In an attempt to prove its ability to reverse-engineer captured American drones, Iran has presented a functional copycat model of the US ScanEagle to a Russian military delegation visiting Tehran.
On Sunday, a delegation led by Russian Air Force Commander
Lieutenant-General Viktor Bondarev visited several military and
engineering facilities in Iran. At one such facility in Tehran,
Iranian Air Defense Force Commander Farzad Esmayeeli personally
presented his Russian counterpart with a copy of the ScanEagle
drone.
“The drone built by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a
symbol of the technical capabilities of the Islamic Iran and
today we presented a real model of it as a gift to Lieutenant
General Viktor Bondarev and the Russian people,” said
Brigadier-General Farzad Esmayeeli, the commander of Iran’s Major
Khatam ol-Anbia Air Defense Base.
“Where’s its control console?” was the first question
posed by Bondarev following the presentation.
According to Iran’s state-run Tehran Times newspaper, the two generals discussed a range of air defense issues, but a more detailed report was not available.
Over the last few years, Iran has been claiming considerable
advances in producing new UAV models at home.
The model of the ScanEagle drone was produced at the Khatam
al-Anbia military factory, also known as GHORB, controlled by the
Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
The original ScanEagle Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, made by a Boeing subsidiary, was said to be intercepted by Iranian air defenses in December 2012. Back then, the Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, Navy Rear-Admiral Ali Fadavi, announced that a drone that had violated Iranian airspace was successfully intercepted.
Tehran said it would analyze the aircraft and put it into
reverse-engineering mass production. Washington, however,
maintained that all of its drones were fully accounted for in a
statement.
In February 2013, Tehran demonstrated images of a ScanEagle UAV
drone production line, revealing that this low-cost, high
endurance drone would provide low-altitude reconnaissance for the
Iranian military.
Iran’s official Fars news agency reported that a ScanEagle clone
could carry various types of cameras, track stationary and moving
targets and provide real-time intelligence while cruising at
altitudes of up to 5 kilometers.
Iran has claimed on several occasions that it has intercepted
signals of a number of American and Israeli reconnaissance UAVs
that violated Iranian airspace, and made them land on Iranian
airfields.
In late 2011, Iran declared it was in possession of the US’s
top-secret RQ-170 Sentinel UAV, produced by Lockheed Martin and
operated by the CIA when it was captured.
After claiming for some time that the aircraft had been lost due
to a malfunction, Washington finally demanded that Tehran return
the RQ-170, an aircraft with a wingspan larger than that of an
F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet. But Tehran said it would decode
Sentinel’s computers and attempt to produce a similar aircraft
domestically.