Posted on 12/12/2011 6:26:23 AM PST by Just4Him
American officials insist that neither weaponry nor technology brought down a U.S. drone that was flying over Iranian territory earlier this month, but a former U.S. ambassador says if reports are true that Russia provided jamming equipment, the situation becomes all that much worse. "Some reports have said Russia sold (Iran) a very sophisticated jamming system a short time ago," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told Fox News on Sunday. "Now, our military says that is not true, it came down because of a malfunction. I certainly hope that's right because if the Russians have provided Iran with sophisticated jamming equipment it means a lot else is at risk too."
Bolton said Congress ought to be concerned if the Iranians are in possession of jamming technology that can bring down missiles, planes and communications and guidance systems "for a whole range of our weapon systems."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Depends on what it's made of. Fiberglass composite is invisible to RF. Carbon and aluminum aren't.
Backup nav systems should let it know pretty much where it is in 3D space.
I too thought the Iranian response was strange. Why publicize the fact they have the drone, especially if it was brought down with jamming technology? They would get a brief public relations bump but reveal a lot about their capabilities.
US ambassadors don’t have clearance for such knowledge, so I highly doubt his guessing is accurate.
Depends on what it’s made of. Fiberglass composite is invisible to RF. Carbon and aluminum aren’t.
We can be confident that a stealth platform does not conduct RF through the wing/body of the aircraft.
A muslim would not miss the brownie points among their own. They brought down a dreaded weapon of the great satan after all.
You still have inertial navigation...assuming that it was part of the system. Counting on GPS to always be there is a single point of failure kind of mistake. Ditto for assuming the satellite links will be there.
This whole episode is curious. Could Iranian radar even detect this thing up in the air? If not, how did they find it - did they somehow recieve and interpret the radio signal controlling the aircraft?
And, judging by its non-wrecked condition, it looks like it did not ‘crash’...so was it ‘jamming’, or was it ‘taking over the controls’?
If the Iranians/Russians are able to do this, it seems there is little they can’t do (I’m thinking satellite communications, etc.).
Wow....still hoping for a Trojan Horse scenario.
How is this possibly a good thing, sure you wrote that right or maybe I am missing your point?
Undoubtedly Pooty sent Iran a jammer.
The good thing would be our early ability to find a good work-around or even a good hard hitting counter-measure.
Who knows what the actual config of the drone nobama gave them was. Probably not setup or equipped like what nobama “thought” he was giving his bretheren, more or less just a way to feel them out. I will give our Mil and CIA more credit than to be as dumb as nobama.
I don’t care what Russia gives them, two things are in play. One, most everything Ruski Mil sucks in real life (excepting AK-47) and if Russia gave them a ballbearing, we can count on the stupid camel jocks to either file on it or pack sand in it.
The classic approach to "stealth" aims to disperse the signal striking the target in multiple directions or absorb the signal to attenuate the reflected signal. That works when the radar transmitter/receiver is in a single location. The new approach is a form of "crowd sourcing" using ganged radar receivers at multiple locations. The "ping" from a transmitter is received by multiple receivers at widely separated locations. That data is correlated to resolve a target. The short answer is that "stealth" is a technology that is nearing its useful life as detection techniques have improved. The advent of an RF rich environment creates an "ocean" through which aircraft must travel. The RF acts as a passive transmitter. If you fly an absorbing object through that "ocean", it creates a detectable disruption. The "ganged" receiver approach can resolve a target that way, albeit with "fuzzier" resolution than a standard radar T/R approach.
BTW, you "beat" the ganged radar by breaking the data links used to "gang" the receivers. That puts your "stealth" back in business. The bad guys have been using buried fiber optic cable for the data links.
Not necessarily. Fiberglass aircraft, for incidence, are almost invisible to radar and it's not because they are absorbing or reflecting RF energy. BTW, I'm also an RF Engineer, I've worked on a couple of stealth projects, specifically range testing various materials for echo signature.
Good thinking!
As my old Granddad always told me “Son, use your head for more than just a hat-rack”
TMI.
Ah, now I get it...duh, must need more coffee!
Thanks for the reply ;)
If they are Jamming GPS signal from Sats,then you not using Freq-Hoping. Also, Frequency Hopping makes it harder to Jam,not impossible you just have to Jam much wider channel. Also,where is guarantee that the Drone was using it, instead something much simpler,because its cheap.
Interesting...sounds like it takes alot of equipment and processign power to ‘defeat’ stealth. No way the Iranians did this by themselves.
Perhaps our pals the Russians have been gently stabbing us in the back.
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