Israeli-made UAV over Iran

Israeli-made UAV over Iran

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Illustration

Drones originally produced in Israel are currently in operational use by many countries. This is the best explanation to what the Iranians called yesterday “shooting down an Israeli spy-UAV”.

Iranian TV featured the UAV, or alleged debris thereof, along with the claims that the UAV – probably an Elbit Hermes-450 – conducted ‘an Israeli spying mission’ over one of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Iranians publish a great deal of news that have no truth or logic to them, and this is yet another example.

The Hermes UAV was not designed for long flights such as the distance between Israel and Iran. This is a tactical UAV which is currently highly active in the sky over Gaza. According to experts, this UAV cannot make a round trip from Israel to Iran and back. It can only cover the distance to Iran – and even this with a relatively light dedicated payload, which limits its performance.

Here is another fact: Israel has at its disposal far better tracking means, which observe Iran continuously. These are Israel’s Ofek espionage satellites, which can see everything at very high resolutions using a dedicated payload in the form of a night-vision and poor visibility radar.

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Unmanned systems conference 2014 – Israel

So what could serve as a plausible explanation?

According to various sources in the foreign press, Elbit Hermes-450 systems have been sold to numerous countries, one of which is Azerbaijan, which is not the only country concerned over the goings on across the border with Iran, so it is very likely that Azerbaijan launched the UAV on a reconnaissance mission.

Georgia also has Israeli-made UAVs, some of which the Russians shot down during the recent war between the two countries.

If any concerned nation in the region launched the UAV, it most likely came from Azerbaijan. It might also be that a third country launched the UAV from another country.

Another puzzle: the nuclear facilities in Natanz are all underground, so UAVs flying overhead can produce very little intelligence about them, if any.

Another issue: at such a long range, the UAV cannot transmit back to Israel – unless using an aerial relay station.

So it would seem this was indeed a Hermes-450 UAV, which was made in Israel, but whence it came and who launched it? These questions remain open.