Steve, that story sounds fishy to me, (being paranoid and all). I hope are considering who this "reader" is. If he is involved very deeply in the government UAV program he would undoubtedly have a level of clearance that he would not want to jeapordize. I would say that sending you evidence that we were flying UAVs over in Iranian airspace would land him in a heap of trouble, besides getting his clearance revoked. Consider too, what may happen to your blog if you are posting what is considered classified information. I imagine there are a few in Washington that would rather you would just STFU. Careful man, this smells like a set-up.

I think this has been going on for a couple of years and has been reported on in the news. A couple of the UAVs have crashed in Iran. I recall reading something about it on Laura Rozen's blog over a year ago.

There was a news story on NPR last week about soldiers posting home-made videos on youtube and myspace that revealed classified information. The two videos that they mentioned had FLIR imagery from an Apache helicopter and the other showing the anti-IED armour on an HMMV and how it protected the vehicle from the blast.

So it seems probable that this is a home video of either a training exercise as suggested or perhaps an actual overflight.

NYT February 17, 2005

Iran Says Pilotless U.S. Planes Are Spying on Nuclear Sites

February 17, 2005, Thursday
By NAZILA FATHI (NYT); Foreign Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 16, Column 5, 756 words

Correction Appended

DISPLAYING ABSTRACT - Iran says American pilotless spy planes have been seen over its nuclear sites; threatens to shoot them down if they come within range; White House refuses commen; issue adds to rising concern in Iran over possible American surveillance operations in country

Correction: March 1, 2005, Tuesday A headline on Feb. 17 about assertions by Iran's information minister that American spy aircraft had been seen over his country's nuclear sites referred incorrectly in some editions to his description of the aircraft. He spoke of pilotless planes, never of jets.

I don't believe any fool would post classified info so brazenly. Sounds like someone is doing some undergrad work with Photoshop!

Hunter UAV's were sucessless early 1990 systems.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/hunter.htm

says: "Hunter, was cancelled in January 1996 after some 20 air vehicle crashes, with only seven of the planned 50 production systems delivered."

Why would a F16 fly with a UAV payload? Why wouldn´t the UAV fly?

The blogsphere is rich of everything.

says: "Hunter, was cancelled in January 1996 after some 20 air vehicle crashes, with only seven of the planned 50 production systems delivered."

Why would a F16 fly with a UAV payload? Why wouldn´t the UAV fly?

The blogsphere is rich of everything.

Posted by b

Come to think of it, isn't the current UAV being used the "Predator"??? Anyone that is "in the UAV business" as Steve's "reader" stated, would surely know this. Steve, check your so called "clever analyst"'s info. It looks like you've been had........

Fly The Wild Skies, And Look The Other Way

August 30, 2006: Before September 11, 2001, the U.S. Department of Defense was spending less than $400 million a year on UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.) Since then, UAV spending has grown to over $4 billion this year. While most of the money is going into the larger UAVs like Global Hawk (costing $130 million each) and Predator ($20 million each), most of the UAVs in the air are smaller ones, like Raven ($25,000 each). In fact, most of the over 2,000 UAVs in Iraq are Ravens, or similar models (weighing under ten pounds.)

continues at....

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairfo/articles/20060830.aspx

Also.....

http://www.uavforum.com/vehicles/production/hunter.htm

The IAI/Malat-built, TRW-assembled RQ-5/Hunter (formerly BQM-155) won the U.S. Army's Short Range UAV competition in 1988 and first flew in Mar 91. Following three crashes in close succession in Aug-Sep 95, full rate production was canceled. The follow-on quality control improvements made Hunter a model of reliability. Seven systems of eight aircraft each were delivered; a total of 75 were built. Hunter has launched from (RATO) and landed on the deck of an amphibious assault ship. Today, one system is deployed at Ft Hood, TX, for concept development, one at Ft Huachuca, AZ, for training, and a third to the Joint ReadinessTraining Center at Ft Polk, LA; the rest are in storage. Hunter is also operated by Israel, Belgium, and France (demo only). Hunter can be converted to Endurance Hunter (E-Hunter) in 3 hours by adding wing extensions; E-Hunter data is given in parentheses:

Great catch, and it's probably real.

Also, hate to be nitpicky butit's "lo and behold", not "low".

Wait........

Eastings and Northings are projected coordinates.

Latitude and Longitude are unprojected coordinates. They are positional reference with respect to the longitudinal meridian and circles of latitude that grid the globe. It uses demarcations of degrees.

Eastings and Northings are positional reference to a mathematical model to best fit a flat representation of the earth to a globe - a projection. Projections are used for a more systematic method of measuring distances on a globe from a flat representation, and are specifically used for surveying and GPS positioning. Predominantly the units used are in metres, although the US still uses survey feet in state projections.

What you are seeing in the video is eastings and northings in metres, with z values in metres as well. This is textbook GPS positioning.

Projections use a prime meridian and a baseline for centring the projection - i.e. each US state or world country will use a central meridian to centre the projection. with E0.0000 and N0.0000 being the centre. The projection becomes less accurate the further you deviate from the meridian and baseline due to distortion from the curviture of the earth.

So.

What you are seeing is a UAV flying somewhere; but without knowing which projection they are using, there is no way to say.

Cheers,

Canuck ( I am a geographer by the way )

The coordinate system being used is Universal Transverse Mercator Zone 12.

This places the UAV in southern Arizona.

From the video:

E 553870 N 3503649 Z12 N

is

31.6668° N -110.43172° W

Which is here:

http://www.google.ca/maphp?hl=en&tab=wl&q=&ll=31.66684327,-110.4317270

Patroling the US/Mexican border, I presume.

Cheers, and thanks for the fun.

thanks canuck.

Uhm... no offence to anyone here, but even if this particular bit of info were true so what.

It's common knowledge that the US violates Iranian airspace with high altitude overflights to fly on suspected nuclear sites.

Its also common knowledge that US aircraft regularly infringe on Iranian airspace to 'paint' radar and missile facilities, for effective targeting in the event of war.

They did this before televising Iraq, too.
Pentagon personalities call it "softening the target."
There have been a few ground skirmishes at the Iranian border.
And, of course, the Scot/Brits were caught in the Shatt last year.
This is not looking good.

Canuck's coordinates place it just NW of Ft Huachuca which is where POA said is one of the training sites for the Hunter UAV.

Incidentally the terrain does look just that way, depending on the time of year. I was stationed there during my service time and flew small planes (MAV ?) in the flying club.

I don't have any idea if the US is flying over Iran but would like to tell you that in Columbia SC, we have white unmarked airplanes flying around downtown neighborhoods. This goes on everyday since last summer. The FAA denies knowing who flies unmarked planes and the local air field cannot contact these planes so the manager of the airport says. The planes fly dangerously low to our homes in NICE neighborhoods not slums. Some nights we get helicopters chasing planes and frequently this noise pollutes our downtown capital city neighborhoods well into the night. I've been awakened by it at 3 am numerous times. We keep focusing like nothing is going on in this country but when you live underneath this day after day, you literally feel like you are likewise invaded by a foreign force. And believe it or not, there is such a thing as unmarked black helicopters and they fly around downtown Columbia SC if anyone needs visual verification . Who are these people and what are they doing and what do they want and when did America start allowing unmarked low flying planes? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know should that plane be hijacked, not a soul in America would know it or verbalize it until something bad happened.
When I spoke to the FAA and they lied about knowing about this..... I got kinda scared.

Canuck -- many thanks for your great work. You beat a friend of mine on the intel side who did much the same -- but I'll join Jeff Lewis in offering you something cold to refresh when we meet.
Best,

Steve Clemons
The Washington Note

Thanks Steve,

Great blog. Keep up the great work.

Cheers,

Steve, I am a little curious....

Subsequent to the conclusions reached here, did you have a little online "heart to heart" with your "clever analyst"?????

:)

The video has been removed from YouTube.

Is this as a result of this discussion?

Cheers,