Sharing drone feeds with the enemy

Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mullen says no harm was done by letting the enemy view video feeds from U.S. surveillance drones.

But a contractor I know explains some of the dangers of this situation might not immediately be apparent. In the note below, TTP, btw, is “tactics, techniques and procedures” — that is, how the military does what it does. SIPR is “secure internet protocol router,” if I recall correctly. And if you don’t know what UAV is, you’re probably in the wrong blog, looking for Megan Fox.  

When I was working on a multi-platform video dissemination technology, we raised the possibility of anyone being able to get feeds back in 2007. My argument was that because the downlink is not encrypted anyhow, why are we wasting valuable SIPR bandwidth to disseminate video feeds for tactical level UAVs? Truthfully though, this is bad. The TTPs for using UAVs can lead to early warning for the enemy, and also provide target information to the enemy … often the UAV will circle where the staging area for an op is at, and then move to recon the site and then back to a staging area. The videos also maintain oversight on troops in contact, downed helos, etc. UAVs also fly at certain times to search for IED activities … but yeah, it isn’t the local insurgents that make me wary … it is the Iranian and other intel agencies that are getting the info. Commanders have come to rely a great deal on the UAV capabilities. I am truly surprised this is just now coming out in the news.

Meanwhile, someone has hacked into South Korea’s war plans. My guess is the Chinese, who I think are far more active in this area than people suspect. Why are they doing it? Because they can. Kind of like taking satellite photos of other peoples’ military bases. 

Deb Smith/U.S. Air Force/Getty Images