Iran shows off underground drone base without revealing its location
Middle East, News May 31, 2022 1 Comment on Iran shows off underground drone base without revealing its locationIranian state television showed footage of an underground airbase for the military attack drones built beneath the Zagros mountain range, however, the exact location of the base was not revealed.
Iranian state-owned media agency was invited by the Iranian military to show the insides of an underground drone base that contains at least 100 drones including Iran’s most advanced and newly built Ababil-5 drone which is equipped with Qaem-9 missile system. Ababil-5 is the Iranian version of the U.S. Hellfire air-to-surface attack drone.
The flagship of the fleet was the Kaman-22 drone, Kaman-22 is Iran’s Unmanned Aerial Combat Vehicle (UACV) that can carry a payload of 300 kilograms and able to fly at least 2,000 kilometers.
Commander of the Iranian military Major General Abdulrahim Mousavi moderated the media tour of the underground base. Mousavi said “No doubt the drones of Islamic Republic of Iran’s armed forces are the region’s most powerful. Our capability to upgrade drones is unstoppable.”
The media correspondent who visited the base said that in order to reach the base he made a 45-minute-long helicopter journey from Kermanshah, a city in western Iran. To maintain the secrecy of location, he was only allowed to take off the blindfolds only after they had reached the underground base.
The footage from inside the base showed a row of missile-fitted and flight-ready drones parked inside a tunnel that was hundreds of meters long.
Iran first started developing drones and UAVs in the 1980s during its eight-year war with Iraq. U.S. and Israel have repeatedly accused Iran of dispatching fleets of drones to carry out strategic attacks in Middle Eastern conflicts including Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria. They have also accused the Iranian drones of carrying out a September 2019 drone strike on a Saudi oil refinery, as well as the drone attack on a commercial ship off the coast of Oman in July 2021, that killed two crewmen.
The U.S. Treasury Department has slapped sanctions on the Iranian drone program last year after they blacklisted Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran’s unveiling of its advance underground drone bases comes only one day after Iranian Revolutionary Guards seized two Greek tankers in the Gulf. The scuffle is the result of Greek authorities’ action from last month, in which they impounded the Iranian-flagged tanker, with 19 Russian crew members on board, due to European Union sanctions. The seizure of the Iranian oil tanker inflamed tensions at a delicate time when U.S. and Iran are trying to revive the new nuclear deal that former U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned to impose sanctions on Iran.
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[…] this year, Iranian state-owned media unveiled an underground drone base that contains at least 100 drones including Iran’s most advanced and newly built Ababil-5 drone which is equipped with Qaem-9 […]