Fox News alert: US fears Iraq has transported GPS guided drones to America

Fox News Channel | 02/24/03 | Brett Baird

[Pokey78]

Drones or pieces of drones that have GPS mapping may have been sent to Iraqi agants in US to spray chem or bio weapons over US cities.

[Travis McGee]

See number 168. No assembly required.

[Eala]

Well, we should hear about no knock raids on R/C Modelers

Did you see the Slashdot article about the demise of model rocketry?

[Dead Corpse]

RC Models. Giant scale competition class. Most of these have 6' wingspans or better. Modifying for GPS control would be every bit as easy as wiring in a Futaba controler is.

$1500 cruise missile. 152" wingspan and is outfitted with two tanks. One for fuel, or for areobatic smoke oil. Could this not also be used to spray and agent over an area?

Not so far fetched at all....

[APBaer]

"Does this mean I am going to have to find my sextant
and try to remember which end to look through?"

Studying for your Proctology Boards, eh?

[Snowy]

[Nexus]

Damn you're quick.

[George W. Bush]

Gee, thanks. (sitting in a high-rise in suburban Atlanta)

Sorry. But it's a discussion with technical aspects.

Payload weight or range. Pick one.

With a powered glider type of design and warm weather, you don't have to sacrifice much.

I thought I'd mention that Fox News is way off on the need to have topo maps in GPS format. It would be nice but all you'd have to do is calculate the coordinates you want and program them. Or send a collaborator to the spot and take a few measurements with a handheld GPS.

Then you program your drone with each point along its flight path and a desired altitude for each leg of the flight. So you could, for instance, launch in Jersey, fly low until you reach New York, increase your altitude to avoid the taller buildings and then reach your approach waypoint with a clear straight run at Wall Street. Decrease altitude as you start your Wall Street run and open the sprayers.

With VX, it might be effective enough to crash the global economy. Those financial types panic easily.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

Here is a model that was to break the trans atlantic record with a GPS unit last summer. It failed and they are to try again next summer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A13958-2001Apr27&notFound=true

[snooker]

Encryption takes the CEP to ~100 meters. I don't think gas would care.

Come to think of it, why would you even need guidance. Just launch and fly it with a RC box.

snooker

[Travis McGee]

Not if the very target is, say, the entire US postal system. Whether there were 1,000 or 100,000 human casualties, an anthrax attack which targeted USPS, UPS and FedEx with 100s of leaky boxes and envelopes on one day would wreck our economy.

Glass jars of anthrax thrown onto subway tracks could also wreck the enonomies of major cities, such as NY.

16 months after the THREE GRAM anthrax warning attack, we still have major postal facilities that are shut down as unsafe to work in, despite millions spent on decontamination.

Imagine a 100 KILO anthrax attack on one day, instead of a mere 3 grams.

[mhking]

Damn you're quick.

Fast flying fingers do the job every time...[g]

[section9]

Oh, they could have done this, as well. I understand that. That's the whole basis of Bush's war: kill Saddam before he can become a bio/nuclear quartermaster for Al Qaeda. The question is, has he already become their quartermaster?

I don't put much stock in this latest UAV story, however.

I do believe that AQ and the Mukhabarat have a relationship, however, so your concerns are warranted.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[baylorbaylor]

If Iraq does not do something stupid with there weapons of mass destruction (use them) then the liberals will say "see they were no threat".

[husky ed]

Purchased from France, or Germany?

Should read "Purchased from France and Germany!"

[Rockitz]

DUCT TAPE!!

I understand this is exactly the reason we won the Cold War. Better tape!

[flamefront]

This is a picture similar to the one on Foxnews which comes from the Boston Globe. On Fox they show it to be with a background of what appears to be a garage door shich would make the wingspan about 10 feet.

[alethia]

"A guided drone... at first I thought they meant Bill Clinton."

LOL...Wouldn't that be a "MIS-guided drone?"

[eno_]

They'd have to using more than a commercial GPS

Not really. Delivering anthrax or VX does not require more than 150 foot accuracy - a lot less really.

And interfacing to a GPS is also fairly trivial. You figure your distance from the waypoint you want, and you turn until your heading is taking you there. The GPS will also give you altitude and groundspeed to within reasonable tolerances, even with a degraded signal.

This is a very plausible type of attack.

[jaime1959]

I'm skeptical they would have the technological know-how to build such things. Sounds like more scare tactics to me. Let's see the evidence.