RQ-170 Sentinel. © TruthDowser / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0

Iran’s story about the electronic ambush of America’s sophisticated drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, is that their experts used their technology savvy to trick the drone into landing where the drone thought was its actual base in Afghanistan but instead they made it land in Iran. They used reverse engineering techniques that they had developed after exploring less sophisticated American drones captured or shot down in recent years. They were able to figure how to exploit a navigational weakness in the drone’s system. "The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian engineer told the newspaper.

Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off the communications link by jamming on the communications. The engineer said that they forced the drone into autopilot. That state is where “the bird loses its brain." The Iranians reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates and they used precise latitudinal and longitudinal data to force the drone to land on its own. In doing so the Iranian team did not have to bother about cracking remote control signals and communications from a control center in the U.S., and the RQ170 suffered only minimal damage, according to the report.

Adding strength and credibility to that story were military experts saying that even a combat-grade GPS system is vulnerable to manipulation. According to a GPS expert at the University of New Brunswick in Canada, RichardLangley, it’s theoretically possible to take control of a drone by jamming.