A suicide drone is being tested for the first time in massive ongoing military drills near the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, Iran's army said on Saturday, the third practice day of the drills.
The unmanned aircraft, which is designed to strike air, ground and naval targets, was described as a "mobile bomb" by Gen. Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, the army's chief commander of ground forces, according to RT.
The domestically produced combat drone, unveiled in September, can be used for "hitting aerial and ground targets and can carry out an attack when it identifies a suspicious target," Pourdastan told journalists on Saturday.
Since Thursday, the six-day military exercise is being carried out by all branches of Iran's military over 527,000 square kilometers (850,000 square miles) near the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which one-fifth of the world's oil supply passes, the Associated Press reported.
The second stage of the maneuvers, which launched on Friday, was led by ground forces and involved the military's land, air and naval forces in southeast Iran. According to local reports, the exercises also included tanks, F-4 Phantom and Mirage fighter jets, helicopters, missiles and artillery units.
Military capabilities and combat readiness will be boosted through the massive drills, said Air Force spokesman Brigadier General Hossein Chitforoush.
"In these drills, Iran is putting to the test and drawing on the experience it gained during the eight-year [Iraqi imposed] war," the top commander told Iranian news television Press TV on Saturday.
While an online news website called it the Raad, the conservative Kayhan daily referred to it as the Yasir. However, both Pourdastam and Iran officials did not provide an official name for the aerial device.
In December 2012, at least three Boeing-designed American ScanEagle drones were seized by Iran after they allegedly violated its airspace over the Persian Gulf. According to western analysts, the Yasir drone is a modified version of the American ScanEagle drone.
It was first unveiled last year, with officials stating that it could fly for up to 10 hours with a range of 200 kilometers, carry out 360-degree imaging and reach an altitude of 4,500 meters due to being equipped with state-of-art, light cameras for reconnaissance.
In addition, Iran is also believed to have produced its own remotely piloted suicide drone, the Raad-85, which is designed to crash into targets and set off its warhead.
Known to frequently tout advances in its homegrown aerospace industries, the drills mark the first time Iran has organized military maneuvers so far from its coastline, according to the Lebanese Daily Star newspaper.
Stretching from the eastern part of the Strait of Hormuz to the Indian Ocean, which includes the southeastern provinces of Hormozgan and Sistan-Baluchistan, the exercises reportedly cover 2.2 million square kilometers, a 24-hour flight capability, and can carry eight bombs or missiles capable of hitting both stationary and moving targets.
