Jan 4 2013
Iran has captured more US drones than it's admitted in the past, a senior military official stated on 3 January 2013.
Iranian Drone Capture. Image copyright USAF - Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
Some four previous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle captures have been highlighted previously but, now, the total number of these events is reported to have been at least six.
According to Iranian Navy representative, Admiral Amir Rastegari - quoted by the Fars news organisation - the two secretive UAV captures involved RQ-11 Raven drones, manufactured by AeroVironment.
Hand-launched, these RQ-11 Ravens have only about a six mile range and a 90 minute endurance, cruising at 56 kilometres per hour. Introduced in May 2003, some 19,000 have so far been built, with the highest numbers in service with the USAF, US Army and US Marine Corps.
RQ-11 Raven UAV
Other RQ-11 Raven UAV users include Australia, Spain, Iraq, the Netherlands and the UK and the type is equipped to carry out entirely autonomous, GPS-based sorties or be controlled by ground-based operators. Typically, RQ-11 Ravens are fitted with video cameras, night vision cameras and other systems.
Admiral Rastegari stated that one RQ-11 Raven capture occurred in mid-2011 and the other, in late-2012. He added that the majority of these UAVs' data had been retrieved by military experts. Such actions could help Iran develop its own, home-grown UAVs.
Iranian Drone Capture
The most recent previous Iranian drone capture was reported at the start of December 2012 and involved a Boeing ScanEagle. It was claimed at the time that this aircraft had infiltrated Iran's airspace - claims that US officials later denied. 12 months prior to that, the Iranian media broadcast images of a captured RQ-170 UAV.
"The air-defense units of the Army have hunted two enemy drone", Fars quoted Rastegari as having said. "These drones were from 11th series of the RQ class, and one of them was hunted in Shahrivar 1390 [between 21 August and 19 September 2011] and the other one in Aban [between 22 October and 20 November 2012].
"Much of the data of these drones has been decoded by the Army's Jihad and Research Center."