US military predator drone virus may do what Taliban couldn’t

Taliban couldn’t stop drones from firing at their hideouts in Pakistan. Now US military predator drone virus may do what Taliban couldn’t as it my affect the whole system.

The mighty US army that deploys predators over a large swathe of areas in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia is facing a problem that might be the making of one of its own sister concerns. Its drones are facing the virus that experts say may be sending info to a third party that is not known to the ones who are regulating these deadly aircrafts.

Laden with lethal missiles and other deadly arms, the predators have killed thousands of people in Pakistan’s restive Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). There have been talks of expanding the operation in other areas of Pakistani including its business capital Karachi where reports suggest a large number of Taliban leaders have been given safe houses either by Pakistani agencies or their supporters that live there in millions.

A report while detailing the predators says, “RQ-1 Predator is a long-endurance, medium-altitude unmanned aircraft system for surveillance and reconnaissance missions. Surveillance imagery from synthetic aperture radar, video cameras and a forward-looking infrared (FLIR) can be distributed in real-time both to the front line soldier and to the operational commander, or worldwide in real-time via satellite communication links. MQ-1, armed with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, is the multi-role version which is used for armed reconnaissance and interdiction.”

Now there are reports that a computer virus has hit the US Nevada control station that remotely pilot US military drone aircraft on missions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and even Libya. Reports suggest that the virus that cannot be deleted from the system has infected the cockpits of American Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke.

Wired Magazine while giving the first details about the virus mentions a source as saying, “We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back…We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know.” (With IANS inputs)

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Posted by admin on October 9, 2011. Filed under world. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry