RQ-170 (File Photo, via Aviation Weekly)
A day after the Pentagon acknowledged that an unmanned American reconnaissance drone went missing while on an operation in western Afghanistan late last week, Defense officials still smarting from the incident have come forward to dismiss Iranian claims that the drone was brought down by hostile activity. And American cyber experts also expressed skepticism over Iranian claims that hackers based in Iran brought down the drone by penetrating its software or jamming its signals."The one thing I can tell you is we don't have any indications that the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle], that we know we no longer have, was brought down by hostile activity of any kind," Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon press briefing Monday, ABC News's Luis Martinez reported. "As it says in the statement, the controllers lost control and, without getting into specific details, I think we're comfortable stating that there's no indication of hostile activity."
Likewise, the Iranian claim of an effective cyber-hacking initiative strains credulity, James Lewis, a cyber security expert, said. "Iran hacking into the drone is as likely as an Ayatollah standing on a mountain-top and using thought waves to bring it down," James Lewis, a former Reagan administration official with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Yahoo News by email Monday. "The most likely explanation is that it crashed on its own."
"If you could hack into a drone, you wouldn't use it for some spontaneous fun, you'd save it for a rainy day," Lewis continued. "You'd need to be able to hack either the control network in the U.S. or a satellite.? Neither is easy, and both are probably not something the Iranians can do."Read More ?
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