this vehicles allows the defense forces carry out studies on them to better understand the control systems and perform future cyber attacks, the war itself is changed, offense and defense require more and more often of hacking techniques, instead of bullet a new generation of cyber weapons in growing, let's hope that in the future the loss of human lives will be also reduced drastically.
