Spying or shying?

Over DC

In recent weeks there has been quite a bit about UAV's flying over Iran. From the initial Washington Post article, there has been a flurry of activity that has centered around the accusation that US recon aircraft have been flying in Iranian skies looking for evidence of nuclear bomb development.

DC seems to have been a-buzz with this. From highly placed military people saying we haven't done it, to other highly placed people saying we have done it, to the Iranians themselves saying that objects in the skies are not theirs, there is general confusion. Classic disinformation. I wish to add to this mess!

What Have We Got?

There are only a few UAV's capable of doing what these reports suggest. Iran after all is a country that has faced Iraq in war (not so distantly), so it has respectable air defenses set up to deter western incursions. That means whatever did this flying either could fly though whatever radars are there undetected, or they went a very long way and came round from behind (Afghanistan?) Further, Iran is a big country. Many of its facilities are close to Tehran, and that is a distance from anywhere - a distance littered with trigger happy radar operators.

Iran itself has some air defense capability, in the form of a radar network, SAM's and air defense fighters. Some of it fairly capable stuff.

Such capabilities shrink the field of UAV contenders enormously. We have just a few vehicles that can fly through radars or go the distances required. The Global Hawk can certainly cover the ground, but I would hypothesis that it has a radar signature that might cause it problems in the face of a determined radar picket line. The X-45 and X-47 are possibly stealthy enough to fly through a radar line but I would suggest are not nearly well enough developed to be put in the field.

The use of a Global Hawk, flying perhaps from Kabul, at over 70,000ft, would give some level of surprise to the initial US attempt. The news is however that these flights have occurred on at least a couple of occasions. This would seem to suggest that a Global Hawk should be missing if it tried this game twice. Iran would most certainly shoot one of these down if it got close to a nuclear facility.

While X-45's and X-47's could be made to fly through the radars I would suggest this would be a tad risky given the early state of development. Further more sensor packages would have to be cobbled together for such flights as these have not yet been developed for the production aircraft.

Another avenue of possibility, one opened by the assertion that the 'military' has not flown these missions, is that the CIA or another covert group did it. That opens the door to some of the exotic stealthy UAV's that have been produced in black programs over the last decade. At least one of these is similar to the cancelled stealthy Dark Star project. Such a vehicle, if in service for the last few years, would be more than capable of flying the missions, right through the front door, so to speak.

One would presume then that the CIA, beat up and bloodied as its new bosses take the reins, is becoming a bit of an information sieve.

Politically, Washington seems to have kept a long arms' reach from the Iranian Nuclear Issue, leaving it to the Europeans to work out, but with a new Secretary Of State in town, I guess things could be changing. There also may be a more proactive stance from the CIA to get on the right side of Dr. Rice for various ulterior political motives. Afterall, who wants to play second fiddle to the Pentagon when their bit of Virginia is so much nicer?

Did What Take Place?

Did the over flight by a UAV take place? Probably. I guess that some UAV runs at the borders have been going on for a time, but this particular episode has a different fingerprint associated with it. Some heavy artillery was rolled out for this. The fact that there are people saying it occurred, and people equally aggressively saying it didn't, probably means it did take place. What did the mission will be one of the more interesting short term aspects to this little story.