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Iranian High Schoolers Will Learn to Hack Foreign Drones

The change comes nearly two years after the most high-profile Iranian drone incident to date.
The RQ-170 drone allegedly captured in 2011, as shown on Iranian TV. Via Wikipedia

Like the rest of daily life, school curricula aren't immune from the specter of war. In the 50s, American schoolchildren learned duck-and-cover drills as a last defense against a Soviet nuclear attack. But in 2013, as the world turns to drones, so have schools: an Iranian general announced plans to teach high school students how to defend against and attack drones.

"This year, we will witness changes in the contents, teachers and teaching hours of the defensive preparedness lesson," said Brigadier General Ali Fazli, a lieutenant commander of Iran's Basij volunteer forces, according to FNA, an Iranian state news service.

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"[Hunting] of spy drones … is an example of this change of content," he said Saturday.

It's not clear exactly what the curricula will consist of, but it's expected to be taught by the country's Revolutionary Guard. Initial reports suggest that drone countermeasures will focus on hacking flying drones, rather than teaching high school kids how to shoot them down, as part of two- and three-hour weekly classes for juniors and seniors, respectively.

The change comes nearly two years after the most high-profile Iranian drone incident to date. In December 2011, the Iranian government announced it had its hands on an American RQ-170 UAV, a large, advanced spy drone manufactured by Lockheed Martin. Iran claimed its cyberwar unit had hacked the drone and landed it safely in northeastern Iran, while the US says it crashed after forces in Afghanistan lost control of the vehicle.

Iran says it has sophisticated electronic systems for tracking and hijacking drones, neither of which is easy to do. To back those claims up, the country has announced the capture of various US drones since the 2011 incident, notably in December 2012 and in February of this year.

The bigger facet of this story is that it's yet another front of cyberwar that's opening up. As we've seen with all of the privacy revelations this year, the US has some of the most sophisticated electronic capabilities in the world, and it's not a leap to expect that carries over to cyberwar efforts. But will we see hacking taught in our high schools? Not likely.

@derektmead