Remote control truck with remote control gun, self destructed after attack
twitter.com
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https://www.farsnews.ir/news/13990909000920/%D8%AC%D8%B2%D8%...
Google Translate of this article matches the summary, and mentions:
"It is worth mentioning that according to the Fars correspondent, in this operation, which lasted about 3 minutes, no human factor was present at the scene of the assassination and the shootings were carried out only with automatic weapons"
Wikipedia has a very different story, citing a number of sources, which involves a dozen human attackers at the scene:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohsen_Fakhrizadeh#Ambush_atta...
They have the motive and this is just as plausible as the absurd high tech idea being floated. Both Israel and Iran benefit from increased tension before the new administration is in office...
Could the Iranian state be responsible for this? Possibly but not particularly likely, could it been an internal conflict within the IRGC or between the IRGC and the local criminal underground (yes this is a thing, the IRGC often supplements it’s income by running criminal enterprises in the region) a bit more likely but still less likely than a combined western effort to take him out.
I don’t think Israel could or well would pull this off alone, by all accounts whilst Israel does operate a very large humint network in Iran much larger than the US ever managed to set up (in fact by published accounts, Israel is the one who’ve always provided the human element in joint operations) they still heavily rely on US intelligence and operational support.
Before JCPOA was signed the “rumor” was that one of the sticks and or plan B was a pretty extensive plan to take out quite a few very high value Iranian targets of the map and that plan didn’t include buildings but rather was a direct threat to essentially take out anyone of any importance especially in the IRGC.
This seems to be the second and quite likely last at least for a while (due to the US elections result) operational use of that “backup plan”.
As far as conspiracies go or at least corruption I would put KSA pressuring Trump to do something before he leaves office in exchange for financial favors over anything else.
This is a more thorough and believable report: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8997575/Assassinati...
(However, that site is a nightmare of ads, popups and auto-playing video, only legible with uMatrix.)
2) Daily Mail article is more thorough and believable than a tweet sourced to IRGC propaganda
Both statements can be true.
It's also legible, I'd even call it pleasant, with Firefox plus NoScript. Many sites block or degrade images when JS is disabled, but not the Daily Mail.
Because a public story completely unconnected with the facts give your adversaries no information about what you've actually worked about the attack.
Why would you use that particular story may be a harder question, but a robot attacker might have a better propaganda look than something revealing, say, betrayal by agents within highly-trusted security services.
This is a very rookie mistake for a senior official who was in enough of a threat to travel around with an escort of armed guards!
I 'd be very hesitant to believe that story without independent confirmation from other sources.
P.S. Some twitter replies, on the original twitter thread [0] even questioned the validity of the source but I don't know enough about it (Fars news) to evaluate those claims. Putting this out here for the HN crowd to weigh in.
[0]: https://twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/1333080696282288128
Assassinations are hard as it is to pull off especially in a country like Iran which is essentially a police state where every westerner and worse an Iranian that can freely travel abroad is likely under close surveillance.
This operation would require you not only to bring in assets but also tech.
Even if this was somehow could rigged with items you can find at “radio shack” there is no way that this would’ve passed any risk assessment too many things can go wrong.
It’s by far easier to use local assets from one of the resistance groups still active in Iran or even hired guns from a criminal organization.
Not to mention that to pull anything like this off you already need to have an extensive network of assets in place.
There are plenty of local resources you’ll be able to use ranging from local opposition groups to hired criminals from Iran and the Caspian region heck getting some offshoot of the Syrian opposition to lend a hand after Iran helped Assad isn’t out of the realm of possibility either.
You assume this was some SEAL Team Six operation, the fact that as many as 12 people opened fire indicates it quite likely wasn’t and the assets who performed the assault itself were quite likely less trained and much more expendable.
This doesn't mitigates any risks but introduces new points of failure.
You still need to get personnel into the country, and now it needs to be technical specialists that may not be as field experienced so now you also need an additional force protection element.
You need to smuggle in or secure more sophisticated technical assets which increases the likelihood of capture/discovery.
You need a longer staging period to manufacture, assemble and test this contraption which again means you are more likely to get captured.
You need to move that thing into place, secure a location close to the action from which you can operate, ensure that no one would discover the parked vehicle as this isn't James Bond and a remote weapons station is much harder to hide in the cabin than a bomb that can be easily placed in the trunk or the side panels of the door.
You need to be sure that no jamming would be put into place (cell and radio jamming is employed especially for VIP force protection to reduce the risk of IEDs) once the action starts or prior to it, and you need to be sure that your radio transmissions won't be intercepted, and we know for a fact that Iran monitors radio transmissions in an attempt to discover cells of foreign operatives because as they've already claimed to capture operatives using this technique.
And you still have the chance of this thing failing completely or partially, which means you either need to be confident enough in being able to take that target out again which in this case is highly unlikely (I'm pretty sure half of his security detail and staff are hanging from their ankles being tortured right now to find out who may have leaked any info about his whereabouts and daily routine) or have a team on standby to finish the job (which makes your A-Team contraption redundant).
Contrast this with Stuxnet.
Stuxnet can be developed, tested and fully validated anywhere in the world by simply building a similar environment.
While it can fail the failure poses no risk to personnel or to your forces, in fact the sooner it fails the more likely it could look like just another virus, Remember Iran didn't even find it out Russian, Finnish, and American cyber-security companies found it by investigating secondary infections.
It can be relatively easily inserted by employing social engineering, having a single asset on site or by the more likely scenario compromising one of the foreign 3rd parties that were providing some services to the Iranian nuclear program (e.g. that Ukrainian engineering consulting firm that is suspected to be the source of at least some of the infections) .
The malware itself wasn't nearly as complicated as you think, it was rather simple just nearly perfectly executed with very strong indication of the kind of operational methodologies western intelligence agencies employ.
US intelligence agencies love extremely complicated scenarios, plausible deniability is a feature not a bug.
One example.... STUXNET
The amount of time, skill and manpower it took to pull that off.
It was low to no risk, and potentially high reward sabotage op that could essentially be entirely developed and run without risking any assets or even sources. The technical complexity of the malware is irrelevant (and even that wasn't that complex, it was just flawless) were talking about the complexity of the op itself.
This op took no less skill and manpower, heck it likely took quite a bit more.
https://mobile.twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/133308069628228...
I'm only surprised it's not done more...
Operations like this take years to plan and you often get only one shot.
This also means that this story is quite likely fiction.
It takes very large amounts of money, skill and time to develop and run an intelligence network capable of pulling something like this off.
As counter intuitive as it seems these organizations are extremely risk averse because to them risks means years of work down the drain, opportunities lost and often for good and quite likely dead assets and or agents.
A $200 or even a $2000 drone doesn’t minimizes these risks it introduces additional ones.
Killing someone in a hail of bullets is easy and reliable, using a toy with a small explosive attached to it isn’t.
Have backup gunman to mop up if needed, likely same pointing illuminator at target.
Not what happened but easy enough.
Might as well call a B-52 to carpet bomb the place.
You aren’t getting an airship and a few dozens of drones into a country like Iran.
Disclaimer: all hypotheticals, I don't advocate violence, I would never do this even for hypothetical purposes
Small drones can’t cary a lot of payload getting your hands on high explosives that would actually do enough damage isn’t easy, rigging this up in a safe manner isn’t as easy as you think either.
Like I’m not saying you should try to do this to prove a point but you have much higher chances of blowing yourself up or even more likely be arrested prior than you think.
Although if a grenade was used rather than a firearm, it could be worryingly effective.
Then again, RC aircraft have been around for many decades, and haven't become the terrorist or criminal's tool of choice. Even flying with a first-person view isn't particularly new, here's a video about a hobbyist doing it in the 80s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5_gPhT61ek
It's not trivial at all. It's trivial-ish if you're operating over a custom data link from a nearby location.
The more remote the operator, the bigger the lag and the bigger the threat of signal loss.
And you can't rely on the Internet because of lag and potential packet loss or congestion.
It's hard enough to get everyone on the same screen in a Zoom meeting. Driving a car remotely and shooting at people over a patchy mobile data link is a whole other level of complexity.
[0: btw, I'm not not implying a thermal scope was used here, but simply drawing a parallel for comparison with off the shelf commonly used hunting equipment. If 320x240 is enough to kill a coyote at night at 100 yards, it's plenty to target a human. Not to mention full-auto fire will cause recoil and whack your aim, so you're not looking to repeat a 5-shot group within dime either, just shoot in the rough vicinity and spray the target with projectiles.]
Also, the US army (not implying US involvement here) is piloting drone from the other side of the planet, so getting a signal out of a country is not very difficult.
Very comparable to what happened with drones: Used to be that only very sophisticated state actors could field such weapons.
But with the rise of consumer-grade drones we started to see DIY implementations where consumer-grade drones were repurposed to drop explosive packages [0].
It's even become a thing for boats, back in 2018 three remote-controlled boats attacked a Saudi-flagged oil tanker in the Red Sea [1], the most recent attack like that just happened this year in July [2].
[0] https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/01/drones-isis/13...
[1] https://www.marineinsight.com/shipping-news/swarm-three-remo...
[2] https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-yemen-security-saudi-boats...
Here's Mythbusters version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06t_KP7y8Ao
But how did it self-destruct then?
I don’t believe this story really it seems like more of a saving face coverup than anything else.
A car bomb/ied to stop the car and a few automatic weapons work just fine.
If you use local assets that may not even know the actual target or don’t care also gives you sufficient plausible deniability.
Regardless. That's all true. Also with a drone you need one that's big enough to carry at least several pounds of explosive...to handle an armored vehicle and the likelihood the detonation would be not directly next to it. You'd need FPV or something so you can guide the drone in close. Also vehicles could be moving at a reasonable place, so the drone would need to be fast enough to keep up/catch up.
Could it be done? Totally. Are there easier/cheaper ways? Totally.
Heck an RC Car ala Call Of Duty games would be more realistic.
Too many things can go wrong with a finicky toy, you still need to be in line of sight most of the time and at that point two guys with AKs or an RPG are going to be a safer bet.
If I had to kill someone in a hostile country I rather have to be the one that empties a mag into their car than the one controlling an RC car trying to get under their vehicle in traffic hoping the battery won’t die, the remote won’t crap out and that no small pothole or pebble on the road will send my toy car flying ala rocket league.
Small drones can't carry a large payload, an explosion is extremely hard to actually aim. Shaped charges work because they either have enough kinetic energy from inertia to keep the explosion directed to the target or they fused with the target before exploding usually by also hitting it really fast.
This is what 400g of C4 looks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajmIEhK4LKc and this is under good conditions where the forces of the blast are contained because they put them in a hole in the ground.
If you detonate a few 100 grams of military grade explosive mid air you pretty much need to be within slapping distance of someone to guarantee a kill from the concussive blast.
A hellfire missile has about 10 Kg of high explosive in its warhead and you still get people walking off from a direct vehicle hit mainly because if the missile breaks through the roof and through the floor of the car before exploding it's usually sufficient to prevent the occupants from being turned into a brussels pate, and here were talking about a few millimeters of sheet metal protecting you against 10 Kg (if you wonder why - the path of least resistance works on explosions too, and rather well this is exactly why shape chargers work and why they don't need to be made out of adamantium or even anything particularly though in fact what essentially is paper mache is often used to make the lenses that focus the explosion in a shaped charge).
With the payload these drones can carry a fragmentation warhead would do absolutely squat against a vehicle it might be able to devastate a crowd where these can essentially detonate on contact but even unarmored vehicles won't be nearly as damaged as you think they would.
Life is not a video game.
Crash into the target, then go boom
Yes this strategy is much more complex but I would argue it has more precision and certainty around its efficacy.
With a machine gun you have to drive close and then aim extremely accurately.
It sounds implausible - at least not without AI superpowers in the targeting system.
At the very least you'd expect lag to be a significant problem.
A surgically precise assassination is its own message: "We kill exactly who we mean to and you cannot stop us."
Pretty scary stuff.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/28/world/middleeast/iran-ass...
Tho if the source is to be trusted that's not how it happened: It exploded 150 m away in the same position it fired from.
So the explosion probably only served to destroy any evidence of the implementation for the remote control.
Also interesting: Earlier reports about this attack did mention suicide/car bomb being part of the attack, but allegedly only as a distraction.
Anyway, it sounds like the remote-control-truck story is a pure fabrication.
[0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Iranian_nucle...
https://mobile.twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/133308069628228...
My understanding derives chiefly from a U.S. government-commissioned study on the effects of an EMP weapon or natural disaster on things like cars, trucks, airplanes and computers. The results were made public, and are overall fairly reassuring:
In this case: Individual controllers needed to control a power plant or factory, as well as "individual cars on a highway" (once enough break down, the highway is blocked).