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Iran claims to have reverse-engineered US spy drone Iran claims to have reverse-engineered US spy drone
(about 7 hours later)
Iran claims it has reverse-engineered a US spy drone captured by its armed forces last year and has begun building a copy. Iran claimed that it had reverse-engineered a US spy drone captured by its armed forces last year, and that it had been building a copy. It cited as proof details of the aircraft's history, which, it said, included a surveillance mission over the home of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan just two weeks before he was killed.
General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, chief of the aerospace division of the Revolutionary Guards, related what he said were details of the aircraft's operational history to prove his claim that Tehran's military experts had extracted data from the US RQ-170 Sentinel captured in December in eastern Iran, state television reported . The US dismissed the claim as "bluster", but it would be an embarrassment for the US military and intelligence community if Iran was able to produce a replica.
Tehran has flaunted the capture of the Sentinel, a top-secret surveillance drone with stealth technology, as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the US in a complicated intelligence and technological battle. After the loss of the drone in December, the US claimed there was little in the software that could be exploited for intelligence purposes and that it was in any case encrypted.
US officials have acknowledged losing the drone. They have said Iran will find it hard to exploit any data and technology aboard it because of measures taken to limit the intelligence value of drones operating over hostile territory. The commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, told the Iranian Fars news agency that they had succeeded in reverse-engineering the drone.
Hajizadeh told state television that the captured surveillance drone was a "national asset" for Iran and said he could not reveal full technical details. But he did provide some samples of the data that he claimed Iranian experts had recovered. A spokesman for the CIA, which operates the drones, declined to comment. The drones have been used for monitoring and assassinating suspected terrorists in Pakistan and for intelligence-gathering in Iran, mainly of its nuclear sites.
"This drone was in California in October 2010 for some technical work and was taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan in November 2010. It conducted flights there but apparently faced problems and [US experts] were unable to fix it," he said. The US blamed the loss of the RQ-170 Sentinel drone on a technical problem. Iran claims it brought it down electronically, by disrupting its GPS system. President Barack Obama asked for the device to be returned, a request that Iran rejected. The former vice-president, Dick Cheney, criticised Obama for failing to take a more robust approach, such as destroying the drone on the ground before the Iranians could get to it.
Hajizadeh said the drone was taken to Los Angeles in December 2010 where sensors of the aircraft underwent testing. He claimed that the drone was in use in Pakistan two weeks before Osama bin Laden was killed by US navy Seals in the country's north-west. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate homeland security committee, who receives regular intelligence updates, told Fox News on Sunday that he was sceptical about Hajizadeh's claims: "There is some history here of Iranian bluster, particularly now when they're on the defensive because of our economic sanctions against them.
"If we had not achieved access to software and hardware of this aircraft, we would be unable to get these details. Our experts are fully dominant over sections and programs of this plane," he said. "Look, it was not good for the US when the drone went down in Iran, and not good when the Iranians grabbed it. [But] I don't have confidence at this point that they are really able to make a copy of it. It's a very sophisticated piece of machinery and has served our national security well, including, I would guess, being used to look all over Iran, particularly at areas where we have reason to believe that they are working on a nuclear weapon."
There are concerns in the US that Iran or other states may be able to reverse-engineer the chemical composition of the drone's radar-deflecting paint or the aircraft's sophisticated optics technology that allows operators to positively identify terror suspects from tens of thousands of feet in the air. In support of his claim to have penetrated the drone's secrets, Hajizadeh said Iranian engineers had successfully retrieved information from the aircraft's memory. As a result, he said, they knew that it had flown a surveillance mission over Osama bin Laden's Pakistan hideout two weeks before he was killed, and that drone parts had been sent to California for work in October 2010 before the drone was transferred to Kandahar, in Afghanistan. The drone then experienced technical problems during operations from Kandahar and was sent back to the US, to Los Angeles, for tests on its sensors and other parts.
There are also worries that adversaries may be able to hack into the drone's database, as Iran claimed to have done. Some surveillance technologies allow video to stream through to operators on the ground but do not store much collected data. If they do, it is encrypted. "Had we not accessed the plane's software and hard disk, we wouldn't have been able to uncover these facts," Hajizadeh said.
Media reports claimed this week that Russia and China had asked Tehran to provide them with information on the drone, but Iran's defence ministry denied this. Although the US insisted in December that the drone carried little useful intelligence, concern was expressed about reverse-engineering of its radar-deflecting paint coating and special optics used for spying.
Hajizadeh's claim was made against a backdrop of international tension over western suspicion that Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons capability. Israel has issued repeated threats that it will bomb Iran's nuclear installations rather than allow it to obtain a nuclear bomb.
Iran engaged in diplomatic negotiations in Istanbul earlier this month and a further round is scheduled for 23 May in Baghdad.