Iran claimed Sunday, April 22 that it had reverse-engineered an American spy drone captured byits armed forces last year and has begun building a copy, according to AP.
Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, chief of the aerospace division of the powerful Revolutionary Guards, related what he said were details of the aircraft's operational history to prove his claim that Tehran's military experts had extracted data from the U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel captured inDecember in eastern Iran, state television reported.
Among the drone's past missions, he said, was surveillance of the compound in northwest Pakistan in which Osama Bin Laden lived and was killed.
Tehran has flaunted the capture of the Sentinel, a top-secret surveillance drone with stealth technology, as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States in a complicated intelligence and technological battle. U.S. officials have acknowledged losing the drone. They have said Iranwill find it hard to exploit any data and technology aboard it because of measures taken to limit the intelligence value of drones operating over hostile territory.
Hajizadeh told state television that the captured surveillance drone is a "national asset" for Iranand that he could not reveal full technical details. But he did provide some samples of the datathat he claimed Iranian experts had recovered. He said all operations carried out by the drone hadbeen recorded in the memory of the aircraft, including maintenance and testing.
Hajizadeh claimed that the drone flew over Osama Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan twoweeks before the al-Qaida leader was killed there in May 2011 by U.S. Navy SEALs. He did not say how the Iranian experts knew this. Hajizadeh said the drone was taken to Los Angeles in December 2010 where sensors of the aircraft underwent testing at an aerospace factory.
There are concerns in the U.S. that Iran or other states may be able to reverse-engineer the chemical composition of the drone's radar-deflecting paint or the aircraft's sophisticated optics technology that allows operators to positively identify terror suspects from tens of thousands offeet in the air.
