Iran to target intruding drones: Cmdr.
A senior Iranian military commander says the country’s air defense forces will firmly deal with any unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) violating the Islamic Republic's airspace.
Colonel Farzad Fereydouni, a commander of the air defense unit in the western province of Kermanshah, told Mehr news agency on Saturday that Iran monitors all the drones in the region and will hit any unidentified intruding drones.
Fereydouni was reacting to a report by the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, earlier in the day quoting him that Iran had "a while ago" shot down an intruding drone in the western province of Kermanshah.
Speaking to Mehr, he elaborated that the drone had in fact been downed last Iranian calendar year (ended March 20). "The military base provided the necessary information in this regard at the time," Fereydouni said.
The shooting down of intruding drones in the past years shows "the precise monitoring and timely tactical measures by the [Iranian] Air Defense Forces," he added.
Iran has in the past brought down a number of aircraft that have violated its airspace.
In October 2014, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said its forces had intercepted and shot down an Israeli spy drone with a surface-to-air missile. The Israeli-made Hermes drone was heading to Natanz nuclear facility in the central Iranian province of Isfahan.
The IRGC also captured a US ScanEagle drone over the Persian Gulf waters upon its intrusion into the Iranian airspace in December 2012.
In the same month the previous year, Iran downed a US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft with minimal damage. The drone was flying over the Iranian city of Kashmar, near the Afghan border, when it was brought down.
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