Those unencrypted drones? Whoops, we meant pretty much the entire US military air fleet.

Not more than 8-10 hours ago we highlighted a developing story concerning the US Military’s use of unencrypted feeds on unmanned drones. Wouldn’t you know it, the situation is a bit hairier and scarier than that. Unfortunately for us, the US has built the satellite technology used in the current crop of unencrypted drones to all corners of the militaries various aircraft. Oh god. And now a quote from Wired after conversation between them and US Military officials:

Since then, nearly every airplane in the American fleet – from F-16 and F/A-18 fighters to A-10 attack planes to Harrier jump jets to B-1B bombers has been outfitted with equipment that lets them transmit to ROVERs. Thousands of ROVER terminals have been distributed to troops in Afghanistan and Iraq…

Hmm, big oversight don’t you think? The fact that our entire fleet of aircraft is now easily circumvented with a satellite dish and some software costing us 1/2 an Xbox 360 game is slightly unsettling. Now I’m curious how they plan on fixing this problem. Will they have to rebuild nearly every aircraft and tool using the flawed technology or is it as simple as a software/protocol change? Let’s hope for the former shall we…

Wired