Military news

This past August, the governor of Ilam met with a team from the Artesh to examine whether or not UAVs could be used to help fight the wildfires blazing across the mountainous province in western Iran. As part of this process, the team conducted a demonstration flight. This event was captured by photographers from IRNA who have published some of the most comprehensive images of the system's support equipment seen thusfar. The full gallery is available here . The article describing the evaluation is available here . The UAV in question was a recent-generation Mohajer-4, which can be distinguished from earlier examples by its streamlined fuselage. It is likely operated by the Army's Ground Forces, though the Air Force is a plausible alternative. One crew-member wore an unrecognizable patch on the front of his jumpsuit. This example bears the serial "P062A-36". This is consistent with the only other documented serial of this type - P062A-007 - which was found on an airfra...

This post first appeared on the website OSIMINT on January 8, 2014. It is preserved here as an archive. Some brief edits have been made for clarity and grammar. --- Before the demands of war led to the use of rotary and fixed-wing attack aircraft, pro-Assad forces in Syria used lightweight UAVs for aerial surveillance. Since they were first documented over Homs in February 2012, footage of Iranian built AB-3 tactical UAVs have increasingly appeared in open-source reporting. Since the Summer of 2013 AB-3s have been joined by smaller Yasir UAVs, also built by Iran. Insurgents downed their first UAV in May 2013 and have brought down at least eight more since. Open-source reporting indicates that the majority of UAVs have been deployed to Damascus. 80% of all AB-3 sightings took place over the capital. This likely reflects both the importance of the capital, and the project's evidence bias. There's no way to know whether or not aerial activity over Damascus is more likely to be rec...