Iraq to buy Predator drones to protect southern oil platforms May 21, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in Drones.Tags: drones, General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, Iraq, Predator, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
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Iraq’s Navy has already purchased U.S. drones to protect its southern oil platforms, from where most of the OPEC nation’s oil is shipped.
This is what an official from the Office of Security Cooperation in Iraq, which is part of the U.S. embassy, said to the Reuters on May 21.
Although no more details about the number of the purchased drone have been disclosed, what it’s certain is that they will be used to protect the oil infrastructure, that went under Iraqi forces responsibility since 2005 and are without a proper aerial surveillance since the U.S. has left the country in December 2011.
With crude exports forecast expected to reach 2.85 barrels per day by the end of the year, the oil infrastructure, and the oilfields around Basra, remains one of the main insurgents’ targets. That’s why the Iraqi Government has bought the robots and started training its engineers to be able to operate them by the end of 2012.
Most probably, the drones purchased by Baghdad are unarmed RQ-1 Predators UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) used to detect suspect activities in typical ISR (Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance) missions.
Since they should be operated by the Iraqi Navy, it must be assumed they will be extensively used above for maritime surveillance around the oil rigs in the Persian Gulf.
Image credit: U.S. Air Force
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Covert US drone operations tracked in real time, via Twitter. Exposing tactics too. May 20, 2012
Posted by Richard Clements in Drones.Tags: Al-Qaeda, drones, Twitter, Yemen
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The social networking medium of Twitter is becoming a bit of a nightmare for covert CIA drone operations in the Yemen. In fact, in near real time, each time a drone is heard or spotted, locals tweet robots’ targets, details and whereabouts to their followers, using the Yemen hastag (#Yemen).
On May 18, MSNBC has run an interesting article in which it describes an attack on an alleged convoy of militants near the town of Shibam.
Although supposed to be covert, the strike was reported as a “missile strike on car in Wadi Hadhramaut” within minutes. Furthermore, a series of tweets published in the day prior to the strike, about drone suspiciously circling in the area during daylight (as opposed to the usual night activity), gave a hint that could have spoiled the subsequent deadly attack.
What becomes apparent when MSNBC describes the attack, is also the tactics being used against the terrorists: Shibam, a town with around 30,000 occupants, was plunged into darkness minutes prior to the missile attack, implying considerable influence in the hunt for these targets.
Even if only 2 percent of Yemen’s population has Internet access, the U.S. are quickly becoming aware of the problem of instant news afforded by the local populace armed with Twitter. However, news of reconnaissance activity conducted ahead of a strike or account explaining the actions preceding the attacks can be more dangerous than the news that a strike is in progress.
This could lead the drone operators to operate with more discretion, at higher altitude and distance from the robots’ targets.
On the other side, terrorists could use twitter to spread false news to try to divert deadly Predators, Reapers (or F-15E Strike Eagles…..) from Djibouti, elsewhere.
Provided that Al Qaeda terrorists are among the 2 percent Yemeni using the Web.
Written with David Cenciotti
Image credit: Air Force
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- The mysterious U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle detachment in Djibouti. Are they conducting covert air strikes in Yemen? (theaviationist.com)
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Sooner or later we will all be spied upon by a drone like this. May 2, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in Drones.Tags: drones, law enforcement, Security, Surveillance, Television, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
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TV coverage of sport events once relied on helicopters. Today, live video is provided by cameras carried by micro-drones like the one depicted in the image below.
Used to film auto or skiing races, such “Octocopter robots” are slightly becoming distinctive features of our lives and, sooner or later, they will be used for surveillance, spying and law enforcement purposes in urban scenarios, in the same way current police helicopters are dispatched over our heads seeking criminals.
At least, being small and light, they will be less dangerous than Predator or Reaper UAVs whose greater freedom in much crowded airspaces is seen as a safety nightmare by many analysts.
In the near future they will also be transformed into deadly war machines: give ‘em more endurance and enough payload to carry also a gun (or a mini-gun), and it’s sorted.
Image credit: ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP/GettyImages
By the way, the above ‘bot was photographed on May 1, 2012 during a special F1 car show in Budapest organized by Hungaroring Zrt and Vodafone Zrt.
Related articles
- Photo: “Check your six”. You’ve got a quadricopter drone behind you (theaviationist.com)
- Unbelievable Aerial Bike Stunts Shot With Nimble DSLR Drone (gizmodo.com.au)
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North Korea’s drones, new ballistic missile on display during mass military parade in Pyongyang April 15, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in North Korea.Tags: drones, Kim Jong-un, military parade, North Korea, Pyongyang, Rocket launch, SA-3, Taepodong-class
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On Apr. 15, 2012, a mass military parade was held in the Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea, to celebrate 100 years since the birth of the late North Korean founder Kim Il Sung.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un delivered his first public televised speech Sunday, just two days after a failed rocket launch. According to Fox News dealing with the ballistic missile test he said (more or less):
“What we trust is not modern weapons, but our beloved soldiers and commanders.”
A lot of interesting hardware rolled out, including some drones, SA-3s, tanks, and a rocket, that according to some sources could be a new, possibly never seen before, Taepodong-class missile similar to the one that was lost few seconds after launch on Apr. 13.
A formation of Mig-29s performed a flypast of the parade.
Image credit: AP, Getty Images, Reuters
Photo: “Check your six”. You’ve got a quadricopter drone behind you April 12, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in Drones.Tags: drones, robocoters, TV drones
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That is a nice picture.
It was taken on Jan. 12, 2012, at Lauberhorn in Wengen, Switzerland, and shows a TV drone (not a quadricopter but a 8-rotor robocopter or a “Octocopter”) flying beside Canada’s Erick Guay during the second practice of the men’s Alpine skiing World Cup downhill race.
Image credit: Reuters
Once helicopters were dispatched to provide TV coverage of the most important events. Today, such job is performed by UFO-like mini ‘bots like the one depicted below.
Image credit: AP Photo/Keystone, Alessandro Della Bella
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U.S. drones to be nuclear powered? April 11, 2012
Posted by Richard Clements in Drones.Tags: Aviation, drones, Military Aviation, Northrop Grumman, Nuclear Power, Sandia National Laboratories, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
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It has emerged that Sandia National Laboratories, the U.S. government’s principle nuclear research and development agency, and defense contractor Northrop Grumman are working on powering the next generation of drones with nuclear power.
With nuclear powered drones, endurance could stop being measured in hours and would be measured in months with excess power used to power better communications and surveillance equipment.
Sandia and Northrop started the project to try and resolve three problems associated with drones with what they call “ultra-persistence technologies”: insufficient “hang time” over a potential target, lack of power for running sophisticated surveillance and weapons systems, and a lack of communications capacity.
The Sandia-Northrop project team looked at power supplies for large to medium sized UAVs before finally settling on nuclear power: not surprising, since Northrop Grumman patented a Helium Powered nuclear reactor as long ago as 1986 and its widely known designs for nuclear powered aircraft date back as far as the ’50s.
The project team found that nuclear power provided far more time on target and intel per mission than any other power source by quite a margin. It was also the most cost effective power source in that it eliminated the need for expensive support infrastructure near hostile territory.
And it would enable drones to carry more weapons or reconnaissance sensors.
Sandia went out of its way to say that the project is now complete and that no equipment was built or tested and this project was nothing more than a feasibility study, perhaps showing how sensitive this technology is.
There are worries that public opinion would not accept the idea of such a potentially dangerous technology, hence Sandia’s rather over the top statement.
Fears of this technology are understandable after the amount of drones that have been lost, both during combat operations and training. The risk is turning the drone into a sort of dirty bomb or the sensitive technology falling into the wrong hands of terrorists or enemy forces.
Therefore there will be no nuclear powered drones. For the moment….
Richard Clements for TheAviationist.com
Image credit: Reuters
All the war tech you’ll find in “Act of Valor” action movie April 8, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in Special Operations.Tags: Act of Valor, Douglas DC-3, drones, HALO jump, MH-47, Navy Seal, Osama bin Laden, Predator, RQ-11, SEAL Delivery Vehicle, Special Forces, Special Operations, United States Navy SEALs
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There are various reasons why “Act of Valor”, the movie released on Feb. 24, 2012, is interesting from the military geek point of view.
First of all it features the Navy SEALs some of which are not actors but regular guys, active duty military that have taken part to the most dangerous U.S. special operations all around the world; missions that, as the movie clearly shows, are often (if not always) supported by cargo planes, helicopters, combat planes, and drones.
The movie opens with footage of a High-Altitude Low Opening (HALO), a type of airborne jump that is repeated another couple of times during the story, during daylight and at night. As they did during a recent operation in Somalia.
Noteworthy, unlike it happened during Operation Neptune’s Spear, the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, the SEALs assault on a riverside compound is not performed using fast-rope and stealthy Black Hawks choppers. However, the exfiltration of the hostage involves two MH-47G Chinooks of the 160 SOAR (Special Operations Aviation Regiment) carrying SOC-Rs (Special Operations Craft – Riverine), high speed boats used for insertion/extraction ops and fire support into a low-to-medium threat environment in a riverine area.
During the exfil operation the SEALs use a RQ-11 Raven drone, a man-portable UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) controlled directly by the ground troops. The Raven is a relatively small bot whose ability is to automatically follow a moving target that was selected by touching the screen of the ROVER-like ground control system. Even if I’m not sure that the kind of imagery delivered to the end user and the targeting features are exactly as portrayed in the movie, the system should work in this way: once a series of pixels was selected, the systems tracks the movements of those pixels on the ground.
The movie features also a very well known Predator used for an unusual (or at least scarcely advertised) role for this asset: COMINT (Communication Intelligence) rather than the typical SCAR (Strike Coordination And Reconnaissance). Actually, if I recall correctly, the drone is used in the movie to detect environmental sounds coming from the compound, a task I’m not sure can be achieved with the current available sensors.
The first kill of the movie is worth a mention, since a sniper takes out an enemy sentry and when the dead man falls back into the river one of the SEALs is under the water with his hands above the surface to grab the body before it splashes.
Along with some interesting footage filmed on the flight deck of USS Bonhomme Richard amphibious assault ship, another interesting scene is the assault on a yacht and accompanying boats involving a Mark V Special Operations Craft and an HH-60 Sea Hawk using the Fast Rope Insertion Extraction System (FRIES), to let the SEALs descend on the target vessel.
Also interesting is the use of a SEAL Delivery Vehicle (SDV), an underwater watercraft deployed from a submarine to reach the Somalian coast.
Although they can be considered no more than warbirds, the movie also features a white Grumman HU-16 Albatross seaplane and an uncolored Douglas DC-3 cargo both landing in the desert.
On a side note: the official Act of Valor poster (the one used in Italy and UK, not sure it is the same in the U.S.) shows an HH-3F Pelican helicopter on the right hand corner: a type of chopper used by the U.S. Coast Guard and Air Force in the Vietnam War and phased out 20 years ago (in the U.S., Italy is still using them, even if it is replacing its ageing fleet with the new HH-139).
Hand Signals: the next step to controlling UAVs on aircraft carriers April 4, 2012
Posted by Richard Clements in Aircraft Carriers, Drones.Tags: aircraft carrier, drones, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Naval Air Station Pensacola, Northrop Grumman, Office of Naval Research, UAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Unmanned Air Vehicle, USS Dwight D Eisenhower, X-47B
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The environment you find on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier is constantly monitored. The organized chaos of launches, recoveries and taxi takes place in a totally unforgiving environment for an unmanned aircraft (and for manned planes too…).
According to an interesting article published by Navy Times, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) took a very close look at the problem of moving UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) about the deck whilst not endangering crew or interfering to the normal operations and they came up with an ingenious camera and computer that recognises the hand signals the sailors use to guide aircraft about an aircraft carrier deck.
It may be a step that finally makes UAV use on a aircraft carrier possible. “It would be really nice if we had an unmanned vehicle that can understand human gestures” said Yale Song a Ph.D candidate at MIT who developed the system.
“Gesturing is an instinctive skill we all have, so it requires little or no thought, leaving the focus itself, as it should be, not the interaction modality” said Song.
Song’s project which began in January 2009, and was funded by the Office of Naval Research, took him to Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, where he learned the hand signals used by the sailors on the flight deck that he used to “train” 20 students 24 signals. The students wore a Yellow Turtleneck and a cranial to replicate the clothing used onboard carriers.
The students performed all of the signals whilst being filmed by Song’s camera/computer combination, which in turn translated their hand movements to stick figures. With this data, Song was able to develop an algorithm that is able to learn how to identify and recognize the signals from people it hadn’t met before therefore hadn’t learned their individual slight variables.
Song said “Based on that training data, we trained our model so that when new data comes in, it has our algorithm to classify the sequence of gestures.”
Song admitted that his system gets the gestures correct around 75 percent of the time, so obviously a lot of more research is needed before this system could be introduced onto an unmanned air system.
According to the Navy Times article, while Song and MIT look into recognizing hand signals, Northrop Grumman has developed a special remote control for moving the X-47B on flight decks by means of a device which attaches to the wrist, waist and one hand. The “yellow shirt” operating the device will have access to a display and will be able to control the aircraft’s throttle, tailhook, brakes and perform several other functions associated with maneuvring an aircraft on deck.
Image credit: U.S. Naval Air Systems Command
Anyway, drone operations automation has already reached aircraft carriers, at least for testing purposes.
An automated landing system, which allowed the X-47’s controllers to take control of an F-18, fly the approach and land the plane onto the flight deck of USS Dwight D Eisenhower whilst the Hornet’s crew makes no input into the plane’s flight, has already been tested. Seen from the outside, the landing looks totally normal. The LSOs still has the power to wave off the landing should they feel that the landing is unsafe or does not meet any other criteria required for a trap landing.
Richard Clements for TheAviationist.com
Drones used as Proxies to get around ISP blocking and law enforcement: Predator’s to add server payload? March 19, 2012
Posted by Paolo Passeri in Drones, Information Security.Tags: BitTorrent, Cloud Computing, drones, Global Positioning System, GPS, Hacker News, Kim Dotcom, Low Orbit Ion Cannon, Low Orbit Server Stations, MegaUpload, Pirate Bay, Raspberry Pi
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Nearly in contemporary with the breaking news that a judge in New Zealand’s High Court has declared that the order used to seize Kim Dotcom’s assets is “null and void”, writing another page inside the endless MegaUpload saga, The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s largest BitTorrent sites, made another clamorous announcement. Tired of countering the block attempts that forced, last month, to switch its top-level domain, possibly to avoid seizure by U.S. authorities, and in October 2011 to set up a new domain to get around ISP blocking in Belgium, the infamous BitTorrent site is considering the hypothesis to turn GPS-controlled aircraft drones into proxies, in order to avoid Law Enforcement controls (and censorship) and hence evade authorities who are looking to shut the site down.
The drones, controlled by GPS and equipped with cheap radio equipment and small computers (such as Raspberry Pi), would act as proxies redirecting users’ traffic to a “secret location”. An unprecedented form of (literally) “Cloud Computing”, or better to say “Computing in the Clouds”, capable to transfer, thanks to modern radio transmitters, more than 100Mbps at over 50 kilometers away, more than enough for a proxy system.
A Predator drone carries a few servers…as tin cans would trail a newly married couple’s car
This is essentially what MrSpock, one of the site’s administrators, stated in a Sunday blog post (apparently unavailable at the moment). Curiously the drones are called “Low Orbit Server Stations”, a name not surprisingly much similar to the “Low Orbit Ion Cannon”, the DDoS weapon used by the Anonymous collective, capable of evoking very familiar hacktivism echoes.
Actually this is not the first time that hackers try to use air communication to circumvent Law Enforcement controls. At the beginning of the year, a group of hackers unveiled their project to take the internet beyond the reach of censors by putting their own communication satellites into orbit.
What raised some doubts (at first glance this announcement looks like an anticipated April Fools), is not the the use of a Low Orbit Server Stations, but the fact that moving into an airspace would be enough to prevent Law Enforcement Controls (and reactions).
Drones are subject to specific rules and restrictions and can only fly along reserved corridors to deconflict them from civilian and military air traffic. And they have to land every now and then, unless someone thinks these pirate robots can be air-to-air refueled.
As a commenter of The Hacker News correctly pointed out: “There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about who “owns” the airspace of a given country“: definitely a drone flying too high would be classified as a threat and forcibly removed by an air force, a drone tethered to ground would be subjected to local zoning laws, while a drone broadcasting from an “intermediate” height would probably violate a number of existing laws and forced to shut down.
At the end it is better to turn back to “Ground Computing” as opposed to “Cloud Drones”. As a matter of fact “it’s probably a lot easier to find a friendly government and host a normal server in that country“.
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011 and 2012 (regularly updated) at hackmageddon.com. And follow the author of this article @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
Ryan Aeronautical photo archive traces development of combat drones from the factory floor to deployment in southeast Asia March 19, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in Drones.Tags: drones, Northrop Grumman, Ryan Aeronautical, Ryan Firebee, San Diego Air & Space Museum, Teledyne, UAV, UCAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Unmanned combat air vehicle
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Founded by T. Claude Ryan in 1934, part of Teledyne from 1969 and purchased by Northrop Grumman in 1999, Ryan Aeronautical company has designed, developed and built some of the most innovative and successful unmanned aerial vehicles, the most famous of those is the Ryan BQM-34 Firebee.
Ryan was a pioneer in aircraft, missiles and unmanned targets, and a photo gallery made available on Flickr by the San Diego Air & Space Museum archive provide a detailed account of the development of the early UCAVs (Umanned Combat Aerial Vehicles) from the desing phase, to the deploymnet in southeast Asia including some rare images of the early sketches, experimental types and testing activities with A-6, F-18 and F-4.
Below you can find a very small selection of images edited by Scott Mahew (thanks for the heads-up!).
The remaining +3,200 images (covering also the Spirit of St. Louis, Lindbergh, the ST, PT and Brougham series of aircraft) can be found here.
All images: Ryan Aeronautical via San Diego Air & Space Museum archive
