Brian Williams - Predators

Not surprisingly, the United States made considerable use of drones in support of the insurgents. According to Global Security’s John Pike, “The US had neither the support nor the means to invade Libya. It would’ve been both a political and military blunder. So we had robots do the work for us—and it worked, perfectly. Qaddafi’s air defenses and armor were obliterated from control rooms a world away.” 119The drones took out antiaircraft defenses, multiple rocket launchers, tanks, and truck-mounted weapons. In fact, twice as many drone strikes were carried out in the 2011 Libyan campaign (146) as in Pakistan that year. 120More than 140 Hellfire missiles were fired by U.S. drones that were based in Sicily and flown from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada and elsewhere. 121

The drones’ most important strike occurred on October 20. On that day Gaddafi, who had been largely defeated and encircled by rebels in the town of Sirte, was spotted by high-flying drones. According to the Telegraph , the drones “built up a normal pattern of life picture so that when something unusual happened this morning such as a large group of vehicles gathering together, that came across as highly unusual activity and the decision was taken to follow them and prosecute an attack.” As Gaddafi broke from cover and tried to escape in an eighty vehicle convoy, a drone spotted vehicles, tracked their movements, and relayed them to nearby French fighter jets. The drone then attacked the convoy with its missiles, bringing it to a halt whereupon it was attacked by the French jets. A bloodied Gaddafi survived the attack, but as he attempted to escape from the burning convoy, he was found in a nearby drainage ditch and executed by vengeful rebels. 122

SENTINEL DOWN: THE CIA LOSES A TOP-SECRET SPY DRONE OVER IRAN

In 2009 a grainy photo of a mysterious jet drone taking off from the runway at a U.S. air base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, was leaked to the press. Technology wonks described the aircraft as the “Beast of Kandahar.” Later the public learned that the top-secret stealth drone was the RQ-170 Sentinel, designed and built by Lockheed Martin’s “Skunk Works,” the company’s supersecret division that built the U2 spy plane, F-22 jet fighter, and F-117 Nighthawk. Speculation about the RQ-170’s purpose abounded. Why would the CIA deploy a radar-proof stealth drone to a region where the Taliban tribesmen had no radar or antiaircraft capabilities?

The first part of the answer came in May 2011, when the bat-wing Sentinel was used to spy on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. But that was not the only target of the stealth jet drone. On December 4, 2011, the Western media reported that the Iranian army’s electronic warfare unit had downed a Sentinel that had intruded deep into Iranian airspace to spy on suspected nuclear weapons development facilities. The Sentinel, which had active phased-array radar, a “next-generation radar that allows one to use radar while staying stealthy,” and full motion sensors to detect radiation, was said to be one of a fleet of drones that had been flying over Iran from a base in Shindand in western Afghanistan without the knowledge of the Afghan government. 123The Iranians claimed the plane was captured intact over the eastern Iranian city of Kashmar, some 140 miles into Iran, by severing its communications links. The Iranians also claimed that they had reconfigured the drone’s GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran, not Afghanistan. An Iranian engineer said, “The [Sentinel’s] GPS navigation is the weakest point. By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain.” 124

Cyberwarfare experts in the West were, however, highly skeptical of the Iranians’ claims of hijacking the state-of-the-art drone. According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor ,

To accomplish such a cyber coup, at least three and probably many more major technical hurdles would need to be overcome, several US cyber warfare and drone experts said. While none of these steps is impossible, each is difficult, and taken together, they represent a massive technological challenge for any enemy hacker—one that the US experts suggest is beyond Iran’s capabilities.

Hijacking and safe landing of the RQ-170 in Iran, if true, would represent a new level of cyber intrigue in the drone wars. First, Iran would need to spot the stealth drone. Second, it would need to jam the encrypted GPS signal. Third, it would have to substitute a false signal that the internal systems on the drone could understand and obey. US experts say even the first task—spotting the drone—would be very difficult for Iran.

The US used a stealth helicopter in the Osama bin Laden raid that went undetected, and US military planes have bombed all over the world undetected. So for Iran to detect a far-smaller stealth drone seems “almost like science fiction,” says John Bumgarner, chief technology officer for the US Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit cyber-warfare think tank. 125

For its part, the Pentagon told reporters that there was no indication that the drone was brought down by “hostile activity of any kind.” 126To allay fears, the military pointed out that the drone was programmed to automatically erase sensitive data onboard to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.

Regardless of whether the CIA lost control of the drone on its own through a command malfunction or whether it was hijacked, the capture was a triumph for an Iran that was suffering under U.S.-led sanctions. Although the data onboard might have been erased or too encrypted to access, the Iranians were able to acquire the drone’s top-secret, radar-proof “skin.” The loss of the drone was such a disaster that the United States contemplated sending in airborne troops to retrieve it or blow it up but rejected the mission as too dangerous. 127They feared that such a mission would be construed as an “act of war.”

The Iranians subsequently displayed the stealth Sentinel in triumph in front of an American flag that had skulls in place of the stars. 128A commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards proudly proclaimed that the Sentinel, which was equipped with highly advanced surveillance systems, electronic communication, and radar systems, had fallen into the trap of Iran’s armed forces. 129When the U.S. government asked for the drone back, an Iranian official contemptuously said, “No one returns the symbol of aggression to the party that sought secret and vital intelligence related to the national security of a country.” 130In a further display of contempt, the Iranians offered to return the drone in the form of a 1:80-scale colorful toy replica of the drone, which began to sell in Iran in January 2012, complete with a stand featuring the words, “We will trample America under our feet.”

In addition, Iran filed a complaint with the UN against the United States for the violation of its airspace. The Iranians promised that they would “reverse engineer” (i.e., duplicate) and “mass-produce” America’s most secret drone. Although this seemed unlikely, the CIA feared Iran would share American secrets with other nations, most likely Russia and China, which were suspected to have the capacity to reverse engineer the drone. One U.S. expert bemoaned the loss of the drone by calling it “the biggest Christmas present to our enemies in probably a decade.” 131

THE SALALA FRIENDLY FIRE INCIDENT AND THE 2011–2012 DRONE LULL

According to the Long War Journal , there were 117 drone strikes in Pakistan in 2010 but only sixty-four in 2011. 132This bucked the trend that had seen an increase in the number of drone strikes every year since 2005. There were four reasons for this unprecedented dip in the number of drone strikes. The first was the previously mentioned monthlong moratorium on drone strikes following the Pakistanis’ arrest of the CIA contractor Raymond Davis in April and March 2011. This moratorium was designed to mollify the Pakistanis, who were infuriated by his killing of two Pakistani robbers/ISI agents. The second was a moratorium on drone strikes following the May 1–2 JSOC raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, which similarly infuriated the Pakistanis.