Posts Tagged ‘Terrorism’
UAV or UFO? Reporting of UAV sightings as terrorism pre-indicator
Posted by Dustin Burke in Technology, Terrorism on November 25th, 2009
How to discern UAV sightings amidst UFO reports?
I started thinking out loud on Twitter today about the potential use of UAVs by terrorists within the US. Use by Hezbollah dates back at least to 2004. I began wondering how long before a suspicious UAV sighting over New York City made the news and caused at least a moderate wave of panic. How would the Intelligence Community (IC) respond to the event? Would the IC have the ability to look back at similar UAV sightings in the past and possibly discern a pattern to understand likely targeting by a terrorist group? My short investigation into this issue seems to indicate this would not be possible.
Looking further into how UAV sightings are reported, I discovered there is no credible source specific to UAV sightings. It occurred to me that UAVs are likely either reported to local law enforcement or as UFO sightings. Unless the police think it suspicious enough to warrant tipping off the FBI and the FBI thinking it warrants DHS involvement (based on this DHS Information Bulletin on Remotely Piloted Vehicle Threats), the only way the incident would see the light of day is if the media picked up on it. This is concerning as there’s the possibility for multiple UAV surveillance/reconnaissance flights over a period of time by a terrorist cell in the US to “fly under the radar” so to speak and the pattern would not emerge to uncover the plot (unless through other means).
I found a few articles on the topic of “UAV or UFO” discussing the issue of UAV sightings being reported as UFOs - space.com article from 2003 “UFOs vs UAVs: How to Tell Friend from Faux” explains that the increase in UAV projects is making it more difficult to separate UAV sightings from supposed UFO sightings. The article mentions a National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) hotline was setup for reporting sightings, but the institute has since shuttered operations in 2004. A WikiHow article explains “How to Report a UFO Sighting“, but makes no mention of UAVs. There are a few websites where UFO sightings can be reported, the National UFO Reporting Center and Mutual UFO Network seem to be the most complete and (dare I say) credible sources. These sites encourage users to submit a report with detailed characteristics about the incident, including the shape of the craft (e.g., blimp, boomerang, disc, triangle, etc.) and behavioral characteristics (e.g, emitted beams of light, left a trail, had lights, etc.) and further encourages the user to upload a photo. Unfortunately, these sites make no mention of UAVs and their classification schemes are not amenable to capturing UAV characteristics sufficient to classify a UAV sighting. Just for fun, here’s a “true believer” perspective on “Are UFO’s Nothing but the next generation of UAV?” (I’m sure 95% of comments were by X-Files fans).
This NASA/Georgia Tech UAV Database provides the specifications of many UAVs, but doesn’t include photos which could be used for identification purposes.
Should a National UAV reporting database be setup to track (and possibly regulate?) UAV activities? What rules and regulations are currently enforced for UAV systems in urban areas in the US? Do you think the threat of UAV use by domestic terrorists in the US either for offensive weapon purposes or for surveillance/reconnaissance poses a real threat to our homeland security and requires closer scrutiny? I’d appreciate your perspective, sound off below.
Next, I’ll take a closer look at FAA policies regarding UAVs.
UAV: a tool for Terrorists?
Posted by Dustin Burke in Technology, Terrorism on November 25th, 2009
Used without permission from Tim Trueman's Flickr photostream, who is in no way associated with the content of this article
The terrorist threat from the use of UAV technology isn’t anything new. Hezbollah has been using UAVs against Israel since 2004. This 2008 article on UAVs and terrorism states that “According to globalsecurity.org Iran has a supplied a number of UAV’s capable of carrying surveillance equipment as well as explosives, to Hezbollah in recent years.” A number of reports discuss the capability of and utility of UAV technology to terrorists including for aerial surveillance and reconnaissance or for targeted attacks - Institute for Defense Analysis 2005 report on “Terrorist Use of Improvised or Commercially Available Precision-Guided UAVs at Stand-Off Ranges: An Approach for Formulating Mitigation Considerations“, ArmedForces 2008 article “Military Experts Highlight Terrorist UAV Fears“, 2005 MIPT report on “Threat of Terrorism using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Technical Aspects“, 2008 RAND Monograph on “Evaluating Novel Threats to the Homeland“.
This recent DIY Drones blog post on “Do Terrorists Want UAS, too?” discusses an AUVSI article that asks how likely it is that terrorists will use UAVs. The reasoning goes that the low cost and wide availability of parts and know-how (DIY Drones is an open community boasting over 6300 members from all over the world) makes UAVs attractive to terrorists for their nefarious purposes. The major points of contention are over how terrorists would likely utilize this technology, either as a surveillance and reconnaissance platform for planning or with an explosive (or otherwise deadly, such as chemical or biological) payload as an offensive weapon. The plausibility seems undeniable.
Is the US Intelligence Community equipped to deal with this threat? This DHS Information Bulletin from July 2004 on “Remotely Piloted Vehicle Threat” (marked as FOUO classification, disclosed by NEFA Foundation) states that “Although RCAs (Remotely Controlled Aircraft) have not been used by terrorists to date, because of their novel capabilities it is prudent to consider the possibility from the point of view of potential consequences, use scenarios, and indicators of such use.”, further noting that “Although protective measures against RPV (Remotely Piloted Vehicles) attacks are not well developed, awareness of the threat is an important first step in this development.” The report suggests several unclassified level protection measures, mostly through BOLO (”Be on the Lookout”) awareness at FBI, hobby shop owners and autopilot suppliers to report suspicious purchases, and local law enforcement to report suspicious individuals taking GPS measurements. A secret-level classified annex is mentioned, and one can only hope it involves more vigilant intelligence collection and pre-indicators that flag suspicious individuals with DIY Drone kits for more in depth investigation into their intent and ties to terrorist groups (with the preservation of the privacy of DIY Drone hobbyists).
It seems more likely that a terrorist group operating in the US will be discovered through “guilt by association” types of analysis (following the flow of terrorist financing, for instance) or will raise suspicion in the process of making home-made explosives (HME) - either through the purchase of certain monitored materials, or otherwise, rather than being discovered as tinkering with UAV drones.
In my next article, I’ll discuss “UAV or UFO?”, the lack of adequate UAV sighting databases and why this should be of concern to the Intelligence Community.