While UAVs have the politically palatable aspect of not endangering a pilot, they are not the panacea that some seem to have come to believe they are.  They break, they crash, and sometimes they even have to be shot down by the good guys.

Now the Wall Street Journal reports that UAV video feeds that provide intel to American forces are also available to the targets of those feeds.  US forces reportedly captured laptops with hours of supposedly classified UAV video.

In an era in which people are derided for not securing their passwords or loading anti-virus software on their computer, it seems unconscionable that the US military didn’t take the “simple” step of encrypting the feeds.  This has led to some interesting comments, including “are we really that stupid?” as well as speculation that the military is intentionally revealing this now as an information campaign against its adversaries.

If this really is a flaw in a military combat system, it is not unforeseeable.  The Predator, and its big brother the Reaper, were essentially acquired “off the shelf” from a commercial vendor.  The Predator’s capabilities were considered so valuable that it was rapidly pushed into combat.  It is possible–and even likely–that this security flaw was a known issue that was judged an acceptable risk.  It is not uncommon for encrypted data to require more bandwidth, and result in slower speeds, than unsecure communications.  As others have noted, a “fix” would likely require modifications at the point of transmission–that is, every single UAV would have to be opened up and upgraded, at a cost of time, money, and intel.

This situation does reveal a weakness of UAVs, though.  They must be operated with streaming video.  On the other hand, a pilot in a fighter can turn his video off and simply look out the window.  No adversary yet has managed to intercept a pilot’s ocular transmissions to his brain.  Maybe there’s hope for the fighter pilot yet.