Iran says “wards off” US drone

Iran’s military has detected a USA military drone in the airspace of the country, leaving the device recognition after warnings, the Iranian news agency Tasnim stated.

The pilotless aircraft was flying as near as 20 miles (32 kilometers) away from the Iranian airspace, but changed its path after receiving a timely warning from the Iranian forces.

The American spy drone was flown from a base in Afghanistan’s Qandahar and is thought to have been programmed to intrude into Iran’s airspace.

Iranian Army’s Air Defense Base has reportedly warned off a U.S. radar-evading unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which had sought to intrude on Iranian airspace.

Iran has said it managed to reverse-engineer the RQ-170 Sentinel, seized in December 2011 after it entered Iranian airspace from neighboring Afghanistan, and that it is capable of launching its own production line for the unmanned aircraft.

In 2014, Iran said it had successfully tested its own version of a US-made drone based on one it had captured.

A USA defense official said last week that four of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) vessels “harassed” a US warship on Tuesday near the Strait of Hormuz.

The incidents all occurred in the Persian Gulf on Wednesday, a day after another encounter in which a group of Iranian naval vessels with their weapons uncovered sped close to two US Navy guided-missile destroyers.