U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blamed Iran for the attack Saturday on key Saudi oil infrastructure. On Sunday, senior U.S. officials again said the American government believes there is no doubt Iran was responsible, saying satellite imagery and other intelligence, show the strike was inconsistent with one launched from Yemen, where Iranian-backed Houthi rebels had claimed responsibility."We knowed they done it" is not proof.
We've been down this road before, with Bush43's administration hyping up bullshit and speculation in order to justify the war of aggression that both Bush and Cheney wanted to launch.
The difference here, though, is that Trump's not inclined to satisfy the warmongering wet dreams of Pompeo and his ilk.
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The Yemeni Houthi rebels claim to be building and operating the drones, clones of the Iranian Qusif, a modified target drone using GPS and model airplane type piston engines.
Yet they were fired from Iraq probably.
They claim a 120min endurance with 30kg payload. Is that enough range and bomb load?
Air to ground pics show fires in several locations and oil refinery production is said to be cut in half.
The rebels claim successful attacks on airfields and a military parade as well. Ships might have been struck as well.
If true it's quite a feat, seems you'd need more than a 10 drone squadron just to successfully hit the oil refinery.
If true it is a major step up in insurgent drone warfare.
Yet the drones are just overgrown model planes with claymore mines, (small), bombs and shrapnel, with modern guidance accurate to within 30m.
A weapon of the weak, disruptive, feared, hard to stop, hard to shoot down. Very surprised it hasn't happened sooner it's so simple.
Surprised the US went so strong for drones, like nobody thought they'd ever be unleashed by others on us or our puppets.
With knowledge of the plant layout, a single drone could pretty easily cause most of the chaos at any one location, because that’s what happens when flammable liquids get explosively released. Given the number of people involved in the design and operation of these facilities, the knowledge isn’t that difficult, and with GPS, getting explosives close enough is a snap.
Now, here’s the fun question...Selective Availability. Those who have used GPS for a while know what this is, it the degradation of GPS signals to no more accurate than about 100 meters vertically and 50 meters horizontally. This would render most civilian GPS application unusable, and destroy the whole premise of NEXTGEN. Until May of 2000, a time varying input to civilian GPS signals caused this Selective Availability. The U.S. Government could, theoretically, switch this back on, but it would only impact the U.S. constellation, not GLONASS. But if the U.S. turned SA back on, would the Russians do the same, perhaps.
Are we heading for a world where we turn back the clock on GPS to prevent precision drone terrorism? Imagine the costs involved.
That seems pretty unlikely, CP. You're forgetting about two other constellations: Galileo and BeiDou. For less than ten bucks I can get a receiver module that will tune into all of them. I have a hard time imagining a not-too-distant future where the US, EU, China, AND Russia all agree to collective action on something.
Plus, even with ~50m accuracy degradation on each system I'm pretty sure you could leverage fixes from all four to substantially improve location estimates. Then you're back to square one (except with a relatively crippled everyday life).
There's always the possibility that they bought better drones from someone else. Or someone did.
-Doug in Oakland
BeiDou and Galileo are both not yet fully operational. And when they are, either would face the same calculation as the GPS and GLONASS operators, maybe more so for BeiDou.
True, although both can already be used for navigation and Galileo is expected to be fully operational in the next few months. Both were built for the express purpose of ensuring domestic (and military) functionality in the event that the US and/or Russia were to intentionally degrade their signals. That makes shutting it down a very tough sell, especially for the EU where control is a lot less centralized...
Loss of all four systems would cripple transportation, agriculture, construction, etc. The impact would be far greater than the potential effects of unrestricted terrorist drone warfare. It's firmly in the category of "not gonna happen" unless it accompanies an actual shooting war.
Fair enough, but if we are in a shooting war, the return of SA would still be economically catastrophic. I just wonder if anyone realizes the corner we’ve all painted ourselves into.
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