IRGC announces production of strategic drone with missile capability

Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari announced that his forces have built a new type of military drone with missile and bombing capabilities. Speaking at a press conference here in Tehran on Friday, Major General Jafari pointed to Shahed 129 as the IRGC’s latest achievement in area of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) production, and said, “This smart, precise and cheap (piece of) technology can facilitate the work of thousands of soldiers, (police) stations and different border guard structures which face numerous hardships and vulnerabilities and it can take charge of the security of (the country’s) borders.” He underlined that Shahed 129 that been designed and produced in IRGC’s Aerospace Force is a state-of-the-art drone, adding that the US is the only other country which is building such a hi-tech drone. The commander boasted that the world powers will be stunned when Iran unveils this exceptional production in the near future. Major General Jafari had stated last year that Shahed 129 can hit and destroy targets from a far distance with its Sadid (Iron-Strong) missiles. “Shahed 129 drone presents the IRGC's latest advancement in this field. With its 24-hour-long non-stop flight capability, the drone can accomplish good missions in reconnaissance and combat fields,” the IRGC commander said in September 2012. In relevant development, IRGC Lieutenant Commander Brigadier General Hossein Salami said an Iranian drone which has been manufactured through the reverse engineering of the US drone which was tracked and hunted down in Iran late in 2011 will be unveiled to the public soon. “All the memories and computer systems of this plane have been decoded and some good news will be announced in the near future not just about the RQ-170 and the optimizations that our forces have done on the reversed engineered model of this drone, but also in area of other important defense achievements," IRGC Lieutenant Commander General Hossein Salami said. Iran announced on December 4, 2011 that its defense forces had downed a US RQ-170 aircraft through a sophisticated cyber attack. The drone was the first such loss by the US. US officials have described the loss of the aircraft in Iran as a setback and a fatal blow to the stealth drone program. The RQ-170 has special coatings and a batwing shape designed to help it penetrate other nations' air defenses undetected. The existence of the aircraft, which is made by Lockheed Martin, has been known since 2009, when a model was photographed at the main US airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The unmanned surveillance plane lost by the United States in Iran was a stealth aircraft being used for secret missions by the CIA, US officials admitted almost a week after Iran captured the plane. The aircraft is among the highly sensitive surveillance platform in the CIA's fleet that was shaped and designed to evade enemy defenses. In March 2012, Iranian experts managed to produce a new type of drone which is capable of carrying out military and border patrol missions. The new remote-controlled aircraft, called Shaparak (Butterfly), has a maximum operational radius of 50 kilometers (31 miles), and a maximum flight ceiling of 15,000 feet (4,572 meters), Reza Danandeh Hakamabad, the aeronautics engineer in charge of the project, said at the time. The aircraft is capable of three and half hours of non-stop flying, and can carry an 8-kilogram (17-pound) payload. Iran successfully tested a home-made radar-evading UAV with bombing capabilities in June 2009. In February 2011, Iran inaugurated the production line of two home-made UAVs with bombing and reconnaissance capabilities. The two hi-tech drones named 'Ra'd' (Thunder) and 'Nazir' (Harbinger) are capable of conducting long-range reconnaissance, patrolling, assault and bombing missions with high precision. Ra'd which is a UAV of choice for assault and bombing missions has the capability to destroy the specified targets with high pinpoint precision. Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in August 2010 unveiled the country's first home-made combat Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The combat drone, named Karrar, was unveiled in a special ceremony in Tehran marking the national 'Day of Defense Industry'. The Karrar UAV is capable of carrying a military payload to carry out bombing missions against ground targets. It is also capable of flying long distances at a very high speed.