Iran unveils ‘suicide drone’
Tehran says main role for new device is surveillance
TEHRAN // Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard said it had developed what it called a suicide drone capable of delivering explosives to targets on land and at sea.
“The new drone is primarily for maritime surveillance and has not been designed to be armed with missiles,” the Tasnim news agency, which is close to the Guard, said yesterday.
“But it can carry heavy payloads of explosives for combat missions to launch suicide attacks.
“Flying at a high cruising speed near the surface of the water, the aircraft can collide with the target and destroy it, either a vessel or an onshore command centre.” Tasnim said the drone was designed to fly as low as half a metre above water at a speed of about 250 kilometres per hour but could reach an altitude of almost 1,000 metres.
As with earlier drone announcements by Iran, the agency released photographs of the aircraft on the ground, but no footage of it flying.
“It has an advanced military camera with the capability of being used at night and during the day, as well as the possibility of being used in damp sea conditions,” the news agency said.
Earlier this month, the Revolutionary Guard claimed to have produced an attack drone, the Saegheh (Thunder- bolt), by reverse engineering a US drone that was captured in December 2011.
Iran claimed one of its cyber warfare units had taken control of the drone and landed it safely.
But the US claimed a technical problem caused it to crash.
The Guard released pictures of the Saegheh, but no footage of it in flight.