Welcome to the Club: Iran’s Drones Showing up in Numerous World Hotspots
Iran has been using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s) for quite some time. In fact, Iran might have actually deployed the world’s first armed drone during their war with Iraq in the 1980’s. Iran’s drone capabilities have increased considerably since those days and their UAV’s are popping up all over our troubled world. The use of drones by the United States against terrorist targets has received a great deal of publicity, some of that coverage being negative as civilians have been killed as a result of these drone strikes. However, it seems that American drones no longer have a monopoly on being involved in civilian deaths. Iran’s drones have turned up in Syria, Darfur, Sudan, Gaza, and in flight over Israel.
News reports have indicated that Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces train the Sudanese military and run weapons and ammunition manufacturing facilities in the Sudan. Additionally weapons either shipped or manufactured in Sudan are also smuggled to Hamas in Gaza. This kind of activity probably led to an Israeli strike against a manufacturing facility in Sudan in 2012. More recent reporting suggests that Iran is now supplying drones to Sudan. One of those drones was shot down by rebel forces over South Kordofan. Digital evidence processed from the drone’s camera system showed that the drone overflew targets that were subsequently bombed by the Sudanese Air Force. Some of the targets were military, but some of those targets were civilians in villages. The drone overflew the civilian villages about 20 minutes before the air attack. It is very likely that the drones are being used as reconnaissance platforms to locate and identify targets for air attacks. The drone that was shot down contained Iranian hardware, as well as a carburetor made in Ireland. Photographs of the drone strongly resemble the Ababil-3 drone revealed in a Fars News Agency report from February of 2014. The drone in that report had the serial #3–2-R126 on its side. An Iranian video shows a similar drone in action and it has the serial #3–2-R050 on its wing. The drone shot down in the Kordofan region had the serial #3–1-R031 on its wing and the same serial # on its side. The drone in all the videos and photos linked above all seem to be Ababil-3’s. They are all similar in size, have an antenna protruding from the top of the nose section, have a twin-boom tail, a pusher propeller and have what appear to be 8 exhaust tubes sticking out from the engine, 4 on top and 4 on bottom. Another very distinctive feature that all the drones have is the front landing gear leg which resembles a backwards, elongated letter “c.” An Iranian drone was also shot down by rebels in 2012 over the Darfur region.
In August of 2014, an Israeli Patriot battery shot down a similar drone over the Golan Heights. At the time of the incident, Syrian troops were engaging rebel forces in the area and the drone was most likely being used by the Syrians for aerial reconnaissance. Although the drone in this case is heavily damaged, the shape is consistent with the Ababil-3 design, a twin-boom tail with the distinctive front landing gear leg. Iranian drones are a frequent sight over Syria and both Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces are involved in that conflict. A drone downed recently by Syrian rebels also appears to be an Ababil-3. The images circulated by the rebel forces showed the distinctive twin-tail design, with 8 exhaust pipes, a pusher propeller and the serial #3–2-R0105 (similar to the serial # for the drone shot down over the Kordofan region and the drone from the Iranian video).
A July 2014 report shows pictures and a Hamas video of an armed drone that the terrorist group claimed to have deployed over Gaza. It is not certain that the weapons on the drone were actually functional, but the drone appears to be the Iranian Ababil-1B armed drone.
So far, Iranian supplied drones have been reconnaissance platforms. In 2009, an F-16 fighter jet shot down an unarmed Iranian drone over Iraq. Of course, such drones are still deadly when used as targeting platforms for other weapons systems, as in the Kordofan region. However, if armed Iranian drones end up in the hands of terrorist or other militant, groups, then they will present a significant threat to American forces deployed overseas.
A recent video purportedly shows an Iranian drone attacking Jabhat Al-Nusrah positions in Lebanon near the Syrian border, so armed Iranian drones in the hands of a terrorist group might already have become a reality. However, the imagery from the video does not provide proof that the attack actually came from the drone. The drone might have been simply spotting for another weapons system. Furthermore, although the video indicates that Hezbollah carried out the attack, Iran might be using that line as a form of plausible deniability for their involvement in the incident.
Journalists Peter Bergen and Emily Schneider were quick to point out the potential future threat these weapons systems present to soft targets. They summed it up well when they wrote, “…but one can imagine a dystopian future where terrorist groups are able to deploy armed drones against less well defended targets. Indeed, that future may have already arrived.”
