Iranian Cyberattack Brings Down Stealth Drone? Al Jazeera

On Dec. 4th, 2011, Al Jazeera reported on how the Iranian media is claiming that it has brought down a super secret US spy drone.  The article quotes Iranian state television as saying "Iran's military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran" and the drone "is now in the possession of Iran's armed forces."  The RQ-170 is a super secret spy drone (utilizing the same flying wing design as the B-2 bomber) which the public has rarely glimpsed.

An RQ-170…man that's cool.
Source: Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons

Here's where it gets interesting.  The semiofficial Fars news agency claims that an Iranian cyberwarfare unit brought down the drone after taking control of it.  Yahoo News reported that "the spy drone, which has been downed with little damage, was seized by the Iranian armed forces."  I suppose that a cyberattack would really be the only way to make sure that a drone flying at 30,000 feet lands with little damage.  However, I'm skeptical as to anything the Fars news agency claims.  It will be interesting to see how this develops.

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Updated: Reuters is reporting that NATO has released a statement that "The UAV to which the Iranians are referring may be a U.S. unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status." 

I'm interested to see just how NATO "lost control" of the aircraft.

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Relevant, but old: WSJ reports insurgents hack US drones.