Actually, from what they said, it's going to have exclusive access for the beta, not necessarily the final release. It probably will be on Xbox One as well, but who knows at this point?

I'm going to give them some benefit of the doubt, just to be diplomatic. I'm going to assume that it is indeed a real airplane and that it was indeed flying in the video. (Global Security disagrees with this assumption at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iran/qaher-313.htm but I just want to state my two cents on the plane as an enthusiast.) That said, just because they say it's a stealth fighter doesn't make it a stealth fighter. In the footage provided there's no documentation of its stealthiness, nor even a general discussion on what makes it stealthy such as vaguely stating "radar absorbent materials", "carefully calculated angles", or "continuous curvature" like you get in History/Discovery/Military channel overviews of the U.S.'s stealth and stealthy aircraft. It's just "we have a stealth fighter." Even the roll-outs of the F-117A and B-2 contained more information about their stealth designs than was discussed in that video.

Lets give them another benefit of the doubt, that they were too intelligent to discuss those facts for strategic purposes.

I'm no expert on stealth, but I have fundamental problems with the aircraft's design in terms of stealth. The down pointing wingtips are sufficiently disjunctive with the rest of the flow of the aircraft that I can't help imagine that they'll generate a larger radar cross-section as a result. It has a forward wing-canard which helps with maneuverability (at least when paired with thrust vectoring), but I imagine that the tips (as seen at http://www.globalsecurity.org/jhtml/jframe.html#http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iran/images/qaher-313-image06.jpg||| ) would also trigger a larger cross-section from some angles. Hell, this image, http://www.globalsecurity.org/jhtml/jframe.html#http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iran/images/qaher-313-image18.jpg||| , to me screams that there's no way in the world this wouldn't reflect radar signals back to the source...

Global Security does point out that the air in-takes are too small for any reasonable modern fighter jet, but perhaps the Iranians couldn't make it stealthy with any significant jet engine. They also point out that the nose cone is too small to hold a radar system, but that might be explained by a very involved ground control team; it hasn't been unheard of for officers on the ground to order fighters to certain locations and engage certain enemies. This was a Russian and Chinese strategy though I don't know if they still hold to that. Not including a radar system in an aircraft would make the pilot dependent on its ground control, less capable of independent action, and less likely to be detected by an enemy's threat detection system. They wouldn't be locking on to a target with their own radar, so missiles fired from them would be fed telemetry from a remote location, which means it couldn't give away the aircraft's position (specific or broad) prior to firing. Of course, that's speculation; it's possible that it has a small radar system that is comparatively weak by the standards we use in the West. Global Security quotes David Cenciotti who noted "It looks like this pilot is in a miniature plane" and it appeared "nothing more than a large mock-up model" but then, so does an F-16 up close. The F-16 looks like a toy next to the F-15 or F-22.

Nonetheless, I don't imagine the DoD is losing any sleep over this announcement... Even if the plane is real and really does have some stealthy features, I'd wager that it would still be a large enough radar target for AWACS to pick it up at a distance, and relay lock data to a squadron of F-15s that are well outside of visual range. I think that its possible stealthy features are ruined by its design. If any thing, I think it's more hot air coming out of Tehran to forestall any potential talk of an attack out of the West to stop their nuclear program.

And for the record, I think the plane looks like it was inspired by Firefox combined with bits from Stealth and actual fighters like the F-22. I'm more concerned about China's stealth fighter(s) which seem to be more legitimate ripoffs of known stealth and stealthy planes.

They weren't exactly building new B-52s in 90. They were committed to supporting the existing aircraft that they were allowed to keep in service (a treaty signed with the Soviets actually had us destroy a large number of the aircraft). The Air Force *knew* they were keeping the plane in service long after they planned to retire the B-1 and B-2 bombers. This wasn't just speculation, or idle planning, they have a vested desire to keep the '52 flying until then.

It should be noted that the USAF knew in 1990 that they'd still be flying B-52s until at least 2040. I was a cadet at Michigan State University's AFROTC, and remember seeing slides and other information that projected that.

These days, in my opinion, sessions are done better and more securely with cookies; a cookie, for example, can be set to require a secure transmission vector (usually SSL in an HTTPS request), and aren't bookmarked as part of a URL. Yes it is more difficult to see what cookies are stored in your browser than in a URL, but most browsers will allow you to view and/or clear cookies easily enough. In addition, cookies can be set to expire automatically a set time on the client so they're only valid for a specified period of time, which can be completely separate from the server side. For instance, you could create a session that would live for 5 hours, and regularly change the session ID (say every fifth request if you like); the session cookie would get updated each time, but the overall session would live only for that 5 hour window. While the same could be done with a session ID in a URL, that session ID could still end up in a bookmark; in the very unlikely event of the session ID being reused, that bookmark could represent an inadvertent attack vector.

In addition, cookies are passed with both GET and POST requests; not every page has to be a POST request to use cookies to pass session IDs, and as I explained already, a session ID in a URL can be bookmarked. GET and POST have two different purposes, and I think everyone designing web pages could stand to read through the HTTP RFC . Logins should be done exclusively with POST in my opinion, and normal data retrieval once logged in should be done with GET. There's no reason that any search engine should ever be given a session, let alone a session ID; if a search engine needs access to otherwise secured information, there are options to accomplish that, but I can't see the logic in locking up data then making it publicly available in a search engine.

Does this mean that AMD/ATI and nVidia are finally recognizing that the only people really losing out in their cold war are their users? I'm traditionally an AMD/ATI customer but have been leaning towards getting an nVidia card for the CUDA support in Adobe's Creative Suite, but if this means that at some point in the future the Radeon HD 7000 series will support CUDA and will potentially accelerate CS, then I'll stick with it...

Definitely true, though I'm sure there are people at the various military contractors that knew better all along. There's no excuse for being lax about security when national security, defense, and military equipment and personnel are involved.

Yes, a video signal is different from the control signal, but any intelligence intercepted by an enemy is still a security risk. More often than not, intelligence from those drones is relayed by radio to ground units rather than being directly received by those units. (Some degree of analysis usually needs to be done.) The video signal needs to be encrypted just as much as the control signals.

My point with regards to the malware infection was more that this should have triggered a re-evaluation of the security involved in the maintenance and usage of our drones.

The question is, after it was confirmed last year that hostiles were intercepting military satellite footage in Afghanistan and that malware was present on a significant number of drones earlier this year, why wasn't any encryption either present or if it was present, why wasn't it updated to prevent interception and/or loss of control? I think the Air Force Cyber Warfare division has some explaining to do...