Saturday, December 10, 2011

Loss of plane peels back layer in US-Iran spying

Loss of plane peels back layer in US-Iran spying

WASHINGTON (AP) â€" The detriment to Iran of a CIA's surveillance drone bristling with modernized spy technology is some-more than a promotion manoeuvre and intelligence asset for a Tehran government. The plane's constraint has peeled behind another covering of privacy from expanding U.S. operations opposite Iran's chief and infantry programs.

Just as a Soviet Union's downing of a American U-2 view craft suggested a dark aspect of a Cold War, Iran's liberation of a worker has strew light on a espionage that is partial of U.S.-Iran hostilities.

Iran has charged a U.S. or a allies with waging a debate of cyberwarfare and sabotage, and of assassinating some Iranian scientists. The U.S. has indicted a Iranian supervision of assisting kill U.S. infantry in Afghanistan and plotting to murder a Saudi envoy in Washington.

"It's commencement to demeanour like there's a thinly-veiled, increasingly violent, tellurian cloak-and-dagger persion afoot," Thomas Donnelly, a former supervision central and infantry consultant with a American Enterprise Institute, pronounced during a Washington conference.

The growth operations in play are "much bigger than people appreciate," pronounced Stephen Hadley, former inhabitant confidence confidant underneath President George W. Bush. "But a U.S. needs to be regulating all it can."

Hadley pronounced that if Iran continues to challenge U.N. resolutions and doesn't quell a chief ambitions, a still dispute "will usually get nastier."

Some historians and unfamiliar process experts compared a worker occurrence to a Soviet Union's 1960 downing of a U-2 view craft and commander Francis Gary Powers. While those dual countries sparred publicly on many issues, a universe usually spasmodic glimpsed any side's tip operations.

"When we initial listened about a drone, my initial suspicion was appreciate integrity there wasn't a commander in it," pronounced Francis Gary Powers Jr., a son of a U-2 commander and owner of a Cold War Museum.

"They were both on intelligence-gathering missions. They were both doing print reconnaissance. They were both ancillary a U.S. government's intelligence-gathering to find out comprehension about a adversaries," Powers said. The disproportion this time, Powers said, was that "there are no family members that have to be notified, there's no restrained in a unfamiliar country."

The U-2 downing repelled U.S. infantry planners, who suspicion a modernized aircraft flew too high to be strike by a Soviet missile. Likewise, Iran says it used modernized electronic crusade measures to detect, penetrate and move down an RQ-170 Sentinel drone.

Iran aired TV footage Thursday of what stream and former U.S. officials endorse is a blank Sentinel. The robotic aircraft suffered what seemed to be usually minimal damage.

Iran protested Friday to a United Nations about what it described as "provocative and growth operations" by a U.S. The Tehran supervision called a moody by a worker a "blatant and unprovoked atmosphere violation" that was "tantamount to an act of hostility."

American officials pronounced Friday that U.S. comprehension assessments prove that Iran played no purpose in a downing, possibly by sharpened it down or regulating electronic or cybertechnology to force it from a sky. They contended a worker malfunctioned. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in sequence to plead a personal program.

Some U.S. experts voiced doubt that Iran would be able of such hacking. But others pronounced Iran's ability to opposite drones competence have been bolstered by Russia's decision, announced in October, to sell Tehran an modernized truck-mounted electronic comprehension system.

The RQ-170 is cat-like though not infallible, pronounced robotics consultant Peter Singer of a Brookings Institution consider tank in Washington.

Singer, who has created extensively about drones, remarkable Russia's proclamation about a sale of an undisclosed series of truck-mounted electronic comprehension systems, called a IL-222 Avtobaza, to Tehran.

He pronounced a apparatus enclosed "really good electronic crusade gear," citing reports that a radars were designed to detect drones and enclosed other apparatus dictated to prevent their information communications.

No nation has demonstrated that it can seize control of a view worker remotely, pronounced Theodore Karasik, a confidence consultant during a Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.

But if any could, Karasik said, a approaching possibilities would embody China and Russia, that has conducted investigate on a subject. Karasik pronounced possibly nation competence have aided Iran opposite a U.S.

The secrecy worker is generally useful to a U.S. since it provides what is called "persistent surveillance" of Iran's chief sites.

The U.S. and a allies think Iran is building a chief weapons formidable underneath cover of a municipal program, a assign that Tehran adamantly denies.

John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, an consultant on invulnerability and comprehension policy, pronounced that continual notice of such sites from aerial drones can assistance comprehension analysts lane vehicles to other facilities.

The images also can tell infantry planners when many workers during a site are approaching to be on a job, he said, in a eventuality a boss orders a infantry strike opposite Iran's chief program. 

"They wish to explosve a buildings housing people when a largest numbers of people are present," Pike said, observant that identical weapons-development efforts have depended most some-more on a technicians, scientists and other experts than on their earthy structures. "The people can reconstruct a buildings, a buildings can't reconstruct a people," he said.

Experts pronounced a worker substantially carried an modernized radar complement as good as other specialized sensors, including detectors for monitoring chief sites. If those were reverse-engineered by Iran, they could give insights into how to censor a chief comforts from a U.S. surveillance.

Russia, China, North Korea and others competence be meddlesome in examining a Sentinel. For example, U.S. drones have modernized engines that concede them to sojourn patrolling an area for days. China is suspicion to be struggling to master this technology.

Singer pronounced it would be formidable for any nation to feat a technological excavation of a downed Sentinel, though carrying one to lift detached will give them a start.

"Bottom line, it's never easy to reverse-engineer anything, let alone something like a radar, though carrying a operative or even shop-worn complement in palm to investigate adult tighten creates it a heck of a lot easier," he said.

Francis Gary Powers Jr. remarkable that view record advances quickly.

Powers pronounced that a CIA dangling U-2 flights for several months after his father was shot down, though by afterwards a U.S. had launched a initial reconnoitering satellite, that could accumulate vastly some-more information.

___

Associated Press reporters Lolita Baldor and Kimberly Dozier in Washington and Adam Schreck in Dubai contributed to this report.


News referensi http://news.yahoo.com/loss-plane-peels-back-layer-us-iran-spying-175114013.html

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