Below are some posts I made a week or so ago. I re-post them here since they seem a good fit and someone might find them interesting.
None of this rings true at all.
Even a novice design team would build in at least triple layer watchdog systems.
There is no way a simple loss of GPS would cause all the systems to fail. Furthermore,
corruption of one system by trojan or virus would not take out the other watchdog
systems. These systems are kept isolated from each other by code base and power supply
and in some instances they have different design teams to ensure against sabotage.
Any one of the redundant systems would either result in the drone returning to friendly
airspace or the destruction of the craft.
GPS is not the sole method of determining the crafts location. They can follow terrain
just as a cruise missile can by referencing mapping data. GPS can give a drone pinpoint
navigation but that is overkill, within a few hundred yards is sufficient and even the
old system of inertial guidance can handle that.
The notion that the craft sustained damage because the landing strip is not at the same
altitude as the real one somewhere in Afghanistan is absurd! A sophisticated drone does
not rely on GPS to determine height above a runway, such a task is child’s play for even
a low dollar radar altimeter system. A remote controled plane enthusiast could build such
a system for his toy planes.
You simply cannot jam the communications system of a drone from the ground! They have
a link to low orbit satellites and the antenna for this is atop the craft and shielded from
a signal located on the ground. A break of this link would also result in a countdown to
self destruct that could only be halted by an encrypted code sent back from the drones
control point.
What is not easy is to somehow fool the redundant on-board positioning systems so that they do not catch the sudden change of location. A sudden shift of location from somewhere over Iran to somewhere over Afghanistan is pretty hard to miss..lol :-)
The instant such a sudden change in GPS takes place the system would know it was being attacked and would no longer rely on any GPS data. It would default to another system like inertial positioning or simply look at the terrain below or check the rf spectrum footprint....there are at least a half dozen ways a drone could get its location...some are non-intuitive and not widely understood.
The fact that GPS is so easy to manipulate is becoming a plus. Many who think they are sophisticated are relying on their ability to mess with GPS as a shield against US tech functioning properly. When the SHTF our stuff will indeed work just fine and they will be a laughingstock :-)
Remember, there would be more than one independent system watching the drone’s progress.
Plus somewhere there was a real live human operator paying attention. The following is a very simplified way of explaining what would occur and what the drone’s systems would be reporting both to the operations base and to the redundant systems on the craft.
Hello, I’m crossing into Iran now, just tooling along everything is just fine.
Hello again, GPS says somehow I have inexplicably turned around and am heading back to base!?
Hello, I just checked inertial guidance and it says I’m still going in the right direction... WTF is going on!?
Hello again, I’m looking around and it sure looks like Iran to me! Please advise?
Hello, I’ve started a watchdog timer for self destruct, please advise if you want me to stop it!?
Hello? Hello?
LOL... as I said, this story is ridiculous.
Something tells me this drone is something other than is being reported!? Or else we have morons building our drones.
p.s. It is no great trick to design GPS equipment so that it can tell the difference between a GPS signal source in orbit where it’s supposed to be and one transmitting from someplace else.
One can only hope.
Or else we have morons building our drones.
Or flying them, or ordering the ones who are flying them, or someone isn't a moron, but a not-quite-bright evil one who thinks that they are a frickin' genius...
Lots of possibilities...
Could be as simple as a power failure or other critical single point hardware failure that wasn’t redundant. A power failure could cause self destruct devices to not properly activate.
Too little information to know much of anything...