They Cracked This 250 Year-Old Code, And Found a Secret Society Inside

The master wears an amulet with a blue eye in the center. Before him, a candidate kneels in the candlelit room, surrounded by microscopes and surgical implements. The year is roughly 1746. The initiation has begun.

The master places a piece of paper in front of the candidate and orders him to put on a pair of eyeglasses. 'Read,' the master commands. The candidate squints, but it's an impossible task. The page is blank.

The candidate is told not to panic; there is hope for his vision to improve. The master wipes the candidate's eyes with a cloth and orders preparation for the surgery to commence. He selects a pair of tweezers from the table. The other members in attendance raise their candles.

The master starts plucking hairs from the candidate's eyebrow. This is a ritualistic procedure; no flesh is cut. But these are 'symbolic actions out of which none are without meaning,' the master assures the candidate. The candidate places his hand on the master's amulet. Try reading again, the master says, replacing the first page with another. This page is filled with handwritten text. Congratulations, brother, the members say. Now you can see.

For more than 260 years, the contents of that page'and the details of this ritual'remained a secret. They were hidden in a coded manuscript, one of thousands produced by secret societies in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the peak of their power, these clandestine organizations, most notably the Freemasons, had hundreds of thousands of adherents, from colonial New York to imperial St. Petersburg. Dismissed today as fodder for conspiracy theorists and History Channel specials, they once served an important purpose: Their lodges were safe houses where freethinkers could explore everything from the laws of physics to the rights of man to the nature of God, all hidden from the oppressive, authoritarian eyes of church and state. But largely because they were so secretive, little is known about most of these organizations. Membership in all but the biggest died out over a century ago, and many of their encrypted texts have remained uncracked, dismissed by historians as impenetrable novelties.

It was actually an accident that brought to light the symbolic 'sight-restoring' ritual. The decoding effort started as a sort of game between two friends that eventually engulfed a team of experts in disciplines ranging from machine translation to intellectual history. Its significance goes far beyond the contents of a single cipher. Hidden within coded manuscripts like these is a secret history of how esoteric, often radical notions of science, politics, and religion spread underground. At least that's what experts believe. The only way to know for sure is to break the codes.

In this case, as it happens, the cracking began in a restaurant in Germany.

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Now the CIA Is Investigating Petraeus

Anyone who thought the multifaceted scandal that brought down CIA Director David Petraeus was winding down can think again. Now the CIA is investigating its own former leader ' while some agency veterans are whispering that they never liked him in the first place. And on top of all of that, the FBI agent who started the entire affair is distancing himself from it.

It's not even a week since Petraeus resigned from CIA after an FBI investigation discovered he had an affair with biographer Paula Broadwell. That investigation reportedly cleared Petraeus of disclosing any classified information, which would be the major national-security concern about a CIA director's affair. But the CIA confirms that its inspector general is taking its own, open-ended look into Petraeus' conduct.

'At the CIA we are constantly reviewing our performance,' spokesman Preston Golson e-mails Danger Room. 'If there are lessons to be learned from this case we'll use them to improve. But we're not getting ahead of ourselves; an investigation is exploratory and doesn't presuppose any particular outcome.'

The CIA inspector general sent word on Wednesday to the House and Senate intelligence committees that internal review was getting started. There's no deadline attached to the review, first reported by the Associated Press, and its focus is broad: determining whether, for instance, Petraeus used any CIA resources for his affair. A likely sub-category of the investigation will be making sure the FBI determined correctly that Petraeus didn't jeopardize classified information. It's unclear if the CIA's internal watchdog will interview Petraeus himself, who will visit the Hill on Friday for a closed-door hearing with those very committees about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

Meanwhile, off the record, current and ex-CIA officers are telling the press that they never liked Petraeus in the first place. A package of stories in Time portrayed CIA analysts bristling at Petraeus' martinet style. 'The agency's not a militaristic organization,' one ex-official huffs to the magazine, 'They don't welcome people barking orders without debate.' That follows on a story in The New York Times before Petraeus' downfall that CIA officials were disinclined to fall in line behind the ex-general. 'The attitude at the agency is, 'You may be the director, but I'm the Thailand analyst,'' went one memorable quote sourced to an anonymous CIA veteran.

'Military guys tend not to do well, because they treat senior people like Lt. Colonels on their staffs,' one former intelligence official tells Danger Room. 'He tried to avoid that. But the [military] bearing is the bearing.'

'There's not gonna be a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth now that he's gone,' the official adds.

Former CIA chief Michael Hayden took pains not to criticize Petraeus in any way. But in an interview with Danger Room, he made it clear that the Agency has to go beyond the drone strikes that characterized the Petraeus Epoch at Langley.

'We have been laser-focused on terrorism, OK? And some of that is very high end, very sophisticated, very nuanced. But an awful lot of that, when you step back, looks more like targeting than it does classical intelligence,' Hayden says.

Frederick Humphries, the FBI agent in Tampa who began the inquest on cyber-harassment that ultimately doomed Petraeus, is also reconsidering his action. He is reportedly saying he 'never sought to blow a whistle on the case,' the Washington Post reports. Humphries was immortalized as the 'Shirtless FBI agent' after sending a (supposedly lighthearted) shirtless photo of himself ' finally revealed here ' to his friend, Jill Kelley, who asked him to look at harassing emails she received from Jill Kelley. Ultimately, Humphries was taken off the case and alerted members of Congress to it, principally Reps. Dave Reichert and Eric Cantor. But the Post cited 'a person close to the inquiry,' who said, 'I don't know if it would have taken this course without Cantor,' the House GOP leader.

'Aside from acknowledging that Majority Leader Cantor was approached by Rep. Dave Reichert, we have not commented on who the Majority Leader spoke to, other than noting that the person was an FBI official,' e-mails Cantor aide Doug Heye. 'Nor have we gone into detail about the conversation, other to note that there were concerns that sensitive information may have been compromised. We maintain that confidentiality.' Reichert, through a spokeswoman, continued to decline comment; Humphries' lawyer has yet to return a request for comment.

The original FBI investigation hasn't even finished yet: it's still looking at Broadwell's computer to learn if any unauthorized classified material appears on it. But there's yet another inquiry at work. On Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta instructed Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to review 'how to better foster a culture of stewardship among our most senior military officers.' What began in Petraeus' bedroom has now left an ethical cloud over his former uniformed colleagues.

Russia's Stealth Fighter Could Match U.S. Jets, Analyst Says

Russia's T-50 stealth fighter prototype, the first radar-evading warplane outside the U.S. when it debuted in January 2010, is slightly less stealthy than the American F-22 and about equal to the smaller F-35. But in several other respects the new warplane from the Russian Sukhoi design bureau is actually superior to the American models.

That's the surprising conclusion of the first-ever public scientific analysis of the T-50's Radar Cross-Section (RCS), completed this week by Dr. Carlo Kopp, an analyst with the independent think tank Air Power Australia.

'The shaping of the T-50 is inferior to that of the F-22 Raptor,' Kopp writes in his dense, jargon-heavy report. But the F-35 and T-50, he adds, exhibit 'similar ' RCS behavior.'

But Kopp's assessment of the T-50 comes with caveats. Quite a few of them, actually. To match the stealthiness of the Lockheed Martin F-35 ' to say nothing of the company's F-22 ' Sukhoi's engineers will have to, among other changes, modify the T-50's engines to a less obtrusive fitting and add a layer of radar-absorbing material to the plane's skin.

With the revised engines and skin, the T-50's 'specular RCS performance will satisfy the Very Low Observable (VLO) requirement that strong specular returns are absent in the nose sector angular domain,' Kopp writes. Translated into plain English, Kopp's saying that an optimized version of the Russian jet could be very, very difficult to detect by most radars as it's bearing down on them.

Major refinements are standard practice as stealth prototypes go through development, it's worth noting. The F-22 and the F-35 underwent big design changes as each was developed over 15 years or more. The T-50, only four of which have been built, has been flying for just under three years and isn't scheduled to enter frontline service until 2016 at the earliest. There's time for the Russians to finesse the design, just as the Chinese are doing with their stealth planes.

Granted, by 2016 the Americans could possess hundreds of combat-ready F-35s plus the roughly 180 F-22s already in service. The T-50 could make up for its lateness with impressive performance that in some ways exceeds even the F-22's vaunted capabilities.

One Russian advantage is what Kopp calls 'extreme plus agility' ' a consequence of the T-50's 'advanced aerodynamic design, exceptional thrust/weight ratio performance and three dimensional thrust vectoring integrated with an advanced digital flight control system.'

The second advantage: 'exceptional combat persistence, the result of an unusually large 25,000-pound internal fuel load,' Kopp writes. The T-50 could keep flying and fighting long after the F-22 and F-35 have run out of gas.

Moreover, the T-50 will dodge certain radars better than others, according to Kopp ' and U.S. sensors are among the worst at detecting the T-50's unique shape, he contends. Kopp's breakdown of T-50 RCS by radar type shows Chinese 'counter-VLO radars,' specifically designed to spot American stealth planes, detecting the T-50 best.

The next best sensors to use against the Russian fighter is the UHF radar aboard the U.S. Navy's E-2 early-warning planes. American fighter radars, including those aboard the F-22 and F-35, are of middling effectiveness against the T-50, Kopp asserts.

'No fundamental obstacles exist in the shaping design of the T-50 prototype which might preclude its development into a genuine Very Low Observable design,' Kopp concludes.

In other words: Watch out, America! You're now only one of three countries with a truly radar-evading warplane in the air.

Droning On: MIT Fights the Boredom of Piloting Robot Spy Planes

If you've checked Twitter, updated your Facebook status and read an article or two at work today then here's a reason not to feel guilty: Periodical procrastination has been shown to boost work performance, especially if your job is particularly tedious. Say, if you're flying a spy drone over Pakistan.

These are the findings of a study to be published in the journal Interacting with Computers. Mary Cummings, director of the Humans and Automation Lab at MIT and author of the study, measured how productive and reactive participants were during a computer simulated exercise. Amazingly, she found that most of the subjects who came out on top were distracted for up to a third of the four-hour-long experiment.

The subjects were charged with simultaneously controlling four computer-simulated unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which were tasked with seeking out potential targets. When one of the UAVs identified a target it was up to the human to decide whether it was hostile or friendly. The UAV required a further command to shoot and destroy the target if it was deemed hostile. The more targets successfully eliminated, the more points awarded.

There's been a lingering debate in the UAV community about whether piloting drones over warzones leads to post-traumatic stress disorder. Certainly, it leads to an odd lifestyle. Pilots are unleashing Hellfire missiles one minute, and serving their daughter blueberry pancakes the next. But the biggest hazard, Cummings suggests, might be something entirely different: boredom. Because most of the time, drones stare down at nothing interesting at all.

Cummings video-recorded the experiment to keep tabs on when the participant was actually engaged with the exercise and when they were looking away from the computer screen.

The high achievers of the experiment were distracted for about 30 percent of the time, deciding instead to check their cell phones, grab a bite to eat or read a book. There was one exception who turned out to be highly focused and also amassed a large number of points ' but not significantly more than her procrastinating coworkers.

We've all had that coworker at some point, right? The one that somehow manages to subdue the temptation to veer off task and instead stubbornly chooses to stay mind-numbingly focused on the task at hand, leaving you with a lingering feeling of remorse and inadequacy when you inevitably check your Twitter feed. Well, here's some even more good news for you: it turns out you're a more conscientious person.

Cummings asked the participants to fill out a survey when they were done with the computer simulation. The results of which categorized them into one of five dominant personality traits. A commonality among the high achievers was conscientiousness, ahead of extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and openness.

Cummings hastens to add that the conscientious among us may better suited for slow paced jobs but that doesn't mean we'd be particularly skilled at controlling the military's UAV fleet. You need to be able to think on your feet and make a rapid decision about whether or not to launch a missile, says Cummings, something which conscientious people might take too long to do.

The study 'funded by the Office of Naval Research and the well-connected aviation firm Aurora Flight Sciences ' argues that 'banning radio listening and conversations or limiting breaks' contributes to boredom and won't create a productive work environment. It goes on to say 'organizational attempts to enforce a distraction-free or 'sterile' environment may only exacerbate negative consequences.' Over half of all U.S. companies have forbidden its employees from logging onto Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites ' something they might want to reconsider.

Israel Kills Hamas Leader, Instantly Posts It to YouTube

The Israel Defense Forces didn't just kill Hamas military leader Ahmed al-Jabari on Wednesday as he was driving his car down the street in Gaza. They killed him and then instantly posted the strike to YouTube. Then they tweeted a warning to all of Jabari's comrades: 'We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead.'

The Jabari hit is part of the biggest assault the IDF has launched in more than three years on Gaza, with more than 20 targets hit. And it's being accompanied by one of the most aggressive social media offensives ever launched by any military. Several days before Jabari's elimination, the IDF began liveblogging the rocket attacks on southern Israel coming from Gaza. Once 'Operation Pillar of Defense' began, the IDF put up a Facebook page, a Flickr feed, and, of course, a stream of Twitter taunts ' all relying on the same white-on-red English-language graphics. 'Ahmed Jabari: Eliminated,' reads a tweet from 2:21 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday.

This is a very different way of waging the war of opinion online. When an American drone strikes a suspected militant in Afghanistan, that footage is rarely made public ' and, if so, only months after the fact. After the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, White House and Pentagon aides did start leaking details like mad. But the only live tweets from the operation were from a bystander in Abbottabad who heard the helicopters landing. And the pictures of bin Laden's corpse were purposely kept from the public.

But Israel also finds itself in a singular position, geopolitically. Its most consistent ally in the region, the Mubarak regime in Cairo, was overthrown last year and replaced by an Islamist government. Relations with Jerusalem's most important partner, the United States, were tested by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's all-but-open support of Barack Obama's rival Mitt Romney in the recent American presidential elections. The need to shape international opinion and rally supporters internationally is acute.

'I believe the video is aimed to deliver three different messages to three different audiences,' emails Gabriella Blum, a professor of international law and international conflict management at Harvard Law School. 'A warning to militants in Gaza (we can get you anywhere, anytime); an appeasing message to the Israeli public (we will not remain helpless in the face of repeated rocket attacks), and a reassuring message to those concerned about the use of targeted killings, especially for its potential collateral damage (we can do this with utmost precision).'

During the last major assault on Gaza ' 2009's 'Operation Cast Lead' ' the IDF did embed camera crews in its combat units. But they were there primarily to defend troops against accusations of war crimes. Drone strike footage was shown to reporters, but only days after the attacks. Meanwhile, a young Israeli soldier ' born in a small town in Hawaii, and converted to Judaism at Yale ' got together with another American Israeli who thought it'd be cool to share some of those videos online. That became the IDF's official YouTube channel, unexpectedly generating millions and millions of views. But social media (and information operations, generally) remained on the periphery of Israeli planning.

This time, things are different. After spotting a long-range Fajr-5 rocket in an underground launch site, the IDF quickly uploaded the surveillance footage to YouTube (see above), and tweeted a Google Maps-style picture of the launcher's location in the town of Zeitoun. After killing Jabari, the IDF posted to its blog something of a rap sheet on the longtime leader of Hamas' Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, including his alleged role in the kidnapping of young soldier Gilad Shalit.

Of course, the official Israeli obituary of Jabari leaves out a few rather meaningful items, like the fact that he was Israeli's de facto partner and ally over the last several years. After Cast Lead, Israel and Hamas made a deal: the Islamic group would keep Gaza's array of militant movements in check, and Israel would keep the aid trucks and the cash flowing. The man responsible for keeping the peace: Ahmed al-Jabari.

@idfspokesperson Our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are (You Opened Hell Gates on Yourselves)

' Alqassam Brigades (@AlqassamBrigade) November 14, 2012

It worked for a while. But in recent weeks, the rockets began flying again, and Jerusalem became displeased with its 'subcontractor,' as the ace Israel military observer Aluf Benn puts it. Jabari was openly warned to step it up, and then executed when he did not.

The message was simple and clear: You failed ' you're dead. Or, as Defense Minister Ehud Barak likes to say, 'In the Middle East there is no second chance for the weak.'

As All Things D notes, it's unclear whether or not the IDF's tough talk violates the terms of service of the big social networks. Twitter users, for example, are not allowed 'post direct, specific threats of violence against others.'

But you can expect some more Tweeted taunts in the days to come. Israel is now sending troops to its south, in preparation for a possible ground assault. The Israeli Navy is shelling targets from the sea. Meanwhile, Hamas is responding ' both online and off. According to Ha'Aretz, 60 rockets were fired from Gaza on Wednesday at Israel's southern towns and villages. Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile batteries were able to intercept 17 of the rockets, which means 43 got through.

'Our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are,' Jabari's former compatriots at al-Qassam Brigades tweeted at the IDF. 'You Opened Hell Gates on Yourselves.'

'Shirtless' FBI Agent Who Hunted Petraeus Also Helped Stop LA Bombing

The FBI agent responsible for the downfall of two of the military's most respected generals helped stop a terrorist from bombing Los Angeles International Airport and shot a man who attacked him with a knife at the gates of a military base. And he kicked off an investigation that not only upended Washington, it has many wondering if the FBI exceeded its authority.

Meet Frederick W. Humphries II ' finally. Humphries, identified by The New York Times, is the mystery Florida-based FBI agent central to the ongoing scandal that brought down CIA Director David Petraeus and threatens the career of the Afghanistan war commander. At nearly every key moment in the tawdry sex scandal, Humphries has been there, lurking in the shadows, sometimes without his shirt on. No wonder colleagues interviewed by the Times described him as 'obsessive.' Even before anyone knew who he was, someone set up a parody Twitter account for him, @shirtlessFBIguy.

In 1999, Humphries used his French language skills to interrogate a Francophone suspect. And that helped the Bureau find and stop Ahmed Ressam from bombing LAX airport in what would come to be known as the Millennium Plot, according to a Seattle Times piece. Described as 'wiry [and] high-energy,' the former Army officer unraveled the cover story of a member of the Millennium Plot by calling bull on the operative's fake Quebecois accent. Eleven years later, Humphries would shoot and kill a 'disturbed knife-wielding man' who attacked him at the gates of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

Humphries knew Tampa socialite Jill Kelley, an unofficial 'ambassador' between Tampa and MacDill, home of U.S. Central Command, run in 2010 and 2011 by Petraeus and Gen. John Allen, now the commander of the Afghanistan war. When Kelley started receiving harassing e-mails this summer, Kelley asked her FBI friend Humphries to look into it. Humphries agreed, but soon found himself taken off the case, according to the Times. That would prove to be a fateful move.

The FBI has broad authorities over cyber-stalking investigations. 'When something of this nature comes to our attention,' spokesman Paul Bresson tells Danger Room, 'we work in close coordination with prosecutors to evaluate the facts and circumstances with respect to jurisdiction and potential violations of federal law.'

Not everyone is buying that the FBI would normally take up the case of a socialite receiving unwanted, nasty e-mails. 'This is highly irregular. Highly, highly irregular. With a case of e-mail harassment, we'd normally say: we're kind of busy, contact your local police,' a former federal prosecutor tells Danger Room. 'You know that old cliche 'let's not make a federal case out of it?' Well, in this case, it rings true.'

In any case, the feds did make a federal case out of it ' just without Humphries. But Humphries didn't let the case go. He sent shirtless pictures of himself to Kelley, something a lawyer for a law-enforcement guild who spoke with Humphries described to the Times as a 'joke' that the national media have misunderstood. Still, his friends characterized him as 'passionate' and 'kind of an obsessive type.' It showed.

Humphries did not take kindly to being removed from a case he kickstarted. Evidently, he knew that the FBI expanded the case from cyber-harassment to one determining whether Paula Broadwell, Petraeus' mistress who harassed Kelley, received classified information from Petraeus. Humphries was convinced there was a Bureau cover-up to protect Obama, and in late October went to Rep. Dave Reichert, a Washington state Republican with whom Reichert had worked previously. Reichert ' who would not respond to Danger Room's queries ' took Humphries to Rep. Eric Cantor, the GOP majority leader, on October 27.

Cantor and his staff met with Humphries shortly after Reichert made the introduction. But they did not know what his motivations were. Nor could they judge Humphries' credibility. Worse, they had no idea the FBI had Petraeus under investigation in the first place. After conferencing, they decided the prudent thing to do was to take the information from the investigation to FBI Director Robert Mueller's office. They did so on October 31, around the same time that FBI agents interviewed Petraeus and reportedly told him he was not under suspicion of leaking classified information.

A week later, on November 6 ' election day ' Mueller informed James Clapper, the director of national intelligence and Petraeus' boss, of the investigation. The House Judiciary Committee has written to Mueller to determine, among other things, why Mueller waited a week, and why he informed neither the relevant congressional oversight committees or the White House. (Mueller on Wednesday briefed the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees.) But Clapper essentially sealed Petraeus' fate, urging him to deliver the resignation from the CIA that ultimately came on Friday.

There are questions about whether the FBI has exceeded its bounds in the case Humphries launched. While the FBI has wide latitude to investigate potential leaks of classified intelligence ' the focus of the ongoing inquiry into Broadwell that brought Petraeus down ' it is far less clear what authority the FBI had to give the Pentagon flirtatious emails between Allen and Kelley that came to agents' attention in the course of that inquiry.

The Pentagon, whose inspector general is now investigating Allen, says there is no evidence Allen gave Kelley classified material or otherwise compromised national security. Under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, adultery is a crime. But a Defense official on Tuesday told reporters that Allen denies cheating on his wife, and the emails contain some 'flirtatious' exchanges between the two. Yet while the so-called 'Plain Sight Doctrine' holds that investigators can pursue evidence of a crime that they encounter in an unrelated investigation, flirtation is not evidence of adultery.

While many of the facts of Allen's case have yet to be determined, some legal experts wonder if the FBI was required to ignore the emails between Allen and Kelley.

'Whether the supposed basis for the investigation was cyber-harassment, disclosure of classified information, or the vulnerability of the CIA chief to blackmailing, it's difficult to see how a military commander's flirtatious emails are relevant,' says Rachel Levinson-Waldman, a lawyer who studies information sharing between national-security agencies at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. In such a case, the FBI is usually required to 'minimize' ' that is, ignore or destroy ' information on unrelated parties that it inadvertently collected. In practice, though, Levinson-Waldman cautions, FBI officials have strong incentives to hold on to such material, for fear of jeopardizing potential future investigations.

The FBI, argues the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Kurt Opsahl, appears to have engaged in 'a series of stretches,' to get from investigating Broadwell to turning over Allen's communications with Kelley to the Defense Department. 'I don't see how that email [traffic] is necessary or how there's any kind of probable cause to believe there's any link to the crimes the FBI was investigating,' Opsahl says.

In a statement released by his military lawyer late Wednesday, Allen vowed 'to fully cooperate with the Inspector General Investigators' while his nomination to be NATO commander is officially on hold. There's a possibility that Allen will be vindicated. But if he's not, he has overzealous FBI investigators to thank ' including Humphries, who started it all.

' additional reporting by Noah Shachtman

Iran Boasts Missile-Launching, Drone-Hurling Hovercraft

Iran's war games are an often entertaining look at antiquated and repackaged military technology presented like it's the latest gear. Here's a great example of it. In the latest round of Iranian exercises being carried out this week, the Mullahs are showing off a new attack hovercraft that can launch drones and missiles, or so Tehran claims.

The hovercraft, called the Tondar (or Thunder), kicked off the exercises, which reportedly includes drones, fighter jets and around 8,000 troops sprawled out across eastern Iran. According to Iran's state news agency, the hovercraft is for 'offensive reconnaissance operations, mid-range amphibious missions' and 'asymmetric defense,' said Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi at the hovercraft's unveiling on Monday. There's also a version for transporting troops that hasn't been revealed, Vahidi said. And Tehran claims the hovercraft is indigenously produced.

Tehran is also testing its Russian-made S-200 air defense systems, which the U.S. would have to destroy in case President Obama ever attacks Iran's nuclear program. Iran is testing another missile defense system called 'Mersad,' or Ambush, which Iranian state media claims can lock on to enemy aircraft at 50 miles and destroy them from 30 miles; along with two other new missiles, including a low-altitude missile called the 'Ya Zahra 3' that 'is completely indigenous and Iranian and has been designed and produced to suit internal needs,' said Farzas Esmaili to the Iranian Students' News Agency.

But there's no telling if any of the new weapons being trotted out this week are really all that new, or just a little new-ish. Iran's military likes to proudly assert its hardware is domestically produced, even though Tehran is in fact reliant on decades-old equipment and sanctions-skipping arms imports from Russia and China. Iranian state media regularly boasts about 100 percent Iranian-made weapons, but the bravado is always worth treating with a great deal of skepticism.

Tehran wants to the world to believe its military is self-sufficient, and that sanctions directed towards Iran's nuclear program are no biggie. And last week, Iranian pilots shot at and missed an unarmed U.S. MQ-1 Predator drone. But it was Tehran's chance to boast about its ability 'to give a crushing response to any enemy aggression in the shortest time and most powerful form possible.'

Case in point behind all this bravado is the Thunder.

Perhaps it is domestically made. Outwardly, the Thunder resembles the British Hovercraft Corporation SR.N6 ' first acquired by Iran when the Shah was in power ' capable of traveling at 58 knots and weighing in at about 10 tons. But it wouldn't be unprecedented for Iran to have upgraded the SR.N6, added a missile launcher and a new coat of paint, and then called it domestically produced. But the design principles behind 1970s-era hovercraft are not too difficult to figure out if Iran wanted to build a copy of its own.

Iran's hovercraft force is also tiny ' perhaps no more than 14 vessels ' even when compared to North Korea, which has an estimated 130 Kongbang-class hovercrafts, enough to potentially launch an invasion of several South Korean islands. Iran's hovercrafts would also be doomed in a confrontation with the well-armed U.S. Navy, and any attack would have to be quick and rely on the element of surprise to have a chance of doing damage. At the same time, it's a creative and low-cost alternative compared to new submarines. Iran has even taken to basing some of its old British-made BH.7 hovercraft ' spotted on Google Maps ' a short hop away from the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, while Iran is boasting about the latest in 1970s tech and playing war games, China is showing off its latest drones. At an airshow near Macau, China's aerospace industry is showcasing several unmanned flying robots, including the Wing Loong, which strongly resembles the U.S. Predator but with longer range. Several drones displayed by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation had a 'striking resemblance to existing Western aircraft,' noted defense trade group Shephard Media. Among them include a small drone called the Auspicious Bird and an unmanned helicopter called the Ptarmigan.

Compared to China, the hardware on display by Iran this week ranges from yesterday's junk to not-terribly-impressive. But don't let Tehran hear you say that.