Electronic Warfare devices can disable your GPS
The Story You Aren't Being Told About Iran Capturing Two American Vessels,
Submitted
by Tyler Durden, 1/20/16
The airwaves in the United States were filled with images
of sailors on their knees while a US Navy vessel was searched. Unjustified
outrage swept the nation. The US Secretary of Defense blamed the
incident on a simple navigation error, however a chain of events leading back
to 2009 demonstrates the facts are a little more complicated than first appear.
The chain of events leads defense analysts to one unmistakable
conclusion: Iran has the ability to disrupt US GPS systems. For western
military analysts, the thought is terrifying. The West uses GPS for much more
than replacing a compass and a map.
In 2009, Lockheed Martin’s RQ-170 Sentinel showed up
on a runway in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The aircraft entered service two years
earlier, but the public was unaware. The bat wing styled drone is reminiscent
of the Stealth Bomber. The similarities extend beyond the cosmetic, and the
RQ-170 is the premier spy drone in the US fleet. This was the drone used to map
out Bin Laden’s compound. It was tasked with keeping an eye on Iran’s
nuclear program. That’s when things got interesting.
On December 4, 2011 a RQ-170 Sentinel crashed into
the Iranian countryside. Iran claimed its electronic warfare unit brought the
plane down. The US Department of Defense stated the aircraft was flying over
western Afghanistan and crashed near or in Iran. The aircraft was 140 miles
inside Iran’s borders. The west laughed at the idea of Iran’s military
obtaining the capability to down one the most sophisticated drones in the world.
One military official remarked it was like: “dropping a Ferrari into an
ox-cart technology culture.”
They probably shouldn’t have been so quick to laugh. It
appears the Iranians didn’t just down the aircraft, they took control of it
mid-flight. Dailytech.com explained: “Using its knowledge of the
frequency, the engineer claims, Iran intiated its ‘electronic ambush’ by
jamming the bird’s communications frequencies, forcing it into auto-pilot.
States the source, ‘By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you
force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain.’
“The team then use a technique
known as ‘spoofing’ — sending a false signal for the purposes of obfuscation or
other gain. In this case the signal in questions was the GPS feed, which
the drone commonly acquires from several satellites. By spoofing the GPS
feed, Iranian officials were able to convince it that it was in Afghanistan,
close to its home base.
“Using its knowledge of the
frequency, the engineer claims, Iran intiated its ‘electronic ambush’ by
jamming the bird’s communications frequencies, forcing it into auto-pilot.
States the source, ‘By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you
force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain.’
“The team then use a technique
known as ‘spoofing’ — sending a false signal for the purposes of obfuscation or
other gain. In this case the signal in questions was the GPS feed, which
the drone commonly acquires from several satellites. By spoofing the GPS
feed, Iranian officials were able to convince it that it was in Afghanistan,
close to its home base. At that point the drone’s autopilot functionality
kicked in and triggered the landing. But rather than landing at a U.S.
military base, the drone victim instead found itself captured at an Iranian
military landing zone.
“Spoofing the GPS is a clever
method, as it allows hackers to ‘land on its own where we wanted it to, without
having to crack the [encrypted] remote-control signals and communications.’
“While the technique did not
require sophistication from a cryptography perspective, it was not entirely
trivial, either, as it required precise calculations to be made to give the
drone the proper forged distance and find and fine an appropriate altitude
landing strip to make sure the drone landed as it did in Afghanistan.
The Iranian engineers knew the
details of the landing site, because the drone had been confirmed in grainy photos
to be landing at a base in Khandar, Afghanistan.
“Despite the careful
calculations, the drone still sustained a dent in its wing and underbody
(though it did not have the usual signs of a high-speed collision).
During its press conferences, the Iranian military covered this damage
with anti-American banners.
“The engineer explained this
damage commenting, ‘If you look at the location where we made it land and the
bird’s home base, they both have [almost] the same altitude. There was a
problem [of a few meters] with the exact altitude so the bird’s underbelly was
damaged in landing; that’s why it was covered in the broadcast footage.’The
approach echoes an October security conference presentation
[PDF] in Chicago, in which ETH Zurich researchers laid out how to use
interference and GPS spoofing to more gently down a drone.”
The Aviationist agreed and suggested
the US “reconsider their drones’ equipment, countermeasures and combat
operation procedures as well as Iran’s electronic and cyberwarfare
capabilities.” It should be noted the “ox-cart technology culture” has
since reverse engineered the drone.
The gross underestimation of the Iranian
military led to the recent incident in the Persian Gulf. The story being repeated
in the western press is one of ten sailors getting lost and ending up in
Iranian territorial waters (if the outlet mentions that part). According
to Secretary of Defense Carter, “All the contributing
factors to that we don’t know yet, and we’re still talking to those folks, and
we’ll find out more … but they were clearly out of the position that they
intended to be in.”
Two boats lost their GPS abilities at the same time, and
the Secretary of Defense isn’t sure what happened? A few US outlets, such as
the L.A. Times, reported on the
other malfunctions during the incident. Both boats lost radio communication and
all other communication during the incident. A single vehicle losing its GPS
abilities can happen. It’s rare, but it can happen. Two vehicles losing the
systems at the same time borders on implausible, but there is still a
possibility of it occurring through Murphy’s Law. The loss of all communication
equipment and GPS systems on two boats at the same time means one thing:
electronic warfare.
The unwillingness to admit the US military has spent
billions on a system that has apparently been defeated by Iran is the most
likely culprit behind the western media’s attempt to focus on the “ill
treatment” of US sailors. Even the L.A. Times, which was willing to report on the communications
failures, placed the following quote in a bold offset in the same article:
“The way those sailors were
treated was entirely inappropriate. … The U.S. Navy would never demand Iranian
sailors hold their hands on their heads and coerce a confession.– James
Stavridis, retired U.S. admiral”
The U.S. Navy’s installation at Guantanamo Bay has been
the scene of the worst treatment of detainees by the US government in decades. The
sailors captured by Iran were not waterboarded, deprived of sleep or food,
sexually abused, or otherwise tortured. The United States does not have the
moral authority to object to how another nation treats detainees.
The burning question now relates to whether or not Iran’s
actions constitute an attack on the U.S. It’s not a simple question. Electronic
warfare and cyber warfare have become common place. It is also worth noting the
two US vessels were within just a few miles of Farsi Island. Farsi Island is
the home of the Revolutionary Guards’ Navy (RGN). The RGN is Iran’s maritime
unconventional warfare force.
For comparison, imagine a scenario in which a
nation that has attacked a US civilian airliner and whose political
leaders have constantly threatened war sent two boats to
pass extraordinarily close to the home base of a U.S. Seal Team. The
reader can decide if Iran’s actions were appropriate.
The most important takeaway from this incident is to
remember the high-tech military of the United States has an exposed
vulnerability. It’s a vulnerability that was exploited by Iran. Iran is not a
nation many in military circles would see as technologically advanced. The
drone warfare system has a fatal flaw. If Iran can exploit it, China and Russia
certainly can. Even North Korea has been able to successfully disrupt the GPS system. Beyond simple navigation,
the U.S. employs the GPS system to guide missiles. If the Iranians can jam and
spoof their way into controlling a drone, it isn’t a huge leap to believe have
the ability, or will soon have the ability, to do the same thing with guided missiles.
It should be noted
that GPS jammers are available on the civilian market and have been detected in use
inside the United Kingdom. This revelation
may also be the reasoning behind the U.S. decision to require drone operators
to register their aircraft
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-20/story-you-arent-being-told-about-iran-capturing-two-american-vessels
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