Michael's Dispatches

I am not sure the Navy has F-35s flying in the Persian Gulf. The near jet is a F/A-18 but the far jet is not. It appears to be a F-35.

@DuneTribune - The far aircraft is part of the F22 fleet that is forward deployed. It's ours, it's just not carrier-based.

Joe, I think that may in fact be a F35. The airwing on the longitudinal axis appears too short to be the f22 and more closely resembles the profile of the JSF.

Wow...breathtaking DUH moment. Wish I could be a large $$ supporter.
Thanks for what you do. I always look forward to your stuff!

OTOH, what if the PAO's are clever and plant false info in the image metadata?

I think the Iranians likely already knew the carriers were there, but agreed that the PA folks should probably scrub the GPS data from photos.

Maybe the notification was purposefull

Looks like the PAO and company need a little OPSEC refresher :eek:

BTW GPS data is not always correct. I have personally seen GPS data that said I was in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico when I was actually in Tennessee 8)

;-)

This is insane!! There are more people on the Eisenhower than in the town where I live. Sometimes I think we are our own worst enemy. Mike, send this up to the Joint Chiefs will you? When my son was in AfStan there were no cameras, no phones, and no internet, period! We didn't even know where he was until he got home. Good security makes for fewer casualties, and this is war where people are being killed every day.

Unless, as a couple folks have suggested, the data are plants, ANY information is potentially an intelligence threat and should not be made available, certainly not at this level.
By the way, I am very impressed by the technological knowledge of your readers. As an old grunt, I wouldn't know anything after the F-15s (my favorite!) and the F-16s.

... using a PC, the GPS coords in the pic are shown if you download the original pic to your PC and just view the file "properties" - "details". Also shown with the coords is the camera timestamp, (11/19/2012 8:04PM) and the fact that the pic was post-processed with Adobe Photoshop, and a name associated with the Photoshop (Lt. Lindeman). This habit of people using consumer-grade tech products (Sony camera) in a security-conscious environment is how we inject computer viruses into places like Iranian nuclear processing facilities.

This is certainly a teachable moment, but Carriers aren't exactly stealthy and the Persian Gulf is not that large. Even the Iranians can figure out where a Carrier TF is...

The second aircraft is definitely an F-22 Raptor. The F-22 has twin engines (intakes on each side) with rectangular, vectoring exhaust nozzles. The F-35 is single-eingine with smaller intakes on each side & a round exhaust nozzle.

The F-35 has yet to be deployed with only one aircraft delivered to the Marines in November 2010.

This is a total non-story. It's public/published/non-classified info that Mighty Ike is deployed to the area. The fact that it's public info where the carrier WAS at some point in the past is no big deal. That photo is dated 11/19 so it's three weeks ago. What's Iran gonna do? Launch missiles at those GPS coordinates? Any country in the world with satellites knows where the Eisenhower is in real time.

Yon has become completely irrelevant which is really sad.

Conservatively, a carrier battle group can cover 480 nautical miles in one day's steaming. The picture would have to be published almost immediately to be of tactical value. Once up in the Gulf, they really can't hide. However, metadata should be scrubbed from all military photos in wartime regardless.

OOPS!! Maybe the "opsec 101" class was full. Perhaps a remedial course of "punch in the gut 201" is in order.

For anyone who thinks this is not a problem, you are simply naive...the photos are taken and create a data point...if enough photos are taken and uploaded a trend or trackable pattern may be used by the iranians providing a potential tactical advantage, though be it small...this is a big deal. He who has the most information controls the field of battle even if from a weaker position.

Others have made the point that Ike, and an F/A 18 are moving targets with non trivial radar signatures. An F-22 also moves but the radar sig is not so big.

Ike's kinda big, there are very few secrets about her location in real time.

SO: No harm, no foul, but a *seriously* teachable moment thanks to Michael.

Good job yet again MY!

to quote my retired Navy husband : "that's what happens when you have those stupid smartphones.....
Good thing he's no longer deployed....

More proof that military intelligence is an oxymoron.

It does seem petty...but a very good point. Doubt these images were uploaded real time- making the whereabouts of Ike a mute point (yeah she was there...where is she?) Loose Canon's Sink Ships?

Almost as crazy as bringing in unarmed Medevacs with red crosses crosses on them.

This administration is saying and doing a lot more these days to minimize our national security and put our people in harms way with no consequences.

I could swear the IKE has been deactivated, right? (01 December)

So, what's wrong if the Navy wants to post a photo, even with geo-tagged data attached, about a ship's track in international waters, MONTHS after the fact?

Everybody calm, please.

It obviously isn't devestating information that was leaked when the location information of these pictures got out. It definately isn't good either! I think the bigger point is, that if this is happening on one of the most technilogically advanced ships in our fleet, in relative calm and safety of open water, what kind of information like this is getting leaked daily in the more hectic, boots on the ground areas that actually could provide tactical information? Such as Harrier parking on an airfield?

Why do you assume that Uncle Sam doesn't want Iran to know the location of this rather powerful formation?

What's more interesting than the lightning or where the carrier group "was", is the arc of electricity on the deck of the carrier between what appears to be an F/A-18 and some crewmen.

That is an impressive lightning shot though. Especially if it was taken from a smartphone, which to my knowledge don't have the shutter speed to capture lightning like that. So if it wasn't taken from a smartphone... Was the GPS info deliberately embedded into the image? Perhaps the Navy wants to let Iran know we are there. However, we've had a carrier stationed in the Persian Gulf since 1991. So I really doubt Iran isn't aware of this.

very nice work... GOD bless u

There are simple programs which should be used, that completely strip out all EXIF and other data from pictures. They can operate on batches of pictures, say ones slated to be released? That way data can be part of the originals the military keeps, but stripped out of those released to the public.

This danger is not anything new, but somebody seems to have forgotten it.

In these particular pictures the data may not be that important, but I see Facebook and Flickr pictures from all kinds of people. Many with EXIF and GPS data intact. THOUSANDS of pictures.

One picture may not be a big deal, but thousands of pictures are. With GPS data and enough identical items in pictures from various sources, you can already build a panorama type view of a base, inside a building, whatever you'd like.

Scary? See PhotoSynth and Imaage Composite Editor(ICE) from Microsoft, both freely available and already being used.

PhotoSynth: http://photosynth.net

Microsoft ICE: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/ice/

Maybe take a stroll around the Kandahar Boardwalk? Not hard to do.