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US Air Force Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ‘Beast of Khandahar’
Image by james_gordon_los_angeles
The RQ-170 Sentinel is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) developed by Lockheed Martin and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF). It has been deployed to Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Development
The RQ-170 Sentinel was developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works as a stealth Unmanned Aerial Vehicle [UAV]. Journalists have noted design similarities between the RQ-170 and previous stealth and UAV programs such as the RQ-3 DarkStar and Polecat. It is a tail-less flying wing aircraft with pods, presumably for sensors or SATCOMs, built into the upper surface of each wing. Few details of the UAV’s characteristics have been released, but estimates of its wingspan range from approximately 65 feet (20 m to betwe)en 75 feet (23 m) and 90 feet (27 m).
The RQ designation indicates that the RQ-170 Sentinel does not carry weapons. Aviation Week’s David A. Fulghum believes that the UAV is probably a tactical, operations-oriented platform and not a strategic intelligence-gathering design.
The USAF confirmed the grainy photos of a gray, flying-wing-typed unmanned airplane near Kandahar Airfield. Since then, this has been known as The Beast of Kandahar. in relation to the discussion of the RQ-170 Sentinel on 4 December 2009. A USAF colonel subsequently commented that RQ-170 is separate from the MQ-X program, which has yet to determine stealth or powerplant requirements, and thus the Sentinel will not replace the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones currently in service. As of May 2011, the US Military had not released any statements concerning the Sentinel since December 2009.
Design
The RQ-170 has a flying wing design containing a single (as yet unknown) engine and is estimated by Aviation Week as being approximately 66 feet in wingspan. Its takeoff weight is estimated as being greater than the RQ-3 DarkStar’s, which was 8,500 pounds. The design lacks several elements common to stealth engineering, namely notched landing gear doors and sharp leading edges. It has a curved wing planform, and the exhaust is not shielded by the wing. Aviation Week postulates that these elements suggest the designers have avoided ‘highly sensitive technologies’ due to the near certainty of eventual operational loss inherent with a single engine design and a desire to avoid the risk of compromising leading edge technology. The publication also suggests that the medium-grey color implies a mid-altitude ceiling, unlikely to exceed 50,000 feet since a higher ceiling would normally be painted darker for best concealment. The postulated weight and ceiling parameters suggests the possible use of a General Electric TF34 that is used in the A-10 or Rolls Royce AE3001H1 that is used in the Global Hawk type engine or one in the 7000lb – 10,000lb thrust range with good efficiency at altitude.
On the basis of the few publicly-available photographs of the RQ-170, aviation expert Bill Sweetman has assessed that the UAV is equipped with an electro-optical/infrared sensor and possibly an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar mounted in its belly fairing. He has also speculated that the two fairings over the UAV’s wings may house datalinks and that the belly and above wing fairings could be designed for modular payloads, allowing the UAV to be used for strike missions and electronic warfare.
Operational history
The 30th Reconnaissance Squadron operates RQ-170 Sentinels. This squadron, which is based at Tonopah Test Range Airport in Nevada, was activated on 1 September 2005. RQ-170 Sentinels have been deployed to Afghanistan, where one was sighted at Kandahar International Airport in late 2007. This sighting, and the Sentinel’s secret status at the time, led Bill Sweetman to dub it the Beast of Kandahar;. Because the UAV was deployed to Afghanistan, despite the Taliban having no radar, has led to speculation that the aircraft is being used to spy on Pakistan or Iran.
In December 2009, South Korea’s Joong Ang Daily newspaper reported that the RQ-170 Sentinel had been test-flown in South Korea for the past few months and that it was expected that they would be permanently deployed in 2010 to replace Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft operating from Osan Air Base. In response to this report, Bill Sweetman argued that the Sentinel’s deployments to Afghanistan and South Korea were probably undertaken to monitor Pakistan and North Korea’s ballistic missile programs.
In August 2010 it was reported that RQ-170s either had been or were about to be redeployed to Afghanistan and that the UAVs had been fitted with a full motion video capability. The missions performed by these aircraft included flying dozens of high altitude sorties over Pakistan to monitor a compound in the town of Abbottabad where terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was believed to be living. On the night of 1/2 May 2011 at least one RQ-170 monitored the area while elements of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group launched an assault on the compound which resulted in bin Laden’s death. The aircraft provided footage of the attack which was watched live by President Barack Obama and his senior national security advisors. The RQ-170 also monitored Pakistani military radio transmissions in the area to provide warning of the response to the attack. On 27 May the Los Angeles Times reported that Pakistani officials were alarmed by the use of the RQ-170 over their country as the drones are designed to evade radar and other surveillance systems, and can be used as a spy plane.
There have been a number of reports, which the New York Times describes as unconfirmed, that RQ-170s have operated over Iran during 2011 to spy on the country’s missile and nuclear programs. On 4 December 2011, Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency reported that the country’s armed forces had shot down an RQ-170 that violated Iranian airspace along its eastern border and captured the lightly damaged wreckage of the UAV. This and subsequent reports did not include any footage to substantiate this claim. The US military released a statement acknowledging that it had lost control of a UAV during the previous week, claiming that it was flying a mission over western Afghanistan when control was lost. The statement did not specify the model of the aircraft. The US military also stated that it was still investigating the cause of the loss. The Iranian Government has claimed to have shot down American UAVs on several occasions, but has not produced any evidence to support these claims.
Operators
USA
United States Air Force
Air Combat Command
432d Air Expeditionary Wing – Creech Air Force Base, Nevada
30th Reconnaissance Squadron – Tonopah Test Range Airport, Nevada
United States Navy
Specifications
RQ-170 Sentinel impression 3-view.png
Aero-stub img.svg This aircraft article is missing some (or all) of its specifications. If you have a source, you can help Wikipedia by adding them.
General characteristics
Powerplant: Unknown, possibly General Electric TF34.
Dimensions
Height: 4–6 ft (estimated)
Wingspan: 46–90 ft (estimated)
Performance
Service ceiling: 50,000 ft (estimated)
The United States on Sunday appeared to give credence to Iranian state media reports that Iran had come into possession of a downed U.S. surveillance drone.
The American-led International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan issued a brief statement Sunday saying that an unarmed U.S. reconnaissance aircraft had gone missing while on a mission in western Afghanistan late last week.
"The UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] to which the Iranians are referring may be a U.S. unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan last week, the ISAF public affairs office said in the statement sent to Yahoo News and other media outlets Sunday. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status.
Circumstances of how U.S. spy drone went down still unclear
The semi-official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported Sunday that Iran’s armed forces had brought down a U.S. spy drone in the east of the country.
Citing an informed military official the IRNA report "noted that the unmanned craft is of the type ‘RQ170,’ which was slightly damaged and is currently in the hands of the Iranian forces.
The IRNA headline claimed that the U.S. spy drone had been shot down–but an Iranian military official quoted on Iranian state television claimed that an Iranian military cyber-warfare unit managed to take over controls of the drone and bring it down, the Washington Post’s Thomas Erdbrink noted.
American officials disputed that the drone had been shot down. One unidentified U.S. official told the Wall Street Journal the drone may have been suffering mechanical difficulties.
Past breaches in U.S. drone information security
However, other reported incidents have lately highlighted vulnerabilities in the security of U.S. drone information systems.
The United States Air Force acknowledged in October that a virus had infected the computer system at Creech Air Force base in Nevada that remotely operates Predator and Reaper drones. And in 2009, an Iraqi insurgent hacked into a U.S. drone down-link, which is not usually encrypted, cyber security expert James Lewis, a former Reagan administration official with the Center for Strategic and Institutional Studies, told Yahoo News last month.
"Militants in Iraq have used off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations," the Wall Street Journal’s Siobhan Gorman, Yochi Dreazen and August Cole reported in December 2009.
Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems, the Journal report said. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber–available for as little as .95 on the Internet–to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.
RQ-170: The U.S. Air Force’s Big Foot, Beast of Kandahar, used in surveillance for bin Laden raid
The unarmed stealth drone that Iran claims to have brought down, the RQ-170 Sentinel, is manufactured by Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Program, based in Palmdale, California.
Until 2009, the U.S. Air Force would say little about the model, despite reported sightings of it on the tarmac at Afghanistan’s Kandahar International Airport since 2007. A December 2009 photo of the RQ-170 posted on aviation websites, however, prompted the Air Force to at least acknowledge the plane’s existence, Military Times’ Michael Hoffman reported in 2009:
For two years, the RQ-170 has been the Air Force’s Bigfoot. Photos and drawings of the stealthy UAV, also called the ‘Beast of Kandahar,’ have surfaced, producing shrugs and no-comments from service officials. In early December, a clear photograph of the jet’s left side appeared on aviation Web sites, perhaps prompting the Air Force to ‘fess up.
However, Air Force officials have not explained what the stealth aircraft is doing in Afghanistan–especially since, as Hoffman noted, the Taliban has no air force or radar.
Experts such as Phil Finnegan, a UAV analyst at the Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm, suggest the stealth capabilities are being used to fly in nearby countries, Hoffman wrote. Neighboring Iran has an air force and air defense system that would require stealth technology to penetrate.
American officials also reportedly used the RQ-170 in surveillance for the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan last May. Reports also suggest that the craft does not use the most sophisticated U.S. military technology because as a single engine UAV, it has a greater likelihood of occasionally going down.
US Air Force Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ‘Beast of Khandahar’
Image by james_gordon_los_angeles
The RQ-170 Sentinel is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) developed by Lockheed Martin and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF). It has been deployed to Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Development
The RQ-170 Sentinel was developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works as a stealth Unmanned Aerial Vehicle [UAV]. Journalists have noted design similarities between the RQ-170 and previous stealth and UAV programs such as the RQ-3 DarkStar and Polecat. It is a tail-less flying wing aircraft with pods, presumably for sensors or SATCOMs, built into the upper surface of each wing. Few details of the UAV’s characteristics have been released, but estimates of its wingspan range from approximately 65 feet (20 m to betwe)en 75 feet (23 m) and 90 feet (27 m).
The RQ designation indicates that the RQ-170 Sentinel does not carry weapons. Aviation Week’s David A. Fulghum believes that the UAV is probably a tactical, operations-oriented platform and not a strategic intelligence-gathering design.
The USAF confirmed the grainy photos of a gray, flying-wing-typed unmanned airplane near Kandahar Airfield. Since then, this has been known as The Beast of Kandahar. in relation to the discussion of the RQ-170 Sentinel on 4 December 2009. A USAF colonel subsequently commented that RQ-170 is separate from the MQ-X program, which has yet to determine stealth or powerplant requirements, and thus the Sentinel will not replace the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones currently in service. As of May 2011, the US Military had not released any statements concerning the Sentinel since December 2009.
Design
The RQ-170 has a flying wing design containing a single (as yet unknown) engine and is estimated by Aviation Week as being approximately 66 feet in wingspan. Its takeoff weight is estimated as being greater than the RQ-3 DarkStar’s, which was 8,500 pounds. The design lacks several elements common to stealth engineering, namely notched landing gear doors and sharp leading edges. It has a curved wing planform, and the exhaust is not shielded by the wing. Aviation Week postulates that these elements suggest the designers have avoided ‘highly sensitive technologies’ due to the near certainty of eventual operational loss inherent with a single engine design and a desire to avoid the risk of compromising leading edge technology. The publication also suggests that the medium-grey color implies a mid-altitude ceiling, unlikely to exceed 50,000 feet since a higher ceiling would normally be painted darker for best concealment. The postulated weight and ceiling parameters suggests the possible use of a General Electric TF34 that is used in the A-10 or Rolls Royce AE3001H1 that is used in the Global Hawk type engine or one in the 7000lb – 10,000lb thrust range with good efficiency at altitude.
On the basis of the few publicly-available photographs of the RQ-170, aviation expert Bill Sweetman has assessed that the UAV is equipped with an electro-optical/infrared sensor and possibly an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar mounted in its belly fairing. He has also speculated that the two fairings over the UAV’s wings may house datalinks and that the belly and above wing fairings could be designed for modular payloads, allowing the UAV to be used for strike missions and electronic warfare.
Operational history
The 30th Reconnaissance Squadron operates RQ-170 Sentinels. This squadron, which is based at Tonopah Test Range Airport in Nevada, was activated on 1 September 2005. RQ-170 Sentinels have been deployed to Afghanistan, where one was sighted at Kandahar International Airport in late 2007. This sighting, and the Sentinel’s secret status at the time, led Bill Sweetman to dub it the Beast of Kandahar;. Because the UAV was deployed to Afghanistan, despite the Taliban having no radar, has led to speculation that the aircraft is being used to spy on Pakistan or Iran.
In December 2009, South Korea’s Joong Ang Daily newspaper reported that the RQ-170 Sentinel had been test-flown in South Korea for the past few months and that it was expected that they would be permanently deployed in 2010 to replace Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft operating from Osan Air Base. In response to this report, Bill Sweetman argued that the Sentinel’s deployments to Afghanistan and South Korea were probably undertaken to monitor Pakistan and North Korea’s ballistic missile programs.
In August 2010 it was reported that RQ-170s either had been or were about to be redeployed to Afghanistan and that the UAVs had been fitted with a full motion video capability. The missions performed by these aircraft included flying dozens of high altitude sorties over Pakistan to monitor a compound in the town of Abbottabad where terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was believed to be living. On the night of 1/2 May 2011 at least one RQ-170 monitored the area while elements of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group launched an assault on the compound which resulted in bin Laden’s death. The aircraft provided footage of the attack which was watched live by President Barack Obama and his senior national security advisors. The RQ-170 also monitored Pakistani military radio transmissions in the area to provide warning of the response to the attack. On 27 May the Los Angeles Times reported that Pakistani officials were alarmed by the use of the RQ-170 over their country as the drones are designed to evade radar and other surveillance systems, and can be used as a spy plane.
There have been a number of reports, which the New York Times describes as unconfirmed, that RQ-170s have operated over Iran during 2011 to spy on the country’s missile and nuclear programs. On 4 December 2011, Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency reported that the country’s armed forces had shot down an RQ-170 that violated Iranian airspace along its eastern border and captured the lightly damaged wreckage of the UAV. This and subsequent reports did not include any footage to substantiate this claim. The US military released a statement acknowledging that it had lost control of a UAV during the previous week, claiming that it was flying a mission over western Afghanistan when control was lost. The statement did not specify the model of the aircraft. The US military also stated that it was still investigating the cause of the loss. The Iranian Government has claimed to have shot down American UAVs on several occasions, but has not produced any evidence to support these claims.
Operators
USA
United States Air Force
Air Combat Command
432d Air Expeditionary Wing – Creech Air Force Base, Nevada
30th Reconnaissance Squadron – Tonopah Test Range Airport, Nevada
United States Navy
Specifications
RQ-170 Sentinel impression 3-view.png
Aero-stub img.svg This aircraft article is missing some (or all) of its specifications. If you have a source, you can help Wikipedia by adding them.
General characteristics
Powerplant: Unknown, possibly General Electric TF34.
Dimensions
Height: 4–6 ft (estimated)
Wingspan: 46–90 ft (estimated)
Performance
Service ceiling: 50,000 ft (estimated)
The United States on Sunday appeared to give credence to Iranian state media reports that Iran had come into possession of a downed U.S. surveillance drone.
The American-led International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan issued a brief statement Sunday saying that an unarmed U.S. reconnaissance aircraft had gone missing while on a mission in western Afghanistan late last week.
"The UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] to which the Iranians are referring may be a U.S. unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan last week, the ISAF public affairs office said in the statement sent to Yahoo News and other media outlets Sunday. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status.
Circumstances of how U.S. spy drone went down still unclear
The semi-official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported Sunday that Iran’s armed forces had brought down a U.S. spy drone in the east of the country.
Citing an informed military official the IRNA report "noted that the unmanned craft is of the type ‘RQ170,’ which was slightly damaged and is currently in the hands of the Iranian forces.
The IRNA headline claimed that the U.S. spy drone had been shot down–but an Iranian military official quoted on Iranian state television claimed that an Iranian military cyber-warfare unit managed to take over controls of the drone and bring it down, the Washington Post’s Thomas Erdbrink noted.
American officials disputed that the drone had been shot down. One unidentified U.S. official told the Wall Street Journal the drone may have been suffering mechanical difficulties.
Past breaches in U.S. drone information security
However, other reported incidents have lately highlighted vulnerabilities in the security of U.S. drone information systems.
The United States Air Force acknowledged in October that a virus had infected the computer system at Creech Air Force base in Nevada that remotely operates Predator and Reaper drones. And in 2009, an Iraqi insurgent hacked into a U.S. drone down-link, which is not usually encrypted, cyber security expert James Lewis, a former Reagan administration official with the Center for Strategic and Institutional Studies, told Yahoo News last month.
"Militants in Iraq have used off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations," the Wall Street Journal’s Siobhan Gorman, Yochi Dreazen and August Cole reported in December 2009.
Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems, the Journal report said. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber–available for as little as .95 on the Internet–to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.
RQ-170: The U.S. Air Force’s Big Foot, Beast of Kandahar, used in surveillance for bin Laden raid
The unarmed stealth drone that Iran claims to have brought down, the RQ-170 Sentinel, is manufactured by Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Program, based in Palmdale, California.
Until 2009, the U.S. Air Force would say little about the model, despite reported sightings of it on the tarmac at Afghanistan’s Kandahar International Airport since 2007. A December 2009 photo of the RQ-170 posted on aviation websites, however, prompted the Air Force to at least acknowledge the plane’s existence, Military Times’ Michael Hoffman reported in 2009:
For two years, the RQ-170 has been the Air Force’s Bigfoot. Photos and drawings of the stealthy UAV, also called the ‘Beast of Kandahar,’ have surfaced, producing shrugs and no-comments from service officials. In early December, a clear photograph of the jet’s left side appeared on aviation Web sites, perhaps prompting the Air Force to ‘fess up.
However, Air Force officials have not explained what the stealth aircraft is doing in Afghanistan–especially since, as Hoffman noted, the Taliban has no air force or radar.
Experts such as Phil Finnegan, a UAV analyst at the Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm, suggest the stealth capabilities are being used to fly in nearby countries, Hoffman wrote. Neighboring Iran has an air force and air defense system that would require stealth technology to penetrate.
American officials also reportedly used the RQ-170 in surveillance for the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan last May. Reports also suggest that the craft does not use the most sophisticated U.S. military technology because as a single engine UAV, it has a greater likelihood of occasionally going down.
US Air Force Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ‘Beast of Khandahar’ artists 3D rendering
Image by james_gordon_los_angeles
The RQ-170 Sentinel is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) developed by Lockheed Martin and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF). It has been deployed to Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Development
The RQ-170 Sentinel was developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works as a stealth Unmanned Aerial Vehicle [UAV]. Journalists have noted design similarities between the RQ-170 and previous stealth and UAV programs such as the RQ-3 DarkStar and Polecat. It is a tail-less flying wing aircraft with pods, presumably for sensors or SATCOMs, built into the upper surface of each wing. Few details of the UAV’s characteristics have been released, but estimates of its wingspan range from approximately 65 feet (20 m to betwe)en 75 feet (23 m) and 90 feet (27 m).
The RQ designation indicates that the RQ-170 Sentinel does not carry weapons. Aviation Week’s David A. Fulghum believes that the UAV is probably a tactical, operations-oriented platform and not a strategic intelligence-gathering design.
The USAF confirmed the grainy photos of a gray, flying-wing-typed unmanned airplane near Kandahar Airfield. Since then, this has been known as The Beast of Kandahar. in relation to the discussion of the RQ-170 Sentinel on 4 December 2009. A USAF colonel subsequently commented that RQ-170 is separate from the MQ-X program, which has yet to determine stealth or powerplant requirements, and thus the Sentinel will not replace the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones currently in service. As of May 2011, the US Military had not released any statements concerning the Sentinel since December 2009.
Design
The RQ-170 has a flying wing design containing a single (as yet unknown) engine and is estimated by Aviation Week as being approximately 66 feet in wingspan. Its takeoff weight is estimated as being greater than the RQ-3 DarkStar’s, which was 8,500 pounds. The design lacks several elements common to stealth engineering, namely notched landing gear doors and sharp leading edges. It has a curved wing planform, and the exhaust is not shielded by the wing. Aviation Week postulates that these elements suggest the designers have avoided ‘highly sensitive technologies’ due to the near certainty of eventual operational loss inherent with a single engine design and a desire to avoid the risk of compromising leading edge technology. The publication also suggests that the medium-grey color implies a mid-altitude ceiling, unlikely to exceed 50,000 feet since a higher ceiling would normally be painted darker for best concealment. The postulated weight and ceiling parameters suggests the possible use of a General Electric TF34 that is used in the A-10 or Rolls Royce AE3001H1 that is used in the Global Hawk type engine or one in the 7000lb – 10,000lb thrust range with good efficiency at altitude.
On the basis of the few publicly-available photographs of the RQ-170, aviation expert Bill Sweetman has assessed that the UAV is equipped with an electro-optical/infrared sensor and possibly an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar mounted in its belly fairing. He has also speculated that the two fairings over the UAV’s wings may house datalinks and that the belly and above wing fairings could be designed for modular payloads, allowing the UAV to be used for strike missions and electronic warfare.
Operational history
The 30th Reconnaissance Squadron operates RQ-170 Sentinels. This squadron, which is based at Tonopah Test Range Airport in Nevada, was activated on 1 September 2005. RQ-170 Sentinels have been deployed to Afghanistan, where one was sighted at Kandahar International Airport in late 2007. This sighting, and the Sentinel’s secret status at the time, led Bill Sweetman to dub it the Beast of Kandahar;. Because the UAV was deployed to Afghanistan, despite the Taliban having no radar, has led to speculation that the aircraft is being used to spy on Pakistan or Iran.
In December 2009, South Korea’s Joong Ang Daily newspaper reported that the RQ-170 Sentinel had been test-flown in South Korea for the past few months and that it was expected that they would be permanently deployed in 2010 to replace Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft operating from Osan Air Base. In response to this report, Bill Sweetman argued that the Sentinel’s deployments to Afghanistan and South Korea were probably undertaken to monitor Pakistan and North Korea’s ballistic missile programs.
In August 2010 it was reported that RQ-170s either had been or were about to be redeployed to Afghanistan and that the UAVs had been fitted with a full motion video capability. The missions performed by these aircraft included flying dozens of high altitude sorties over Pakistan to monitor a compound in the town of Abbottabad where terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was believed to be living. On the night of 1/2 May 2011 at least one RQ-170 monitored the area while elements of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group launched an assault on the compound which resulted in bin Laden’s death. The aircraft provided footage of the attack which was watched live by President Barack Obama and his senior national security advisors. The RQ-170 also monitored Pakistani military radio transmissions in the area to provide warning of the response to the attack. On 27 May the Los Angeles Times reported that Pakistani officials were alarmed by the use of the RQ-170 over their country as the drones are designed to evade radar and other surveillance systems, and can be used as a spy plane.
There have been a number of reports, which the New York Times describes as unconfirmed, that RQ-170s have operated over Iran during 2011 to spy on the country’s missile and nuclear programs. On 4 December 2011, Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency reported that the country’s armed forces had shot down an RQ-170 that violated Iranian airspace along its eastern border and captured the lightly damaged wreckage of the UAV. This and subsequent reports did not include any footage to substantiate this claim. The US military released a statement acknowledging that it had lost control of a UAV during the previous week, claiming that it was flying a mission over western Afghanistan when control was lost. The statement did not specify the model of the aircraft. The US military also stated that it was still investigating the cause of the loss. The Iranian Government has claimed to have shot down American UAVs on several occasions, but has not produced any evidence to support these claims.
Operators
USA
United States Air Force
Air Combat Command
432d Air Expeditionary Wing – Creech Air Force Base, Nevada
30th Reconnaissance Squadron – Tonopah Test Range Airport, Nevada
United States Navy
Specifications
RQ-170 Sentinel impression 3-view.png
Aero-stub img.svg This aircraft article is missing some (or all) of its specifications. If you have a source, you can help Wikipedia by adding them.
General characteristics
Powerplant: Unknown, possibly General Electric TF34.
Dimensions
Height: 4–6 ft (estimated)
Wingspan: 46–90 ft (estimated)
Performance
Service ceiling: 50,000 ft (estimated)
The United States on Sunday appeared to give credence to Iranian state media reports that Iran had come into possession of a downed U.S. surveillance drone.
The American-led International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan issued a brief statement Sunday saying that an unarmed U.S. reconnaissance aircraft had gone missing while on a mission in western Afghanistan late last week.
"The UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] to which the Iranians are referring may be a U.S. unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan last week, the ISAF public affairs office said in the statement sent to Yahoo News and other media outlets Sunday. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status.
Circumstances of how U.S. spy drone went down still unclear
The semi-official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported Sunday that Iran’s armed forces had brought down a U.S. spy drone in the east of the country.
Citing an informed military official the IRNA report "noted that the unmanned craft is of the type ‘RQ170,’ which was slightly damaged and is currently in the hands of the Iranian forces.
The IRNA headline claimed that the U.S. spy drone had been shot down–but an Iranian military official quoted on Iranian state television claimed that an Iranian military cyber-warfare unit managed to take over controls of the drone and bring it down, the Washington Post’s Thomas Erdbrink noted.
American officials disputed that the drone had been shot down. One unidentified U.S. official told the Wall Street Journal the drone may have been suffering mechanical difficulties.
Past breaches in U.S. drone information security
However, other reported incidents have lately highlighted vulnerabilities in the security of U.S. drone information systems.
The United States Air Force acknowledged in October that a virus had infected the computer system at Creech Air Force base in Nevada that remotely operates Predator and Reaper drones. And in 2009, an Iraqi insurgent hacked into a U.S. drone down-link, which is not usually encrypted, cyber security expert James Lewis, a former Reagan administration official with the Center for Strategic and Institutional Studies, told Yahoo News last month.
"Militants in Iraq have used off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations," the Wall Street Journal’s Siobhan Gorman, Yochi Dreazen and August Cole reported in December 2009.
Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems, the Journal report said. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber–available for as little as .95 on the Internet–to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.
RQ-170: The U.S. Air Force’s Big Foot, Beast of Kandahar, used in surveillance for bin Laden raid
The unarmed stealth drone that Iran claims to have brought down, the RQ-170 Sentinel, is manufactured by Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Program, based in Palmdale, California.
Until 2009, the U.S. Air Force would say little about the model, despite reported sightings of it on the tarmac at Afghanistan’s Kandahar International Airport since 2007. A December 2009 photo of the RQ-170 posted on aviation websites, however, prompted the Air Force to at least acknowledge the plane’s existence, Military Times’ Michael Hoffman reported in 2009:
For two years, the RQ-170 has been the Air Force’s Bigfoot. Photos and drawings of the stealthy UAV, also called the ‘Beast of Kandahar,’ have surfaced, producing shrugs and no-comments from service officials. In early December, a clear photograph of the jet’s left side appeared on aviation Web sites, perhaps prompting the Air Force to ‘fess up.
However, Air Force officials have not explained what the stealth aircraft is doing in Afghanistan–especially since, as Hoffman noted, the Taliban has no air force or radar.
Experts such as Phil Finnegan, a UAV analyst at the Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm, suggest the stealth capabilities are being used to fly in nearby countries, Hoffman wrote. Neighboring Iran has an air force and air defense system that would require stealth technology to penetrate.
American officials also reportedly used the RQ-170 in surveillance for the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan last May. Reports also suggest that the craft does not use the most sophisticated U.S. military technology because as a single engine UAV, it has a greater likelihood of occasionally going down.
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