Who Is Behind Mystery Spy Devices Dropped Over Syria?
December 26th, 2011Via: intelnews.org:
On December 14, residents of a small town in northern Syria reported seeing unidentified aircraft circling overhead, and dropping several small items attached to mini-parachutes. Two days ago, one local resident, Adnan Mustafa, posted on Facebook several photographs of some of these items, which were found scattered around the area. The gadgets, pictured here, look suspiciously like surreptitious listening devices. Residents say the question is: who dropped them, and why?
The devices were found in the hills around Afrin, a predominantly ethnic-Kurdish town 20 miles south of the Syrian-Turkish border. Local townsfolk said the flight patterns of the planes observed on December 14 resembled those of previous sightings of Turkish aircraft, which routinely invade Syrian airspace before returning to the Turkish air base in Incirlik, about 100 miles north of Afrin.
Syrian newspaper Al-Hakikah (The Truth), which supports the opposition Syrian National Council, said the suspected spy gadgets weigh about 90 grams each and bear “Made in Germany” labels, as well as “GRAW DFM-06” inscriptions. Graw is a Nuremberg-based German company that produces radiosondes, small radio transmitters used in weather balloons, that measure various atmospheric parameters and transmit them to fixed receivers. But Al-Hakikah reports that the devices found in Afrin seem to transmit GPS coordinates, and appear to have been modified to intercept radio communications.
I don’t suppose anyone has better photos of the devices, do they? It’s kind of hard to tell what they are. The mentioned part number (GRAW DFM-06) is a FM transmitter.
The remainder of this post is educated guesses combined with speculation.
Depending on exactly which one, it could transmit GPS data. They appear to have the ability to send some other data too, but it won’t be amazingly fast. Rebroadcasting of multiple frequencies for intelligence gathering looks like it’s out of the picture.
Looking at the photos, there are two boards. One is probably the transmitter, the other may be a power supply board. It looks like they were housed in a plastic housing, similar to an add-on RJ12 phone jack. The remainder of the white is likely styrofoam, possibly spray foam shaped with a hot knife or wire.
So the question is still, what were they listening to?
The devices most likely only could listen to one frequency at a time.
The bottom left picture appears to be a battery, but it could be a capacitor. Either way, it doesn’t have a lot of battery life. I’d venture to guess that it would have between an hour to just a few days. That’s a hard way to gather intelligence, if you have to drop new listening posts a couple times a week.
Since the only identified board is made to transmit GPS data for weather balloons, I would hazard to guess that it is exactly what they were doing.
“But they were on parachutes”, you say.. Sure. Instead of tracing a balloon on the way up and back down, it’s tracking the path down. They could be tracing weather information, including prevailing winds.
This could be a civilian purpose. We all know there are an awful lot of people looking at the global climate. It could be local farmers concerned with weather trends.
… and it could be a government. Governments tend to watch unwelcome aircraft very carefully. Syria isn’t just an undefended spot on the map. They have somewhere between 500 to 1000 combat aircraft in their fleet. An incursion by potentially hostile aircraft does warrant a response. An aircraft circling in their airspace is a target.
But lets say, for the sake of argument, that the Syrian military and civilian ATC completely missed this foreign aircraft circling in their airspace.
They could be monitoring prevalent winds in the area. Dropping bombs screaming at the ground is troublesome. People hear them coming, and look up to see who’s dropping them (while they’re running away, I’m sure). Dropping bombs with parachutes doesn’t let them impact heavily, but it does let them come in quietly, and the dropping aircraft can be out of sight before the first bomb hits. It’s important to know, “If I want it to land here, where should I drop it?”
It wouldn’t necessarily be bombs though. It could be quietly laying out landmines. It could be dropping packets of leaflets saying “Dear Syrians, We’ll be invading tomorrow. Please put down your weapons and come to us with your hands up.” It could be that they’re going to drop their version of the airborne infantry in to invade …
[checks on Afrin, Syria’s demographics] The city of Afrin, population 80,000. No military significance. But it does appear to be a regional bottleneck for highway traffic. For the US, it would be similar to disrupting traffic on I-5, I-10, I-75, or I-95 in a rural area. Local traffic would be ok, but regional traffic would be impacted. So the road could be bombed, and impact civilian, commercial, and military traffic for days.
Despite loving conspiracies, my vote is for local farmers wanting to know more about prevailing weather conditions that they can’t observe from the ground. My second guess would be a project by some college students for a paper that will never get international attention.
It would really help to have clear detailed pictures of the devices, and some sort of description of the aircraft other than “we’ve seen them before”. Single or twin engine? Prop or jet? Straight or swept wings? Low, mid, or high elevators? General size? Cockpit configuration?
I noticed two helicopters flying over where I was the other day. I knew they weren’t regular civilian aircraft by the sound. I noted the prop configuration, the sound (jet versus piston), and the body configuration. I later confirmed them as unmarked UH-60 Blackhawks. I know of at least 2 organizations that use such unmarked helicopters in this airspace. All it got from me was “Hmmm, neat. I wonder where they’re going.” It’s not a conspiracy, and they’re not following me. Most likely it was the state police, in cooperation with the US DEA, who use them to find and bust marijuana farms. If I was a marijuana farmer, I might be concerned, but since I’m not, I don’t care. 🙂
If they were covert eavesdropping devices wouldn’t they be shaped like rocks and not have huge black and white barcodes on them?
A low tech version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Igloo_White ?
Acoubuoy, camouflaged parachute into the trees.
Spikebuoy went into the ground, with weed like antenna.
Acoustic or seismic they went for vehicles and voices.