Iran’s Army launches large-scale drone drill
The Iranian Army on Tuesday launched a massive drill involving a broad range of military unmanned aerial vehicles.
Troops from the four units of the Army, namely the Ground Force, Navy, Air Force, and Air Defense Force participated in the military maneuver, Tasnim News Agency reported.
Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, the deputy chief of the Iranian Army for Coordination, said nearly 200 drones covered strategic waters of the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, as well as all four corners of the country and its central part.
He noted that the patrol and reconnaissance drones carried out missions along the country’s borders on Tuesday morning and took images from the drill
zones.
Sayyari said the surveillance drones successfully carried out their intelligence-gathering and patrol missions on the first day of the Army’s 1402 joint drone military exercise.
The Army has flown diverse homegrown drones, including Chamrosh, Yasir, Sadeq, Pelican, Ababil, Kaman-12, Yazdan, and Mohajer to control the country’s land, sea, and air borders as well as the international waters, the general said.
He also noted that the Army has set up the Zolfaqar headquarters as the command and control center of drone operations.
Sayyari added that the drones monitored the country’s frontiers and identified designated targets in the general zone of the exercise as well as international waters.
Last month, Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Baqeri said the scope of foreign demand for sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicles developed and manufactured indigenously by the country’s military specialists is much larger than its production capacity.
Iran was once under arms embargoes on the purchase of foreign-made weapons, but now the Islamic Republic is faced with bans on the export of its domestically developed military products, Baqeri said on September 18.