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On the heels of the drone that landed inside Iran recently, now there’s a report of another drone crash-landing in the Seychelles Islands:
One of the Air Force’s premier drones crashed Tuesday morning in the Seychelles, the Indian Ocean archipelago that serves as a base for anti-piracy operations, as well as U.S. surveillance missions over Somalia.
The crash of the MQ-9 Reaper comes roughly two weeks after a U.S. drone went down in Iran [...]
The Air Force acknowledged the crash at the Seychelles airport, and a spokesman for the service said the crash happened as the drone was landing. No one was injured.
This was a crash landing, rather than the apparently intact drone in Iran, which may have been taken over remotely. But it’s really not a surprise that US military planes are unreliable. In fact, a new report from the Pentagon on the F-35 program reveals a host of issues:
Technical and performance problems with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter appear to be more numerous and more serious than anyone in the Department of Defense has been willing to concede publicly, according to a leaked Pentagon report obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The internal report marked “For Official Use Only” is written in carefully couched language, but clearly sounds alarms that some very large, troubling and costly to resolve technological and performance issues lie ahead for the already troubled and massively over budget F-35.
There are thirteen new design flaws that have been found, according to the internal report. I remember a previous report on the F-35 showed it had problems performing when it rained. Aside from the waste and fraud associated with military contracting, they apparently make incredibly faulty equipment.
Mitt Romney jumped on the Dick Cheney bandwagon by criticizing President Obama for not destroying the drone in Iran. Given the massive design failures we keep seeing crop up, how do we know that the White House didn’t try, and the self-destruct button fell off, or something?
Most expensive military in the world, folks.
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Just 13 design flaws? Oh, my. And how much do these things cost? And they melt in the rain? Oh, my, my.
“Most expensive military in the world……and beyond”
“You go to war with the faulty military arsenal you HAVE, not the dependable military arsenal you WANT.”
Anonymous
In 2011 I saw an earlier NYT report indicating that the drones actually crash with some frequency. This is not surprising; these are new generation aircraft probably with some technology built-in still somewhat experimental. The military has a long history of battlefield testing new technology.
“Wings that Don’t Fly” was the title of a lecture Victoria Newhouse gave at NYPL about a decade ago. It was about the architecturally abysmal wings that U.S. art galleries keep adding to existing bldgs so that every director can lay claim to an expanded erection, and as can the superrich whose collection & wing gets named after him.
This is wings that don’t fly in a more literal application.
Knowing the utter competence and literal-mindedness of the US military, I’m inclined to believe that when they pushed the self-destruct button … the button self-destructed. :-P
If we want to focus on a failed military aircraft program I would suggest the Osprey, which has had failures costing human lives and continues on in production and use nonetheless.
LOL
Dronedrops keep falling on my head.
Apparently the Iranians, with their “universal remote” purchased on eBay, can fly our UAV’s better than we can. That’s pretty impresive.
Winnah!
Whoa!!! “expanded erection”. Let’s keep it clean here young lady.
For comparison (please forgive the third post) consider that the civilian 737 still manifests occasional mechanical failures and faults despite having been in service for 3,000 years now.
I don’t have a sense of alarm over a drone crashing. The F-35 program should be cancelled (I believe) for well-publicized reasons.
Another one bites the dust…
Your tax dollah$$$ at work, my friends. ‘Course, despite his snarling bitching, you can rest a$$ured that Dick Cheney got his cut…
The Marines like it. It looks “neat” when taking off.
The Iranians probably used a broadband EMF jammer and did not “take over” the captured drone so much as probably having cut off its satellite link for a long period of time, in which it may have executed some pre-programmed response and landed.
Looks neat when crashing, too, probably.
That’s certainly possible…………………. too.
That’s pretty good.
Didn’t know you could be so funny.
Indeed, which is why the entirely predictable “Republican” bitching and whining about how Barry Zer0 *failed* in some way in this instance is so boringly ridiculous… not that I’m not first in line to diss Zer0, but in this case, it’s like: whatever…
If Eye-Ran “captured” this drone… don’t worry. Now the Seycelles have it, too, and will no doubt raffle that one off to the highest bidder.
You must never have listened to Phillipe de Montebello from the Met.
That dick Cheney is like an Amway “direct distributor”. He gets a cut off EVER NICKEL WE SPEND.
Easier to imagine them suspending or eliminating active control then having the ability to take over the craft itself – the authentication and access control at the point of satellite link is probably pretty epic in these drones. I imagine you might have to be a satellite just to get them to acknowledge you exist. The Iranians don’t have any satellites.
No, I haven’t. What position did he play?
The drone crashed while landing in the Seychelles, at an established US Air Force base. I doubt very much that the government presence in the Seychelles was aware of any plane crash. They probably don’t have a functioning military or intelligence apparatus in general.
As I recall my econversation of this subject (and I am a complete emoron so feel free to jump all over my inexpertise) with an army major, going back almost a decade and related to U.S. sat control of logistics trucks, he told me that ‘they’ would not only have to know where the sat is, but also figure out the codes to hack into it. So your version sounds a lot like his.
But, they could have a ground control uplink with a Chinese or Russian satellite utilizing the same megaherz settings and parameters that would mirror our signal under the proper meteoroligical conditions.
How’s that???
Heh. Listen to the link.
When you discuss Predator Drones, you should also mention the Jonas Brothers. The President threatens American citizens with assassination, but it is a joke. Ha. Ha. The President threatens all Americans with indefinite detention and assassination, and it is not a joke. But Banksters are not threatened with anything.
In my 26, the army major in question considered that unlikely, again in dim memory, bc there are so many choices of links and passwords.
Hacking is a lot better than when I probed the issue so long ago (guy in question was against the Iraq war so we had something in common when we were first eintroduced), but my anti-military Qs went OTT with him, so, sigh, the econversation ended in a whimper, not a bang.
Sounds like something Wylie Coyote bought from ACME.
I doubt very much the Russians or Chinese are giving Iranians access to their military satellites in order to attack US aircraft. Placing that aside, simply having the ability to broadcast a signal in a high frequency range would be completely insufficient. I personally suspect that the drone aircraft will have a lock-in to specific control frequencies that shift as a function of time, a function which is determined by electronics found in US satellites. Furthermore, I believe there will be a very, very encrypted tunnel for communication between the satellite and the aircraft. Finally, the control of the aircraft itself will rely on a very expansive protocol or set of protocols that enable the actual transfer of data and control signals between the aircraft and the system controlling it.
You can’t just call up the drone and tell it to “land now!”. To control the aircraft manually – which you suggest, you’d have to have a system on the ground that can generate the needed signals to actually fly the plane correctly, and receive its data back, and you’d have to do this after gaining exclusive access to the satellite link in a way that allowed you to override or simply sever the already-existing communications underway between the aircraft and its true controller.
Much more believable to me is that the Iranians used a broadband EMF jammer, and the plane either went way over an interrupt time out corresponding to its lack of communication with its owner and crash landed, or landed deliberately, perhaps quite low on fuel.
The real issue is why a self-destruct signal wasn’t sent to the craft via a separate channel than satellite link.
I am so NOT a tunes fan. But Wylie Coyote is the one for me. So common to be 10′ over the cliff before you realize it.
Cheetoes break for operator.
Oh…… THAT Phillipe de Montebello. Fascinating intereview.
Not.
Phillipe de Montebello, IMHO, is the guy who really needs erection amplification. What a pompous jerk.
For now, we’ll just have to wonder. I don’t expect that Ahmadinejad will be forthcoming on the issue.
I expect Philip Giraldi or Eric Margolis, or any of the other leftie ex-CIAers, will worm some useful info out of their contacts.
I elt his obversations on Watteau were “on target”. I thought ALL museum directors were pompous by natuire.
Or, Wiki-leaks.
That was one of Newhouse’s main points.
Perhaps.
The other fascinating part of the dronedrops story is that some one on the U.S. side is already leaking. TBA. (I’ve been trying to see that movie for decades, but every time I get to the theater, something else is playing.)
Note that Iran has been reported to have successfully limited electronic communications across its borders, indicating to amateur observers like you and I that they probably have radio jamming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_jamming
Iran
The country of Iran has frequently used jamming of satellite TV (as well as filtering the Internet and restricting Internet connectivity speed and other methods) as a strategy to prevent the consequences of freedom of expression in the last decade. Most of the jamming took place in the year 2009 after the controversial presidential election in Iran to control the flow of information and updates about the protests. Although most of the jamming is done on news channels or political ones, another famous series of jamming started around July 2010 on a non-political, Persian language satellite TV channel called “Farsi1″ which airs Persian-dubbed popular TV series.
The f-22 Raptor, that cost twice as much as the f-35, is the one that has problems in the rain.
F22 Raptor
The $153 million (that’s the official number, the actual after retrofits for problems is much higher) averages a critical failure for every 1.7 hours flown. It is not used in combat because it’s to unreliable, and yet they forced us the buy 183 of them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/09/AR2009070903020.html
The entire fighter jet program has been a huge suck.
O let’s just bomba, bomba bomb those terrorists in Iran. Johnny Boy, Darth Vader and Lindy the Tough, and their friends will sign right up. BTW where is Ole’ Joe these days. He would fit right in. Dumb fucks all.
:)
Biggest government program in the world.
Wow. I guess the CIA didn’t get that memo.
Oh, I thought it was flying buttresses. Thnx.
Anyone recall the story on the virus infected flight control software of these UAV’s? Shit GE or Lockheed or whatever manufacturer/programmer made these vehicles probably just sold them the stuff. All’s fair for Our Corporate Owners.