US Drones/UCAV General Thread:

US to Base Drones in Seychelles to Fight Piracy

By Alisha Ryu
Nairobi
02 September 2009

The United States is planning to deploy unmanned aerial vehicles in the Seychelles islands in the coming weeks to combat piracy. The use of land-based drones is a new approach to deter ship hijackings in the region.

The spokesman for the U.S. military's Africa Command, Vince Crawley, says several Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles will be in the Seychelles by late October or November. He says they will be used to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions throughout the Indian Ocean region.

"We have people going in individually for very short trips right now. We plan to start sending some of the teams that will assist in the September-October time frame. And then it would take a month to begin the flights," said Crawley. "It is widely recognized that western Indian Ocean piracy is extremely disruptive to international trade and this is simply a U.S. contribution to the international effort against piracy."

Reapers are designed for long-endurance, high-altitude surveillance, capable of staying in the air for 30 hours and flying at speeds of more than 440 kilometers an hour. They can also carry weapons and ordinance, but African Command says the drones being deployed in the Seychelles will not be armed.

The U.S. Navy has long used ship-based unmanned aerial vehicles in counter-piracy missions. But the UAVs in the Seychelles will be housed at the international airport in the capital Mahe. Dozens of American military and civilian personnel will also be based at the airport to oversee the Navy-led mission for the next several months.

Crawley says the government in the Seychelles requested assistance from the United States earlier this year after Somali pirates began extending their operations more than 1000 kilometers away from Somali shores. Since March, two Seychelles-flagged vessels have been hijacked and several others attacked in waters near the Seychelles and the Comoros Islands.

In addition to the Reaper UAVs, the U.S. military is also considering basing Navy P-3 Orion patrol aircraft in the Seychelles for a limited time. Like the Reaper, the Orion can survey a large region and help deter attacks.

Maritime officials say the vastness of the Indian Ocean and the lack of naval patrols in the area are tempting some pirates to expand their operations further east. The Indian Ocean is considered a safer hunting ground than the Gulf of Aden, a narrow shipping lane to the north that is heavily patrolled by warships from more than a dozen countries.

For nearly a year, the international armada has been successful in keeping many ships from being hijacked. But it has done little to deter pirates from targeting ships.

In the first half of 2009, nearly 150 vessels were attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia, compared to less than 30 in the same period a year ago. More than 30 vessels have been taken, with ransom demands now averaging about $2 million for the release of the ship and its crew.

Rough weather conditions have helped keep the number of pirate attacks in the region low for the past few months. But as the weather improves, sailors, ship owners, and maritime officials say they are bracing for another surge of pirate activity.


http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/2009/intell-090902-voa01.htm

Report: US Building Drone Bases in Africa, Arabian Peninsula

September 21, 2011

VOA News
In-Depth Coverage

The United States is reported to be expanding a secret drone program in east Africa and the Arabian peninsula in order to gather intelligence and strike al-Qaida-linked militants in Somalia and Yemen.

Citing U.S. defense officials, The Washington Post reported that the U.S. is building a new military installation to host the unmanned aircraft in Ethiopia, where drones can more easily attack members of the militant group al-Shabab that is fighting for control of neighboring Somalia.

The report also said the U.S. has re-opened a drone base in the Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, where a small fleet of "hunter-killer" drones resumed operations this month after a test mission determined that aircraft based there could patrol Somalia.

In addition, the report said the Central Intelligence Agency is building a secret airstrip somehwere in the Arabian subcontinent in order to carry out drone missions against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. U.S. officials say the group, based in Yemen, is al-Qaida's most active branch, and is responsible for several attempted attacks on U.S. targets.

The U.S. is reported to have already flown drones over Somalia and Yemen from installations in Djibouti.

The U.S. military is also believed to have used the unmanned drone aircraft to carry out missions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Libya.

U.S. officials previously acknowledged the existence of the drone base in Seychelles, but said the aircraft were surveillance drones that were primarily being used to track pirates in the region. But the Wall Street Journal reports that the base will now house MQ-9 Reaper drones that can be outfitted for both reconnaissance and strike missions.

Officials at the White House did not comment on the report.

Earlier this month, the commander of U.S. military operations in Africa said three African-based terrorist groups were working together to threaten U.S. interests in the region. General Carter Ham said al-Shabab, Algeria-based Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, and Boko Haram in Nigeria have said they intend to share training and operations in order to target Westerners, specifically Americans.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/2011/intell-110921-voa01.htm

A computer virus was detected in the U.S. drone remote control system, the Wired.com news portal said.

The virus "has infected the cockpits of America's Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots' every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones," it said.

It was first detected two weeks ago but has done no damage to U.S. military operations so far. There has been no confirmation so far that the virus sent classified information to an outside source.

"We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back... We think it's benign. But we just don't know," the portal quoted a source familiar with the situation as saying.

It is still unclear whether the virus attack was deliberate or accidental.

"It may be a common piece of malware that just happened to make its way into these sensitive networks," the website said.

The Air Force declined to comment directly on the virus.

"We generally do not discuss specific vulnerabilities, threats, or responses to our computer networks, since that helps people looking to exploit or attack our systems to refine their approach," said Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, a spokesman for Air Combat Command, which oversees the drones and all other Air Force tactical aircraft.

Drone systems have been widely used by the U.S. military in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. According to the Pakistani media, the overall number of U.S. drone missions in the region has been steadily increasing.

The issue of drone U.S. has become an irritant in U.S.-Pakistani relations recently. Pakistani media estimates that at least 115 drone attacks were recorded in the country's northwest last year, in which at least 670 people were killed. In 2009 about 420 people were killed in 45 airstrikes.

http://www.en.ria.ru/world/20111009/167502276.html


Sounds like Chinese are spying?

The US has been carrying out follow-up attacks after its drone strikes in Pakistan, specifically targeting people coming to the aid of the wounded. The tactic has been widely condemned, including by the UN – which considers it a war crime.

A Guardian report by Glenn Greenwald shows the US government's hypocrisy regarding such tactics. While the FBI has warned that “terrorists may use secondary explosive devices to kill and injure emergency personnel responding to an initial attack,” the US regularly applies the same methods.

A 2004 FBI alert warned Americans against secondary attacks meant to “incite more terror,” advising that such incidents can usually be expected within an hour of the initial attack.

“These devices may be hidden in everyday objects such as vehicles, briefcases, flower pots or garbage cans, or can be sequential suicide attacks in the same locations, and are generally detonated less than one hour after the initial attack, targeting first responders as well as the general population,” the alert read.

The second plane crashing into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 is considered a secondary attack.

While warning of such tactics, the US government has tried to justify its own employment of them. A 2010 video published by WikiLeaks shows two journalists being killed by an American helicopter targeting insurgents in Baghdad. After rescuers drove to the scene to bring the wounded to hospital, the helicopter once again opened fire – killing children in the process and putting bullets into those who were already visibly dead.

Initially, the US military claimed that all those killed were insurgents, saying it was the Iraqi militants' “fault for bringing kids in to a battle,” The Guardian reported in 2010.

The Geneva Convention concluded that those who “collect and care for the wounded” must be themselves protected from harm. UN special rapporteur Christof Heyns said attacks on rescuers are considered a war crime.

But attacking rescuers has now become the norm for American forces. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that the CIA has killed dozens of rescuers and funeral attendees in Pakistan.

The report states that 50 or more civilians had been killed as a result of helping victims – including pulling bodies out of rubble. Between May 2009 and June 2011, news media reported at least 15 attacks on rescuers.

This past weekend, Reuters reported that northern Pakistan saw “a flurry of drone attacks” at a time when most of the country was celebrating the end of Ramadan. At least one of the strikes was a follow-up attack, the International Herald Tribune reports.

Al-Qaida allegedly ambushed funerals of their attack victims in Yemen over the past few months, sparking outrage by Americans who are condemning the acts. At the same time, the US continues to employ secondary attacks in its own affairs abroad, in a continuous war against terrorism.

http://rt.com/usa/news/us-strikes-rescuers-attack-159/

This is why, I used to think that drone could not substitute to human. Those who pretend that are wrong. The drone could help, in order to gather informations, help for intelligence, help against poor armed, low skills insurgents. However, drone is useless against any army that can afford to resist, even useless versus high skills insugents.

For US forces this is another setback, after iran where they lost two so-called state of the art' drone, du to the help of russian technology, as Iranian seemed to use Nebo.
In another attemp to violate the soveirgnity of Crimea, US lost a third drone. It would be more preferable and less risky to send an SR-71 above the Crimea.


http://inserbia.info/news/2014/03/mq-5b-hunter-drone-from-66th-us-brigade-captured-intact-by-russian-forces/

MQ-5B Hunter Drone from 66th US brigade captured intact by Russian forces

An American scout-attack drone was intercepted in the Crimean sky, Interfax and AP reported quoting the Rostec state corporation.

“Judging by side marking, the MQ-5B drone was part of the 66th US brigade of military intelligence with the main location in Bavaria,” the report on the website of the corporation reads.

The 66th Military Intelligence Brigade is a United States Army brigade, subordinate to United States Army Intelligence and Security Command and based at Wiesbaden Army Airfield, Wiesbaden, Germany. After years of history as a counter intelligence/intelligence group with headquarters in Munich and geographically dispersed detachments, it became a brigade on 16 October 1986, but was inactivated in July 1995. Reformed again as an intelligence group in 2002, it became a brigade again in 2008.

The unit’s mission is to provide intelligence support to U.S. Army Europe and U.S. Army Africa.

Part of the 66th Military Intelligence Brigade supports near real-time missions for deployed soldiers such as operations in Afghanistan and also Iraq.

According to the report, at the beginning of March, the American brigade was relocated to the Ukrainian Kirovohrad, from where drones commit reconnaissance raids in the direction of Crimea and Russian border areas.

Earlier, they reportedly appeared in the Kherson region, in the area of the Crimean roadblock Chongar.

“According to some data, the American reconnaissance brigade had 18 MQ-5B drones in its arsenal. This is the second time the American UAV is intercepted over Crimea,” the report says, Voice of Russia reported.

“The drone was at the height of about 4 thousand meters and was practically invisible from the earth. It was possible to break the drone’s link with its American operators with the help of the EW (electronic warfare) complex Avtobaza. As a result, the device made an emergency landing and passed into the possession of the self-defense forces almost unbroken,” the report says.

The IAI RQ-5 Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was originally intended to serve as the United States Army’s Short Range UAV system for division and corps commanders.

The RQ-5 is based on the Hunter UAV that was developed by Israel Aircraft Industries. A version armed with the Northrop Grumman GBU-44/B Viper Strike weapon system is known as the MQ-5A/B.

As of October 2012, the U.S. Army had 20 MQ-5B Hunters in service.

Good NEMROD ,
Yu are always the harbinger of joyful news.

Keep it up. Nemrod.. well done..

If yu just type MQ-5B Hunter Drone in google , there are upfront 100 news site links with Chilling , screaming pentagon officials

refuting any MQ-5 drone catured over crimea.
The screams COMING FROM pentagon are so shrill that even neutral analysts in India are questioning
why the pentagon is jumping HELL and FIRE over the denials of MQ-5B

The google is now filled with pentagon SCREAMS that no MQ-5 are captured.



By the UPA Gov in India has rebuffed the OBAMA, Pentagon measure to criticize Russia in UNSC and UN meeting.

sometimes the India gov leads the way in such situations.

India and China have also refuted the pentagon allegations (Russ invasion) in UN Security council meeting.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/06/20/when-drones-fall-from-the-sky/?wpisrc=al_national

Pentagon Reports US Air Force to Spend $279 Million on New Reaper Drones

The US Defense Department announced Thursday that the US Air Force has signed a new $279-million contract to the California-based defense contractor General Atomics for provision of 24 MQ-9 Block 5 Reaper aircrafts.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The United States Air Force has issued a new $279-million contract to the California-based defense contractor General Atomics to produce Reaper drones and supporting equipment and parts, according to a statement by the US Defense Department on Thursday.

“Procurement funds in the amount of $279,144,933 are being obligated at the time of award,” the statement said. “The contractor will provide 24 MQ-9 Block 5 Reaper aircraft and associated spare parts, support equipment and spares.”

While Reaper drones are primarily used for intelligence gathering, they can also deploy Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs, according to the Air Force.

The Pentagon says it provided Sanaa with more than $400 million worth of military gear, including helicopters, night-vision gear, surveillance equipment, military radios and transport aircraft since 2006, as part of a counterterrorism strategy.

US drone strikes have killed nearly 2,500 people in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia during the tenure of President Barack Obama, according to the latest monthly report by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Critics have charged that the done strikes violate international law and result in civilian deaths. UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez criticized the Obama administration over the killing of 16 civilians by US drone strikes in Yemen at two separate wedding processions.

“A deadly attack on illegitimate targets amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment if, as in this case, it results in serious physical or mental pain and suffering for the innocent victims,” Mendez said in a statement.

General Atomics is expected to finish and deliver the Reaper drones by September 2017, according to the Defense Department.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/military/20150206/1017849868.html#ixzz3Qy0dm1uK

Pentagon Planning Hack-Proof Chopper-Drone by 2018

Defense contracting giant Boeing is planning on rolling out what they say is an unhackable unmanned aircraft – a drone that looks like a helicopter - by early 2018.

Programmers are currently working on the software that they assure will not fall prey to hackers. The software would be completely encapsulated within the device, called Boeing Little Bird, so that no outsiders would have access and wouldn’t be able to tamper with the surveillance video.

Pentagon and industry officials say they recently conducted a successful test run and predict a bright future for the device.

“The intent is to conduct an experiment to prove that these new coding techniques can create secure code at full scale,” said John Launchbury of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
A mock-up of the 750kg variant of the Chirok UAV.

“Boeing is on track to replace all the code on the vehicle to make it impenetrable. The software’s main purpose is to rewrite and secure the mission computer on board the Little Bird,” he told the publication NextGov.

Launchbury says the process should be completed by this summer. The device has close to 100,000 lines of code.

"We’ve developed a new programming language that is probably free from those (hacking) vulnerabilities,” he said. “The approach is to transition the programming language we’ve developed, called Ivory, to Boeing so that they can rewrite their systems.”

No word on the drone’s cost.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/us/20150312/1019411517.html#ixzz3UC2eUDTq

Pentagon Testing Drones That Can Launch from Ocean Floor



The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is testing a drone that can hibernate on the ocean floor for years at a time before being launched to the surface and into the air at the push of a button.



http://sputniknews.com/news/20150331/1020268533.html

Pentagon’s DARPA Develops Radar for Air Attacks Through the Clouds





The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing radar that can lock onto targets through cloud coverage, enabling aircraft to offer close-air support to ground troops despite unclear weather conditions.

US close-air support is severely limited in parts of the world where clouds are in the sky between one quarter and one half of the time, including the Korean Peninsula, Central America, Colombia and the Balkans.

Even in clear conditions, large clouds of dust are raised on the battlefield from explosions and incoming rounds, making it difficult for aircraft to target adversaries and track friendly ground forces in the area.

That has led DARPA to develop a gimbal-mounted radar sensor that will provide high-frame-rate radar images in order to identify targets when weather conditions inhibit the use of electro-optic sensors, which convert light into an electronic signal.

Our radar system can be used to image the ground, even through clouds and dust, at a sufficiently high resolution and frame rate to support the engagement of maneuvering targets,” DARPA’s Bruce Wallace wrote in an article for SPIE.

The Pentagon’s research and development agency is in the midst of building a prototype of its Video Synthetic Aperture Radar (ViSAR) system, with plans of conducting over-the-air flight tests next year.

DARPA will install the ViSAR system using a type of gimbal that is already flown on a variety of aircraft – including the MQ-9 Reaper drone – to show that the system can easily be installed on tactical aircraft, such as the AC-130 gunship.

Because no suitable electronics for the ViSAR system currently exist, DARPA went ahead and fabricated the necessary hardware, including receivers, exciters and an amplifier.

According to DARPA, laboratory integration for the ViSAR will take place this fall, and the radar system will be packed into the gimbal during the winter and spring of 2016. Flight tests in summer 2016 will demonstrate over-the-air real-time imaging of moving and stationary targets through clouds, the agency said.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/news/20150324/1019964034.html#ixzz3W0MmroG2


I heard Russia was slow in approaching Drone Tech for warfare .

for mighty US MILITARY THE DO

Radar for detecting targets through clouds, when they cannot be optically tracked.

Getting really tired of your shit murica . Wasting money as always . Yeah ! WE ARE THE BEST .

No matter the amount of money being spend on military US has its restrictions and huuge military to support outside US borders so

NAVAIR: Aerial Refueling Will End X-47B Test Program, Salty Dogs Bound for Museums or Boneyard

US Global Hawk drones flying over Black Sea, Ukraine

MOSCOW, April 16. /TASS/. As of this January, U.S. Global Hawk drones have been spotted regularly over the Black Sea, Gen Andrei Kartapolov, Chief of the Main Department for Operations at the Russian General Staff said on Thursday at the 4th Moscow conference on international security.

"And in March 2015, the drones appeared for the first time in the airspace over Ukraine," he said, adding that the utilization of these unmanned aircraft increased the depth of data gathering on the territory of Russia by 250 kilometers to 300 kilometers.

"Also, up to thirty combat jets, about 300 armored vehicles, and more than 1,500 ground troops and U.S. marines are present on the territories of East-European countries on the rotation basis now," Gen Kartapolov said.

He recalled U.S. ships capable of carrying Tomahawk cruise missiles and antimissile missiles were present in the Black Sea practically all the time. Naval ships of NATO countries located outside of the Black Sea littoral area are also present the space of the sea along with the American ships.

"The intensity of flights of U.S. reconnaissance aviation has grown two-fold to 750 sorties compared with 2013, while stealth jets have made nine times more flights - 182," Gen Kartapolov said.

"Such flights have become practically daily ones and their routes approach Russia’s western borders at the closest possible distance," he said

Earlier in the day, the Chief of General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Gen Valery Gerassimov spoke about a sharp intensification of NATO’s military activities in the areas adjoining the Russian borders.

Somewhat strange decission considering the tests were deemed succesful...

The US Navy's 'UFO' Drone Might Be Impressive But It's Heading To A Museum
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/04/17/the-us-navy-ufo-drone-might-be-amazing-but-its-heading-to-a-museum_n_7084990.html

One possible reason not mentioned in the above article

End of program

In February 2015, the Navy stated that the competition for private tenders for constructing the UCLASS fleet would begin in 2016, with the aircraft expected to enter service in the early 2020s. Reportedly, despite the X-47B's success in test flights, Navy officials were concerned that it would be too costly and insufficiently stealthy for the needs of the UCLASS project.

In April 2015, it was reported that the X-47B demonstrators would become museum exhibits upon the completion of their flight testing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_X-47B#cite_note-Museum-10

Cyberspec wrote:Somewhat strange decission considering the tests were deemed succesful...

well they were intended for demo purposes only so i dont see why its strange at all. its a lot more preferable to having them shredded to pieces to deny anyone else its secrets too.

Fair enough....the usual practice is to progress to X-47C then D, E, until a serial version is achieved.

For the First Time Ever: US Navy Drone Refueled Mid-Flight

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/us/20150423/1021251796.html#ixzz3YAXtEyCL