Venezuela says building drones with Iran's help

Designed as a surveillance tool, the machine "does not carry arms" and has a 100-kilometer (60 mile) sweep. It can fly solo for some 90 minutes and reach an altitude of 3,000 meters (9,000 feet)," said General Julio Morales, president of the state-run Venezuelan Military Industrial Company Cavim.

Fallen U.S. Drone Nearly Led to Covert Strike in Iran
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/12/fallen-us-drone-nearly-led-covert-strike-iran/45857/

New reports on the CIA drone lost in Iran last week reveal the scope of the stealth plane's mission and just how far the U.S. was willing to go to recover it. The Associated Press reports on Wednesday that despite U.S. military statements Monday suggesting the drone was lost while flying a mission in western Afghanistan, Iranian officials say the RQ-170 drone was detected about 140 miles from the border of Afghanistan, deep inside the country's air space. U.S. officials, speaking on background, confirmed the RQ-170 drone had been spying on Iran for years but did not indicate the extent to which it penetrated Iranian air space. They did say the U.S. air base in Shindad, Afghanistan, was designed to launch "surveillance missions and even special operations missions into Iran if deemed necessary."

In a sign of how badly the U.S. wanted the stealth drone back, The Wall Street Journal reports that it contemplated three different operations to recover the fallen drone. One plan involved sending commandos in Afghanistan assisted by U.S. agents in Iran to track down and recover the drone. "Another option would have had a team sneak in to blow up the remaining pieces of the drone," reports the Journal. "A third option would have been to destroy the wreckage with an airstrike."
In the end, officials decided not to carry out the mission for two reasons: a) they feared the strike could be considered an "act of war" and b) it crashed in such a remote area of Iran that officials hoped it wouldn't be found "therefore, leaving the remains where they were could be the safest option."

So what went wrong? While Iran maintains that it shot down the plane using anti-aircraft weaponry, sources inside and outside the military explain to Reuters that most signs indicate a technical malfunction because of the way the RQ-170 is programmed. "The aircraft is flown remotely by pilots based in the United States, but is also programmed to autonomously fly back to the base it departed from if its data link with U.S.-based pilots is lost," a defense analyst who consults for Lockheed told the news agency. "The fact that the plane did not return to its base suggests a 'catastrophic' technical malfunction," another industry insider familiar with drone technology attested. Additionally, "several current and former defense officials" said shooting down the drone was unlikely because of the aircraft's anti-radar coating and ability to fly at high altitudes.

U.S. Made Covert Plan to Retrieve Iran Drone
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577082822643123332.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

U.S. officials considered conducting a covert mission inside Iran to retrieve or destroy a stealth drone that crashed late last week, but ultimately concluded such a secret operation wasn't worth the risk of provoking a more explosive clash with Tehran, a U.S. official said.

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But the U.S. official said the drone developed mechanical difficulties and remote pilots lost control of the aircraft, and said officials knew immediately it had crashed in eastern Iran.

~snip~

Under one plan, a team would be sent to retrieve the aircraft. U.S. officials considered both sending in a team of American commandos based in Afghanistan as well as using allied agents inside Iran to hunt down the downed aircraft.

Another option would have had a team sneak in to blow up the remaining pieces of the drone. A third option would have been to destroy the wreckage with an airstrike.

Iran says it's recovered data from captured U.S. spy drone
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-04-22/middleeast/world_meast_iran-us-plane_1_spy-drone-tehran-aerospace-forces?_s=PM:MIDDLEEAST

"This plane is seen as a national capital for us and our words should not disclose all the information that we have very easily," Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh was quoted as saying by the semiofficial Fars News Agency.

"Yet, I provide four cues in here to let the Americans know how deep we could penetrate into the intelligence systems and devices of this drone."

Some data from the drone's memory device revealed it had flown over the Pakistani hideout of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden two weeks before his death in May, according to Hajizadeh.

"Had we not accessed the plane's softwares and hard discs, we wouldn't have been able to achieve these facts," he said.

Iran claims to be cloning American spy drone
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2012/04/iran-claims-to-be-cloning-american-spy-drone-75172.html

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran claimed Sunday that it had reverse-engineered an American spy drone captured by its armed forces last year and has begun building a copy.

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Tehran has flaunted the capture of the Sentinel, a top-secret surveillance drone with stealth technology, as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States in a complicated intelligence and technological battle.

~snip~

There are concerns in the U.S. that Iran or other states may be able to reverse-engineer the chemical composition of the drone's radar-deflecting paint or the aircraft's sophisticated optics technology that allows operators to positively identify terror suspects from tens of thousands of feet in the air.

There are also worries that adversaries may be able to hack into the drone's database, as Iran claimed to have done. Some surveillance technologies allow video to stream through to operators on the ground but do not store much collected data. If they do, it is encrypted.

surpressing press freedom

pitting parts of middle-class Caracas against the entire country