Iranian military engineers were able to hack into the U.S. surveillance drone which was downed and captured by Iran last week. Preferring to remain anonymous, an Iranian engineer told the Christian Science Monitor that they were able to scramble the communications technology in the aircraft and manipulate its GPS signals, making it “land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center, said the engineer.

“The GPS navigation is the weakest point,” he said “By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain.” The techniques were developed by reverse-engineering a number of less sophisticated American drones captured or shot down by Iran in recent years. This indicates Iran could reverse-engineer this latest, much more sophisticated drone to great benefit.

Read the whole report at the Christian Science Monitor.