‘Iran among few states with drone tech’
IRAN: A senior Iranian commander says the Islamic Republic is
among the few countries that possess the technological know-how of the
unmanned aerial vehicles fitted with scanning and reconnaissance
systems. Deputy Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC),
Brigadier General Hossein Salami said on Saturday that the US spy drone,
recently downed by the Iranian military forces while violating Iran’s
airspace, showed the US modern intelligence technology and the fact that
the Islamic Republic could decode the drone’s data and figure out the
technology applied to it, IRNA reported.
Salami went on to say that the enemies of the Islamic Republic did
not have a true understanding of Iran’s capabilities.
The US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft was brought down with minimal
damage by the Iranian Army’s electronic warfare unit on Sunday, December
4, 2011, when flying over the northeastern Iran city of Kashmar, some
225 kilometers (140 miles) away from the Afghan border.
On December 6, two US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity,
confirmed that the drone had been part of a CIA reconnaissance mission,
involving the United State intelligence community stationed in
Afghanistan. Iran has announced that it intends to carry out reverse
engineering on the aircraft, which is similar in design to a US Air
Force B-2 stealth bomber.
Press TV |