NASA Global Hawk was Probably NOT Hacked

A group of hackers claims to have broken into the computer systems of NASA, stealing hours of on-board footage from the agency’s fleet of aircraft, hundreds of data logs from its weather and climate missions, as well as a list of names, phone numbers and emails of more than 2,400 employees.

The hackers dumped the allegedly stolen data online on Sunday, along with a long, rambling “zine” where they explained how they obtained the more than 250 GB of files. One of the group’s administrators told Motherboard that they were actually able to steal as much as 1 TB of data, but couldn’t upload it all.

The hackers, which call themselves AnonSec, also claimed to have taken “semi-partial control” of a NASA drone in a failed attempt to crash it into the ocean. In a manifesto accompanying the dump, the hackers explained that they were able to replace a file with the drone’s pre-planned route with their own route. NASA denied this ever happened, and an expert told Motherboard it’s highly unlikely they ever gained control of the drone, and that the file was probably just used to indicate waypoints for the drone operator.

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Was NASA's Global Hawk Drone Hacked?

Hackers from the AnonSec group who spent several months hacking Nasa have released a huge data dump and revealed they tried to bring down a $222m Global Hawk Drone into the Pacific Ocean. The hack included employee personal details, flight logs and video footage collected from unmanned and manned aircraft.

The 250GB data dump contained the names, email addresses and phone numbers of 2,414 Nasa employees, 2,143 flight logs and 631 videos taken from Nasa aircraft and radar feeds, as well as a self-published paper (known as a "zine") from the group explaining the extensive technical vulnerabilities that the hackers were able to breach.

In the zine, AnonSec explains that it purchased an "initial foothold" from a hacker with knowledge of Nasa's servers in 2013 and then began experimenting to see how many computers they could break into and hijack. AnonSec found that the administrator credentials for securely controlling Nasa computers and servers remotely were left at default, so it took the hackers no time at all to get into the network and then grab more login data using a hidden packet sniffer.

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Eventually, AnonSec says it managed to infiltrate the networks at the Glenn Research Center, Goddard Space Flight Center and Dryden Flight Research Center, and were able to gain full root access to three network-attached storage (NAS) devices that were compiling back-ups of aircraft flight logs.

The hackers then secretly programmed the NAS devices to quietly send a copy of all the flight logs out to the hackers' server outside Nasa's network, but when they looked at the flight logs, they realised that part of the data they were receiving consisted of pre-planned route files for Nasa's Global Hawk drones. Every time a drone mission took off, Nasa drone operators were uploading specific flight paths, so the hackers realised that they could simply replace the Global Hawk drone route file, and that would cause the drone to deviate from its set flight path and do whatever the hackers wanted it to do.

"Several members were in disagreement on this because if it worked, we would be labelled terrorists for possibly crashing a $222.7m US drone... but we continued anyways lol," AnonSec wrote in its zine, together with a screenshot showing how the hackers tried to deviate the Global Hawk's flight path to cause it to crash into the Pacific Ocean.

Fortunately for Nasa, AnonSec says that the drone operators in Ground Control noticed that the drone had deviated from its original flight path and manually accessed the drone via satellite to redirect it from a watery grave.

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Global Hawk Approved for Sale to Japan

The U.S. State Department has approved the sale of three unmanned drones worth $1.2 billion to Japan, the Pentagon said Friday.

Lawmakers have 15 days to block the sale, although such action is rare. Once the deal has cleared that hurdle, Japan and the U.S. government can negotiate the actual sale.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees foreign arms sales, told lawmakers the government of Japan had asked to buy three Global Hawk drones including parts and logistical support.

The drones “will significantly enhance Japan’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities and help ensure that Japan is able to continue to monitor and deter regional threats,” the agency said in a notice to lawmakers that was posted on its website.

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In Clash With Lockheed Over ISR, Northrop Appears to be Winning

As the Pentagon looks to define a path forward for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, two giants in the aerospace community are battling for a piece of the action.

Right now, the Air Force’s plan of record is to replace Lockheed Martin’s infamous U-2 spy plane with Northrop Grumman’s RQ-4 Global Hawk, an unmanned, long-range surveillance platform. The Air Force recently pushed back the U-2s planned retirement date from 2016 to 2019, allowing more time to upgrade the Global Hawk before putting the U-2 to rest.

All signs indicate the Air Force is sticking to this plan. The service recently awarded Northrop won a $3.2 billion contract to continue sustainment and modernization work on the Global Hawk through 2025, with new orders to be made by Sept. 30, 2020.

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Global Hawk, Predator, Other Drones may get Upgrades Including air to air missiles

It’s a little-known fact that when Northrop Grumman designed the Global Hawk spy drone back in the 1990s, the company added underwing hardpoints for weapons — just in case the U.S. Air Force decided, down the road, that it wanted to arm the currently-weaponless 737-size surveillance robot.

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more info.

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TO be honest, it would be better to start phasing out the predators and reapers for a new drone with the capabilities they want rather than add in the capability for a drone which is not really able to perform very well in, say, an air to air mission.

Lockheed: Fund Replacement UAV for Global Hawk and U-2

The Air Force's current plans for high-altitude surveillance, keeping the decades-old U-2 flying while upgrading the new RQ-4 Global Hawk drone, will not meet the demands of the military for reconnaissance, and the service needs to start again with a new aircraft to replace both spy plans, the head of Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works said.

The Air Force's fiscal 2016 budget request will keep the U-2 flying until 2019 while funding upgrades to the Global Hawk's sensor package to put the drone on par with the aging spy plane. The move will have the drone take over the spy plane's missions in full, though the differences in capabilities means that neither aircraft can really do the other's job.

"I ask myself, when will a program be initiated, which I think will be unmanned, to replace both and do the full set of missions accomplished by both the U-2 and the Global Hawk" said Rob Weiss, the executive vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin's advanced development programs, or Skunk Works, which originally designed the U-2.

Air Force officials have repeatedly said there is an ever-increasing demand for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance around the world. The service does not have enough operators, and is trying to upgrade its ISR fleet to keep up with demand.

"There is no opportunity to replace both of them based on current demand," Weiss said.

The Air Force had originally sought to cut it's brand-new Block 30 variants of the Global Hawk, saying the U-2 was more capable and had a cheaper cost per flight hour. The service flipped its position, and in the fiscal 2015 request tried to retire all of its U-2s, a move that Congress blocked. The compromise in the newest spending request looks to appease Congressional concerns and keep the spy plane in the air long enough to meet short-term demands of combatant commanders.

But the difference in capability will mean this plan could mean a shortfall in ISR capability, Weiss said. Northrop Grumman is developing a "universal payload adapter" to take the sensor suite from a U-2 and fix it to the drone. The $487 million project is expected to take three to four years to develop and test, according to an Air Force report to Congress.

There is technology advanced enough to be able to develop a new system to address the need for high-altitude surveillance, but now it's an issue of funding and deciding to move forward.

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Japan Budgets 20 P-1s, 5 V-22s & 6 F-35s

Japan’s parliament has approved a Y4.98 trillion ($42 billion) defence budget for FY2015, with a strong emphasis on new airpower capabilities.

The budget, posted on the web site of Japan’s defence ministry, is 2.8% higher than in FY2014, and sets a new record for Japanese defence spending.

It contains funding for several major aircraft programmes, notably 20 Kawasaki P-1 maritime patrol aircraft.

The budget will also see the radar and infrared sensors carried by the nation’s Lockheed Martin P-3C Orion aircraft upgraded, as well as service life extensions for three P-3Cs.

It also includes funding for five Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey aircraft, which will be part of a new amphibious capability modelled on the US Marine Corps.

Tokyo continues to place a premium on high-end intelligence surveillance & reconnaissance (ISR) platforms.

The budget includes improvements on one Boeing E-767 airborne early warning & control (AEW&C) aircraft, as well as the acquisition of one Northrop Grumman E-2D.

There is also funding toward Tokyo’s eventual procurement of the Northrop Grumman MQ-4 Global Hawk, but it does not specify a specific variant or the number of aircraft it plans to obtain.

Tokyo’s fighter fleet also gets a boost, with funding for six Lockheed Martin F-35As, the modernisation of eight F-15s, and improvements to nine Mitsubishi F-2 fighters.

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Indian Navy Wants American MQ-4C Triton Maritime Surveillance Drone

The Indian Navy has earlier shown interest in acquiring six to eight of the maritime variants of the US high altitude, long endurance (HALE) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) for extended ocean surveillance. The drones have been upgraded as the MQ-4C Triton maritime surveillance platform for the U.S. Navy, providing real-time intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance over vast ocean and coastal regions.

The Global Hawk has been deployed by the U.S. in Japan, and the U.S. this week approved the sale of four Global Hawks to South Korea. Australia and Japan too have expressed interest in these drones, though Australia later backed out because of the high price.

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Japan Purchases Global Hawk, V-22 & E-2D

Japan has announced the selection of the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk for its high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) requirement and the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey for its tilt-rotor requirement.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) also confirmed that it would buy a Northrop Grumman E-2D Advanced Hawkeye airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft. All three requirements were announced in the fiscal year 2015 budget request.

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Japan is actually buying 17 V-22s.

MQ-4C Triton is a SERIOUS Upgrade on the Global Hawk

A new drone with the mammoth wingspan of a Boeing 757 is set to give the U.S. Navy some serious surveillance power.

Northrop Grumman and the Navy say they’ve just completed the ninth flight trial of the Triton unmanned aircraft system (UAS), an improvement upon its predecessor in the Air Force, the Global Hawk.

With its 130-foot wingspan, Triton will provide high-altitude, real-time intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) from a sensor suite that supplies a 360-degree view at a radius of over 2,000 nautical miles, allowing monitoring from higher and farther away than any of its competitors.

But should a closer look be necessary, unique de-icing and lightning protection capabilities allow Triton to plunge through the clouds to get a closer view and automatically classify ships. And in recent tests, the drone was able to easily recover from perturbations in its flight path caused by turbulence.

Although Triton has a higher degree of autonomy than the most autonomous drones, operators on the ground will be able to obtain high-resolution imagery, use radar for target detection and provide information-sharing capabilities to other military units.

Thus far, Triton has completed flights up to 9.4 hours at altitudes of 50,000 feet at the company’s manufacturing facility in Palmdale, California. According to Northrop Grumman, Triton could support missions up to 24 hours.

Northrop Grumman reported earlier that Triton had demonstrated structural strength of the drone’s wing — a key capability that will allow the aircraft to descend from high altitudes to make positive identification of targets during surveillance missions — even when it was subjected to a load at 22 percent above the Navy’s requirement.

“During surveillance missions using Triton, Navy operators may spot a target of interest and order the aircraft to a lower altitude to make positive identification,” said Mike Mackey, Northrop Gumman’s Triton UAS program director, in a statement. “The wing’s strength allows the aircraft to safely descend, sometimes through weather patterns, to complete this maneuver.”

Under an initial contract of $1.16 billion in 2008, the Navy has ordered 68 of the MQ-4C Triton drones with expected delivery in 2017 — a slip from the initial anticipated date of December 2015.

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