Iran Admits Exporting UAS Technology to Venezuela

Mohajer 2

Iran’s Deputy Minister of Science, Research and Technology said that the Islamic Republic is exporting its domestically made UAS technologies to a number of countries including Syria and Venezuela.

Mohammad Mehdinejad-Nouri told students at Iran’s Babol Noshirvani University of Technology in the northern province of Mazandaran that the exports were a result of the significant advances Iran has made in UAS technology, which have made the Islamic Republic a leader in designing and operating unmanned aircraft, Iran’s ISNA news agency reported.

The claims come a day after the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace division, Brig.-Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said that Iran had decoded data from a downed US stealth R-Q-170 and also had captured or obtained more than one US ScanEagle drone as well as a RQ- 7 Shadow.

Hajizadeh also claimed that Iran has made great strides in UAS development, boasting that the Ayoub UAS that Hezbollah flew over Israeli airspace earlier this year was in fact a decade-old Iranian model.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s stateowned CA Venezolana de Industria Militares (CAVIM) company announced on Monday that it had presented the result of several projects, including a localized version of Iran’s Mohajer-2 UAS, the same type as that flown by Hezbollah and by Bashar Assad’s forces in Syria.

CAVIM’s announcement came after Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez admitted in June that Caracas is building UAS with Iranian assistance as well as with help from Russia and China.

The Iranian Mohajer-2, a reconnaissance and surveillance UAS with a range of around 50km. and an approximate endurance of 90 minutes, were reported in June to be operating from CAVIM’s Maracay factory in north-central Venezuela.

Based on information taken from photographs of the Venezuelan aircraft, known locally as a Sant Arpia, Caracas appears to have slightly modified the Mohajer-2.

Source: Jerusalem Post

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