The Straits of Hormuz seem to be warming - due to Geoplolitical Games and Brinkmanship

[Jan Klimkowski]

What goes to ground, comes around:

Iran 'hacks software of US spy drone'

Iran has hacked the software of an advanced American spy drone which came down its territory and has begun building its own copies of the aircraft, officials claimed

22 Apr 2012 Daily Telegraph

Tehran said it had decoded hard drives and databases on board the RQ-170 Sentinel, in an announcement which increased fears Russia and China would also soon gain access to the top secret technology.

Brig Gen Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps aerospace forces, gave details of the aircraft's operational history as proof that engineers had successfully probed its records.

He said the drone had flown over Osama bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan a fortnight before the al-Qaeda chief had been killed in an American special forces raid.

It had flown in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, in November 2010 before suffering technical difficulties and being sent for tests on its sensors to an airfield near Los Angeles.

"Had we not accessed the plane's soft wares and hard discs, we wouldn't have been able to achieve these facts," he told the Fars news agency.

The Tehran-based Mehr news agency added that Iran had "started manufacturing models of the captured US spy plane", but gave no more details.

The aircraft, which is supposedly the CIA's unseen "eye in the sky", can carry a payload of advanced sensors capable of beaming back a trove of imagery and electronic intercepts.

Analysts believe Iran, China and Russia are also particularly interested in the stealth technology and wing coating materials which allow it to escape radar detection.

The unarmed drone was paraded on Iranian state television, apparently looking intact, after coming down 140 miles inside Iran's eastern border in December.

Tehran said it had been brought down by electronic attack after taking off from an American base inside Afghanistan.

America acknowledged the loss of the aircraft, but said it was more likely to have crashed through malfunction.

Analysts suggested at the time that data encryption, self-destruct mechanisms and damage sustained during the crash could all make it impossible for Iranian engineers to use or reverse engineer the technology.