Comment Utter Garbage (Score 3, Informative) 647
It's amazing how little a grasp of basic engineering, or even common sense, your typical journalist has, or any other people who actually believe this bunk.
1) How does one "jam" a tight-beam satellite uplink? Electronic Warfare has been around for just as long as there has been radios on the battlefield, and people actually think that the possibility of jamming didn't occur to the craft's designers?
2) Jamming GPS, however, *can* be done; you just have to be louder than the broadcast signal. HOWEVER, see the first item. The possibility never occurred to the designers?
3) In order to "spoof" a GPS to such a precise degree as to make the aircraft land would require the Iranians to know the precise location (within a meter or two) of the craft in relationship to the terrain below it. A stealthed aircraft that even American systems have difficulty detecting, mind you. Otherwise, drone goes SPLAT.
4) Even assuming a miracle happens and 3) is actually accomplished, the aircraft is now scooting along the ground at several hundred miles per hour. How do you tell the craft to shut down its engine? Better yet, how do you get it to drop its landing gear?
So; after all this, let's play a bit of Occam's Razor: The drone suffered a major malfunction and splattered itself across the face of a mountain somewhere. The Iranians, in the hopes of deterring the Americans from sending more drones, cook up this cock-and-bull story of being able to bring the drones down intact. Their "proof" is a fiberglass model put together from released photos and media footage (Oh, look! The landing gear just *happens* to be concealed! Possibly because the Iranians don't know what it's supposed to look like?).
Now; doesn't this sound just a little bit more plausible?
1) How does one "jam" a tight-beam satellite uplink? Electronic Warfare has been around for just as long as there has been radios on the battlefield, and people actually think that the possibility of jamming didn't occur to the craft's designers?
2) Jamming GPS, however, *can* be done; you just have to be louder than the broadcast signal. HOWEVER, see the first item. The possibility never occurred to the designers?
3) In order to "spoof" a GPS to such a precise degree as to make the aircraft land would require the Iranians to know the precise location (within a meter or two) of the craft in relationship to the terrain below it. A stealthed aircraft that even American systems have difficulty detecting, mind you. Otherwise, drone goes SPLAT.
4) Even assuming a miracle happens and 3) is actually accomplished, the aircraft is now scooting along the ground at several hundred miles per hour. How do you tell the craft to shut down its engine? Better yet, how do you get it to drop its landing gear?
So; after all this, let's play a bit of Occam's Razor: The drone suffered a major malfunction and splattered itself across the face of a mountain somewhere. The Iranians, in the hopes of deterring the Americans from sending more drones, cook up this cock-and-bull story of being able to bring the drones down intact. Their "proof" is a fiberglass model put together from released photos and media footage (Oh, look! The landing gear just *happens* to be concealed! Possibly because the Iranians don't know what it's supposed to look like?).
Now; doesn't this sound just a little bit more plausible?
