Syrian drones spying on rebels: made in Iran UAVs or amateur radio controlled models? March 13, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in Drones, Syria.Tags: Ababil, Bashar al-Assad, Global Hawk, Homs, Iran, Mohajer 4, Pahpad, Syria, UAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
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One of the most interesting things of the Syrian uprising, from the military analyst perspective, is the use of drones by the Syrian regime.
Syria had its drone fleet when the uprising started. According to some sources they are manufactured domestically, at the Syria’s Scientific Research Center, even if, according to the images surfaced so far, all of them are a copy of those produced by Iran.
Among the types believed to be operated by Bashar al-Assad forces: the Mohajer 4, the Ababil, (most probably) the Mirsad-1 that Hezbollah terror group has used to violate the Israeli airspace in the past, and, the only one filmed over Homs that could be clearly identified as the “Pahpad” (that is not the actual name of the robot but the short form in Persian for “remotely piloted aircraft”).
There’s another interesting drone that was spotted recently and still has to be identified. It is particularly interesting because it does not look like any of the above mentioned drones (even if a correct identification is impossible because of the extremely low quality of the footage). At first glance, its shape, color etc, recalls those of Israeli or U.S. drones. However, it is quite unlikely that it was not Syrian considered the amount of air defense and anti-aircraft systems believed to be active in Syria: U.S Joint Chief Dempsey recently said that Syrian air defense is 5 times more sophisticated than Libya, 10 times more than in former Jugoslavia (1999) and covers one fifth of the terrain.
Actually there’s also a video of seemingly solid flying object orbiting into a smoke cloud of a burning oil pipe, that someone still considers a drone.
What are these drones doing over Homs?
Depending on the payload they are carrying they can could be eavesdropping into “enemy” communications or helping ground forces to pinpoint rebels by locating the oppositors’ firing positions and directing the shelling accordingly. Noteworthy, such furing support flights do not take place at night suggesting that the loyalist robots can only carry a color/monochrome daylight TV camera.
Rebels have affirmed that they were able to shot down and recover some of these Syria’s made-in-Iran drones. However, even if the shape of the recovered drone recall that of the “Pahpad” or “Mohajer 4″, based on the below video, the downed robot seem to be much smaller that the typical UAVs (whose wingspan exceeds 5 mt).
Here below you can find a screen dump, published by Ynet of another drone recovered by rebels.
Image credit: Ynet
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[Updated] Syrian Mohajer 4 drone spying on the clashes in Syria February 25, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in Drones, Syria.Tags: Ababil, Homs, Iran, Israel, Mohajer, Mohajer 4, Syria, UAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
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Update Feb. 26 22.22 GMT
The following screenshot comes from the footage recorded few days ago in Kafr Batna, a small suburb of Damascus, Syria, and uploaded on Youtube. I’ve already mentioned it in my post about the drones activities over Syria, however, someone suggested the UAV that can be seen overflying the clashes is not an Israeli but a Syrian ‘bot made in Iran.
Whereas Israel can count on a wide variety of drones, some of which are particularly famous (as the “Heron”), Damascus is known to be equipped with just a few types of robots. Among them, the Iranian made Mohajer 4 and Ababil and maybe also the Mirsad-1 that Hezbollah has used to violate the Israeli airspace in the past.
After analyzing the image I’ve come to the conclusion that the one overflying Kafr Batna could be a Syrian (or Hezbollah) Mohajer 4.
Here are the spefication of this drone (credit here):
Length: 3.74 m
Wingspan: 5.3 m
Height: NA
Empty Weight: NA
MTOW: 210 kg
Payload Weight: NA
Cruise Speed: 200 km/h
Endurance: 3 hr
Range: 150 km
Ceiling: 4.57 km
Powerplant: NA
Here below you can find two images of the Iranian-made Mohajer, from the type’s Wiki page.
What’s your opinion?
Image credit: via Wikipedia
Another day, another Iranian drone. Tehran reveals the new “A1″ UAV. January 30, 2012
Posted by Richard Clements in Drones, Iran.Tags: Ababil, drones, F-16, Iran, Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force, Israel, Israel Defence, Military Aviation, UAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
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On Jan. 30, Iran has announced the development of a new UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) called the “A1″. According to the information released so far, the new drone allegedly has a service ceiling of 10,000 feet, an endurance of two hours and can carry up to a 11lbs (5kg) payload. Furthermore, it has an engine running on hi-octane gas/oil mix (2 stroke engine??) with a 2 blade pusher propeller and can be either launched from a ramp attached to the bed of a truck or ship-launched from rocket launchers.
These “features” seem to suggest that the new drone is another variant of the Ababil indigenous UAV family, which already includes the Ababil-5, used as a medium range surveillance platform, and the Ababil-T, a short to medium range UCAV with offensive capabilities.
Image credit: PressTV
Press TV website which broke the news also mentions a –B and a –S version but does not disclose what the purposes of these are.
It was an Ababil-T drone, allegedly launched from within Lebanon and sported Hezbollah markings, that was shot down in 2006 by an Israeli Air Force F-16 using a Rafael Python 5, about 5 nautical miles off Israel’s coast.
Ababil-T (credit: IDF)
The launching of the new drone is a further evidence of a blooming indigenous UAV program which has similar beginnings to that of the Israeli UAV program, started many years ago to develop drones for artillery spotting and battlefield overwatch as well as decoys for SAM sites (they are used to personify manned assets and spur a reaction by the SAM site that can be then attacked by other SEAD assets).
Although the significance of Iran’s UAV program remains unclear (especially if we consider the claims about the prodigious performance of some drones that are nothing more than scale models), it’s once again interesting to notice how the Iranian government use the local media to trickle out information on new systems being developed by Tehran.
The Aviationist will monitor further developments as and when they arise.
Written with The Aviationist’s Editor David Cenciotti
