
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
anyone have a picture of the part between the two tails because its seems pretty big on the youtube image
also i suppose you need a ramp to launch this bad boy?
anyone know if the two iranian ships that crossed the suez canal last week are equipped with such infrastructure?
Certainly the Kharg can transport containerized systems, including the requisite ramps/catapults needed to launch these mid-size UAVs. Wouldn’t take many hours to lift them down with a crane, and if there’s a crew ready (one might have come on the same ship) the system could be in operation right away.
in this blog-post – besides the video of the drone – there are two frozen frames and in one of them the tail is seen at a more revealing angle.
http://www.osgeoint.blogspot.com/2012/02/syria-uav-captured-on-video-over-kafr.html
There is also added images of an Iranian drone called Papal which could be a match.
– it kind of resembles the one linked to by lissnup in a comment to the december 27. post of your blog.
Hi Bjoern,
I had seen it (IIRC because you pointed me to that article on Twitter :)) and I’ve already prepared a new article that will be published later today.
Thanks
David
you are welcome. Just saw it…and thanks for credits.
About the connection between the “Pahpal” and the amateur drone: The over all shape is a match, but particularily the way the wings taper seems to be the same. And also; the tapering fits within the blured limits of the video’ed drone.
(so I guess I’ll have to go back on my “off the shelf scale model plane” grr…)
Mohajer 4 Pictiure
http://persianarmy.persianblog.ir/post/89
http://www.mashreghnews.ir/fa/news/70051/%D9%85%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%AC%D8%B13-%D9%88-4-%D9%85%D8%AC%D9%88%D8%B2-%D9%88%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%AF-%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86-%D8%A8%D9%87-%D9%84%DB%8C%DA%AF-%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%AA%D8%B1-%D9%87%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%BE%DB%8C%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%87%D8%A7%DB%8C-%D8%A8%D8%AF%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%B3%D8%B1%D9%86%D8%B4%DB%8C%D9%86-%D8%B9%DA%A9%D8%B3