Iran claimed capable to clone the U.S. spy drone
TEHRAN – Corps Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Air Force General Amirali Hajizadeh said Iran is ready to produce drones that are identical to the spy plane belonging to the United States (U.S.) who was shot down in the region and Iran in December 2011.
“The U.S. should know the extent to which Iran capable explore every part of their spy plane. A number of experts that we have to have a full understanding of each component and the program contained in the plane,” said Commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Air Force General Amirali Hajizadeh, such as RT was quoted Sunday (22/04/2012).
Previously, the U.S. had considered disparaging remarks Tehran in ability to decode unmanned RQ-170 type belong to the U.S..
U.S. officials have acknowledged losing the drone. They have said Iran will find it hard to exploit any data and technology aboard it because of measures taken to limit the intelligence value of drones operating over hostile territory.
Hajizadeh told state television that the captured surveillance drone is a “national asset” for Iran and that he could not reveal full technical details. But he did provide some samples of the data that he claimed Iranian experts had recovered.
“There is almost no part hidden to us in this aircraft. We recovered part of the data that had been erased. There were many codes and characters. But we deciphered them by the grace of God,” Hajizadeh said.
He said all operations carried out by the drone had been recorded in the memory of the aircraft, including maintenance and testing.
Hajizadeh claimed that the drone flew over Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan two weeks before the al-Qaida leader was killed there in May 2011 by U.S. Navy SEALs. He did not say how the Iranian experts knew this.
Before that, he said, “this drone was in California on Oct. 16, 2010, for some technical work and was taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan on Nov. 18, 2010. It conducted flights there but apparently faced problems and (U.S. experts) were unable to fix it,” he said.
Hajizadeh said the drone was taken to Los Angeles in December 2010 where sensors of the aircraft underwent testing at an aerospace factory.
“If we had not achieved access to software and hardware of this aircraft, we would be unable to get these details. Our experts are fully dominant over sections and programs of this plane,” he said. “It’s not that we can bring down a drone but cannot recover the data.”
There are concerns in the U.S. that Iran or other states may be able to reverse-engineer the chemical composition of the drone’s radar-deflecting paint or the aircraft’s sophisticated optics technology that allows operators to positively identify terror suspects from tens of thousands of feet in the air.
There are also worries that adversaries may be able to hack into the drone’s database, as Iran claimed to have done. Some surveillance technologies allow video to stream through to operators on the ground but do not store much collected data. If they do, it is encrypted.
In fact, Tehran has boldly expressed, a number of countries have now been approached Iran to obtain information related to Iran’s military technology obtained through a U.S. drone. China and Russia also reportedly the most interested party for the information of military technology.
So far, the U.S. seems not intend to issue any statement in response to Tehran’s statement.
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