How a drone’s flight took the U.S. and Iran to the brink of war
The incident that came close to sparking a new war in the Middle East began late on Wednesday night at the Al Dhafr air base in the United Arab Emirates, just over 30km south of Abu Dhabi.
The base is home to the UAE’s air force and a fluctuating number of US warplanes, including Global Hawk drones, used to fly high above the Persian Gulf looking down on the constant flow of oil tankers and northwards, sucking up huge quantities of data from Iran.
The Iranian government says that the Global Hawk which took off from Al Dhafr on Wednesday night was in “stealth mode”, meaning it had its transponder turned off.
The Pentagon has not commented on this, but the Global Hawk is not a stealthy plane. It is the size of a small commercial airliner and packed with electronic surveillance gadgetry costing $130m, considerably more than the new US F35 fighter. Its primary defence against being shot down is its speed and altitude. It can fly at 400mph at 55,000ft. [Continue reading…]
The US military launched a cyber-attack on Iranian weapons systems on Thursday, according to sources, as President Donald Trump backed away from plans for a more conventional strike in response to Iran’s downing of a US surveillance drone.
The hack disabled Iranian computer systems that controlled its rocket and missile launchers, two officials told the Associated Press, and were conducted with approval from Trump. A third official confirmed the broad outlines of the strike. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly about the operation.
Two of the officials said the attacks, which specifically targeted computer systems of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), had been provided as options after two oil tankers were bombed. The IRGC has been designated a foreign terrorist group by the Trump administration. [Continue reading…]