Friday, March 20, 2015

F-35 Fighter Jets To Get Mysterious New 'Cyberpod' Cyber-Weapon

F-35 Fighter Jets To Get Mysterious New 'Cyberpod' Cyber-Weapon


F-35 © Provided by Popular Science F-35
Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is, for better or worse, the future of American military airplanes. With Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps versions each costing over $100 million, the plane is a jack-of-some-trades approach designed to replace a total of 10 older airplane models used by America and its allies. The F-35 has a lot of very different-sized shoes to fill, and it’s going to do something new: carry a cyber-attack weapon.
Like many new weapons systems, the cyberpod is cloaked in secrecy. Rear Admiral Randy Mahr, a program director on the F-35, told IHS Jane's that “industry is developing a pod that would not degrade the signature of the airplane.” Translation: The cyberpod is probably an external weapon that won't make the F-35 any less stealthy than it is now.
Cyber-attack is a broad category that encompasses everything from jamming signals to destroying laboratory equipment (i.e. centrifuges to refine weapons-grade nuclear materials) with malicious code. The common thread is that all cyber attacks target computers in some form or another.
We don't yet know what the F-35’s cyberpod will do. But in 2010 the U.S. Navy revealed its goal develop existing cyber-weapon technologies into a “Next Generation Jammer.” Made by Raytheon, the jammer fools hostile radar systems by receiving those signals, then sending back false ones directly to the source. Fast-forward five years, and it's almost certain the jammer has evolved--and that the cyberpod could do more than the jamming devices currently carried by naval aircraft. If not, what’s the cyberpoint?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

IF YOU REMEMBER THE 9 MARINES THAT WERE FOUND DEAD AND LOOKING LIKE PRUNES?? THEY WERE FRIED WHILE WALKING ON PATROL IN AFGHANISTAN..... THEY WERE FRIED BY A NEW SPACE TECH THEY (THE BAD GUYS) WERE TRYING OUT.... WE BELIEVE THIS IS THE B.S. THEY ARE GETTING READY TO USE ON US.... WAKE UP!!!

Anonymous said...

I think the Russians used something like this recently; They shut down a U.S. Aegis destroyers systems from what I remember.

Unknown said...

No. That was a false rumour spread by a propaganda website. Never happened.