Al Jazeera has posted exclusive footage of a drone shot down by Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s local branch in Syria, while it was flying over Aleppo.
The drone seems to be a Yasir drone, a small Iranian drone (that can be quickly disassembled to be carried in a suitcase) based on the American Boeing ScanEagle (captured by the Iranians in 2012).
The Yasir (or the Sayeh – the version operated by the IRGC, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps) has been operating in Syria since November.
Yasir has quite a distinctive shape: it’s almost identical to a ScanEagle but it features a twin-tailboom empennage and an inverted v-tail elerudder similar to that of the RQ-7 Shadow.
Another drone of the same type was reportedly downed in the Qalamoun Mountains on Dec. 7. In this case the UAV is almost intact and easy to ID.
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H/T to @ShamiWitness and @massdall for the links
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