UV Online
US warplanes down Iranian UAV over Iraq
The Pentagon says it is conducting out a detailed analysis of the remains of an Iranian Aircraft Manufacturing Ababil 3 unmanned air system that was shot down by two coalition fighter aircraft north of Baghdad on 25 February, and are now attempting to determine its mission and capabilities.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell says that "there is exploitation underway right now of the debris from the aircraft to try to determine what precisely they had their eyes on."
He says that while the UAS incursion " is the first of its kind, I frankly don't know why it should come as a surprise to anybody. The Iranians have tried multiple methods of destabilizing the government in Iraq, of providing extremist groups with the means to attack our forces and Iraqi security forces.
"So the fact that they sent a surveillance drone several miles into sovereign Iraqi territory and then hovered for more than an hour shouldn't come, I think, as a surprise to anybody; although it was the first, I think, that we've seen of that particular method.
"And when we saw it, as far as I know -and Multinational Forces - Iraq has put out a statement to this effect -as far as I know, we watched it for more than an hour; made sure that it was not any sort of coalition aircraft; eventually went about clearing the air space, to try to mitigate any collateral damage; and then shot it down.
"But we couldn't allow it to remain there, in part because it was operating in an area that is a high air traffic zone, and would have presented a danger to coalition aircraft; not to mention the fact it was in violation of sovereign Iraqi air space."
Morrell said the analysis process is including assessment of whether the aircraft sensors were datalinked: "I, frankly, don't know if it was a drone that was capable of sending -- sending signals back or whether it was merely recording and then was going to return and its video or data then exploited by the Iranians.
So I'm not -- I'm not sure enough as to what precisely the capabilities of this drone were. All I can tell you is that we're in the process of exploiting the debris that we've recovered."
No details of the weapon types used to engage the drone have been released. Ababil 3 has a top speed of 200kt while the claimed range for the basic model Ababil airframe is 150km.
The Israeli Air Force engaged a modified Ababil UAS operated by Hezbollah over northern Israel in 2006, using a Python IV missile launched from a Lockheed Martin F-16.
By Peter La Franchi
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