Satellite-controlled machine gun

[sTeamTraen]

Does anyone else think that all this sounds a bit unlikely?

A satellite-controlled machine gun was used in last week's assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was killed in a gun and car bomb attack on the outskirts of Tehran on Nov. 27, was driving on a highway east of the capital when the weapon "zoomed in" on him "using artificial intelligence", Mehr said on Sunday, quoting Commodore Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
...
Fadavi said on Sunday that the gun fired a total of 13 shots at Fakhrizadeh and managed to target him with such accuracy that his wife, sitting just inches away from him in the same vehicle, escaped injury.

(Emphasis added in two places)

[dyqik]

Sounds pretty trivial to set up, tbh. The only difficultly is getting away with putting it in the right place.

We had a satellite controlled telescope on top of a 5800m high volcano in Chile in 2000. A machine gun is just a different kind of machine. Number plate and vehicle tracking is pretty standard computer vision.

Maybe more chance than design with not hitting his wife though.

[sTeamTraen]

But machine guns are not very accurate; the kind of bandwidth you have to a satellite is not very good for artificial intelligence; and the gun was apparently a pickup truck with a driver. Is it not a more parsimonious explanation that the gun was operated by a human and the Iranians are rather embarrassed that it was allowed to get so close to the victim? How would you even get evidence that a satellite and "artificial intelligence" were involved?

[dyqik]

But machine guns are not very accurate; the kind of bandwidth you have to a satellite is not very good for artificial intelligence; and the gun was apparently a pickup truck with a driver. Is it not a more parsimonious explanation that the gun was operated by a human and the Iranians are rather embarrassed that it was allowed to get so close to the victim?

You don't need bandwidth for the "AI". You put it in the package with the gun - there's nothing required that isn't in a Tesla already.

[Bird on a Fire]

Have they ruled out RF pulses from an energy weapon?

Asking for an amigo.

[Woodchopper]

I doubt it with satellite control.

An assassination of someone in a moving vehicle is very time sensitive. A few seconds delay and they’ve missed the vehicle.

The assassins would need a camera for targeting on the ground, images sent via a satellite video link to a controller, the controller has to verify the target, and then a signal is sent to the machinegun. All of that involves a time lag which would make it very hard to hit a moving car with a stationary gun.

The above is possible with drones because flying over the target allows a lot more time.

[Woodchopper]

An AI controlled gun might be more feasible. It’s possible for it to recognize a particular car (eg number plate, colour, dimensions etc). It could be activated and sent instructions by satellite.

But why bother? I can’t see that setting up a robot assassin would be easier than just sending a human to pull the trigger.

Anyway if it had been a robot they’d have found and publicized bits of it by now.

[Woodchopper]

I doubt it with satellite control.

An assassination of someone in a moving vehicle is very time sensitive. A few seconds delay and they’ve missed the vehicle.

The assassins would need a camera for targeting on the ground, images sent via a satellite video link to a controller, the controller has to verify the target, and then a signal is sent to the machinegun. All of that involves a time lag which would make it very hard to hit a moving car with a stationary gun.

The above is possible with drones because flying over the target allows a lot more time.

Probably less than a few seconds delay. If we assume that the car is travelling at 50 kmh (which isn't very fast) then that's 13.9 meters per second. Which means that at that vehicle speed the signal to fire the machinegun needs to be within a fraction of a second (not just to hit the car, but to hit a specific passenger).

[jimbob]

But machine guns are not very accurate; the kind of bandwidth you have to a satellite is not very good for artificial intelligence; and the gun was apparently a pickup truck with a driver. Is it not a more parsimonious explanation that the gun was operated by a human and the Iranians are rather embarrassed that it was allowed to get so close to the victim? How would you even get evidence that a satellite and "artificial intelligence" were involved?

Exactly. If you have a human involved, having an AI as well just makes it less likely to succeed and probably gives the Iranian regime some high tech system to investigate. Whereas a gun is far easier to get rid of

[Woodchopper]

How would you even get evidence that a satellite and "artificial intelligence" were involved?

If a satellite datalink and AI were used then there would be physical evidence at the scene of the assassination. Even with some kind of self destruct mechanism it would be very hard to reduce the hardware to dust. But if they actually had that evidence I wonder why photographs haven't been published.

I agree that this looks like an attempt to deflect attention from a severe intelligence failure. It looks like an Israeli team managed to get into Iran,
assassinate a scientist who must have been under some kind of protection, and then get out again without being caught. Must be very embarrassing.

[TimW]

There may not have been a human at the scene at all. The vehicle was parked, could have been there for some time.

One of the parts of the changing story that has remained consistent has been that the vehicle exploded, so the remaining physical evidence may not be very impressive.

[Woodchopper]

There may not have been a human at the scene at all. The vehicle was parked, could have been there for some time.

Remote activation by a human located within sight of the target wouldn't be unusual.

[Woodchopper]

One of the parts of the changing story that has remained consistent has been that the vehicle exploded, so the remaining physical evidence may not be very impressive.

Not impressive, but still something they could use to back up their story.

[Grumble]

There may not have been a human at the scene at all. The vehicle was parked, could have been there for some time.

Remote activation by a human located within sight of the target wouldn't be unusual.

Probably a human who can train a laser on the target for the gun to aim at.

[bob sterman]

Could "satellite-controlled" just mean some bloke watching a GPS map to see when they are close to the target (e.g. if they had managed to GPS track the phone of someone in the car)?

E.g. in the same way that a parent's toaster might be "satellite-controlled" if they pop a slice of bread in to toast when the Google Family Link map on their Android phone shows that their kid is about to arrive home from school?

[Woodchopper]

Could "satellite-controlled" just mean some bloke watching a GPS map to see when they are close to the target (e.g. if they had managed to GPS track the phone of someone in the car)?

E.g. in the same way that a parent's toaster might be "satellite-controlled" if they pop a slice of bread in to toast when the Google Family Link map on their Android phone shows that their kid is about to arrive home from school?

As mentioned above, its probably too time sensitive for that. Parent doesn't care if there is a delay of a few seconds before the toaster starts, but that would be a problem in an assassination.

[Martin Y]

I could imagine the feasibility of an autonomous system which recognised a number plate on a passing car, picked out the face of its driver and trained a weapon on them. I would probably also add a human, possibly watching a satellite video link, who could choose whether or not to release the safety catch.

[Woodchopper]

I could imagine the feasibility of an autonomous system which recognised a number plate on a passing car, picked out the face of its driver and trained a weapon on them. I would probably also add a human, possibly watching a satellite video link, who could choose whether or not to release the safety catch.

Yes, I think that's feasible.

But still, I think that a human team is more likely. If you've got to get people into Iran to set up the autonomous system, then why not get them to do the rest.

[dyqik]

But why bother? I can’t see that setting up a robot assassin would be easier than just sending a human to pull the trigger.

It's a terror attack, designed to intimidate people who might want to work for the Iranian regime. Assassinations of prominent scientists who cooperate with regimes are designed to stop other scientists cooperating.

That said, it's a pretty poor nuclear program that depends on one guy to work. Basic good practice in any engineering enterprise is to minimize your "hit by bus" factor, so that the loss of one person doesn't disrupt the enterprise.

[TimW]

But still, I think that a human team is more likely. If you've got to get people into Iran to set up the autonomous system, then why not get them to do the rest.

Because you'd want to get them out. You can mount the autonomous system on a big car bomb and destroy lots of the evidence. I don't think you could guarantee getting a human team back intact - Fakhrizadeh was in a 3-car convoy of security, I expect some of them were ready to retaliate if they could find a target.

That doesn't necessarily mean there weren't agents in the vicinity, just maybe not at the immediate site of the attack.

[OneOffDave]

It's not unusual for IEDs and similar devices to have additional charges designed to destroy the timing and trigger elements to reduce the forensic value of what's left. Was standard practice for the IRA on their vehicle mounted mortar devices like the one used on the attack on Downing Street in February 1991

The hitting one person in the car and not hitting anyone else in it is quite impressive given the relative unpredictability of the path of rounds once they've hit any parts of the target vehicle. A careful choice of round both in terms of calibre and velocity as well as material can alter this, but there's always the limitation of the inherent accuracy of the weapon even in a fixed mount

[monkey]

I wouldn't be surprised if the Iranians found some satellite communications stuff. It's likely that this was Israel (although they deny it), and I imagine sending a video feed to the officer in charge in Tel Aviv from Tehran is somewhat difficult using the usual methods. And like others, I also wouldn't be surprised to find out that the Iranians are lying about how sophisticated the attack was. Put these together and a satellite communications doodad left behind after the attack turns into satellite controlled.

[Grumble]

I wouldn't be surprised if the Iranians found some satellite communications stuff. It's likely that this was Israel (although they deny it), and I imagine sending a video feed to the officer in charge in Tel Aviv from Tehran is somewhat difficult using the usual methods. And like others, I also wouldn't be surprised to find out that the Iranians are lying about how sophisticated the attack was. Put these together and a satellite communications doodad left behind after the attack turns into satellite controlled.

Yes, a satellite link so top brass can say “go” is definitely plausible.

[sTeamTraen]

There may not have been a human at the scene at all. The vehicle was parked, could have been there for some time.

One of the parts of the changing story that has remained consistent has been that the vehicle exploded, so the remaining physical evidence may not be very impressive.

From the story:

Various accounts of his death have emerged since the incident. While early news reports said he was caught in a gunfight between his bodyguards, others said that he was fired at by a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a pick-up truck operated by someone who later fled the country.

That seems to suggest (although it would be nice to have a lot more detail about the various imagine scenarios, perhaps involving stop-motion animation with Playmobil figures) that the machine gun was remote controlled but the truck wasn't. This seems even more bizarre. What is the need for someone to hang around in the cab of the truck while the machine gun fires itself?

I wouldn't be surprised if the Iranians found some satellite communications stuff. It's likely that this was Israel (although they deny it), and I imagine sending a video feed to the officer in charge in Tel Aviv from Tehran is somewhat difficult using the usual methods. And like others, I also wouldn't be surprised to find out that the Iranians are lying about how sophisticated the attack was. Put these together and a satellite communications doodad left behind after the attack turns into satellite controlled.

Yes, a satellite link so top brass can say “go” is definitely plausible.

A simple satellite phone would do. They aren't very big. "I can see his car. Shall I fire?" "Yes".

But doubtless the Iranians are just waiting for the right moment to show us the evidence. Even an exploding truck would leave a lot of large pieces.

[Grumble]

From the story:
Various accounts of his death have emerged since the incident. While early news reports said he was caught in a gunfight between his bodyguards, others said that he was fired at by a remote-controlled machine gun, mounted on a pick-up truck, operated by someone who later fled the country.
That seems to suggest (although it would be nice to have a lot more detail about the various imagine scenarios, perhaps involving stop-motion animation with Playmobil figures) that the machine gun was remote controlled but the truck wasn't. This seems even more bizarre. What is the need for someone to hang around in the cab of the truck while the machine gun fires itself?

It doesn’t read that way to me. I have added a couple of commas that show how I read it.