Afghanistan UAV's at risk of being shot down by the Taliban
Posted: Thursday, December 17, 2009
by Highway 101
There is a front page article in the Wall Street Journal on December 17, 2009 containing the shocking revelation that insurgents in Iraq have used inexpensive computer software to capture live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, which may be helping them evade and monitor U.S. military operations. The WSJ article quotes senior defense and intelligence officials as having told the newspaper that Iranian-supported insurgents used programs such as SkyGrabber, which costs about $26, to exploit an unsecured communications link in the unmanned planes. The shocking news is that US drones are broadcasting video of their surveillance sorties unencrypted however this is old news which any terrorist could easily have found out from several on line sources.
In an article in the Xconomy e-magazine a few days later on January 26, 2009 Bruce V. Bigelow writes ‘Isn't the video transmitted from robotic spy planes already encrypted? Not necessarily, says Enerdyne general manager Steve Gardner. As it turns out, it's possible to buy a standard commercial FM receiver used by TV news organizations and tune it to "eavesdrop" on the analog video signal transmitted by several different types of robotic aircraft used by the U.S. military. He says in the early years of UAV development, aircraft companies encrypted the digital electronics used to control UAVs, but "typically chose small analog transmitters" to broadcast video signals from the aircraft to ground units. That could be a problem if the eavesdroppers are U.S. adversaries in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Gardner says whether that scenario should be a concern has become a hot topic of discussion these days in defense circles that are focused on the development and use of UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles.
So if Enderdyne, a subsidiary of Viasat a defense contractor in Carlsbad, California, has been working on a solution for this UAV broadcast video since at least 2008 then why has no one at the Pentagon taken action to prevent terrorists from being able to freely access video from these pilotless aircraft? Worse still if the Taliban are able to view video from these drones you have to wonder what they might be able to do if they used a commercially available maritime VSAT terminal such as those made by Seatel which could track the UAV signal and attach to it a rocket launcher. Pardon the pun but it's not rocket science.
Turn the clock back 40 years or so to Vietnam where the Vietcong riding bicycles with World War II 303 rifles slung over their shoulders were able to defeat an American army equipped with B52 bombers. I think the US military is getting complacent in relying on UAV's to be their weapon of choice in hunting down terrorists in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border area and they should not underestimate the Taliban. Clearly the gaffe on using unencrypted video on UAV's needs to be fixed in a hurry before the Taliban progress to using the same signals as tracking beacons to shoot down these drones.
Vince Waterson is a telecommunications consultant and can be reached at vince@icanresource.com www.icanresource.com
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