Livefist: GUEST POST | Why The Beast Was Lost
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GUEST POST | Why The Beast Was Lost
-By Aditya Mandrekar
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With news that Iran may have downed one of
the United States' most secret spy-planes -- an
RQ-170 Sentinel built Lockheed-Martin -- the
internet has been abuzz with claims, counter-
claims and outright denials that it could have
happened. Now that Iran has officially released
footage of the UAV in their possession - one that
does resemble the 'Beast of Kandahar' from the
few photos available - speculation has turned to
precisely why the UAV is in Iranian hands.
But first, two things that can be inferred from the
video released:
The UAV may be a blended wing design, but
there are no obvious "stealth" characteristics. A
meshed air intake is not enough to make an
aircraft low-observable and could simply be there
to prevent foreign object damage (FOD). The
control surfaces too do not have any serrated
(jagged) edges that are needed to spread radio
wave reflections; neither do various panels on the
aircraft.
Amusingly, the aircraft is placed on a plinth
instead of its own landing gear. Which means
either the gear stayed retracted or was torn off on
landing, either pointing to signs that it wasn't
made to land in a controlled manner.
So how is the Beast in Iranian hands?
The most exotic claim is of course 'it was hacked'.
This is also the one least likely to be true and
ironically the one explanation that the speculators
seem to long for. The possibility of a spy plane
flying with a datalink continuously active is quite
low. There are many reasons for this, but
security (exposing the communication channel
for long durations) and power consumption (to
power the receiver and, in some cases, a
transmitter for two-way communication) are
chief concerns. UAVs obviously can be fed
course correction updates in real time if sudden
changes are necessary. But these will be brief and
short transmissions that will be irregular and hard
to break into - encryption levels are beyond the
average supercomputer's power to break in
reasonable time, not to mention the possibility of
passcodes changing every mission.