European Drone Expert: Shooting Down of US Drone Viewed As Milestone

A senior fellow expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and a drone expert stressed that shooting down of a US Triton Global Hawk drone by Iran was a landmark event as it inflicted heavy damage to Washington.

“The GH (Global Hawk) is the world’s biggest drone system. We are talking about a flying data hoover, filled with high tech equipment. This is a hugely expensive system,” Ulrike E Franke, an expert in German foreign and defense Policy, UAVs/drones, revolutions in military affairs and military technology, wrote on her twitter page on Thursday.

“Of course, losing an expensive drone is not the same as losing the pilot(s) of a manned system. But this isn’t a throwaway drone whose loss the US will just shrug off,” she added.

Franke added that the drone was specifically designed to be largely invulnerable – because it flies to extremely high, noting, “Losing this Triton/Global Hawk hence hurts the US quite a lot. And (again, speaking as drone scholar, not geopolitical commentator here) depending on the exact circumstances, this incident may also hurt exports of the system.”

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) in a statement on Thursday disclosed details about the shooting down of a US spy drone near the Strait of Hormuz, stressing that it was downed after violating Iranian airspace over the Southern coasts.

“The Global Hawk spy drone took off from one of the US forces’ bases South of the Persian Gulf at 00:14 am today and turned off all its Identification (Identification Friend or Foe) equipment and continued flight from the Strait of Hormuz to Chabahar port in a full stealth mode,” the statement said at Thursday noon after the IRGC declared in an earlier statement that it had shot down the drone at dawn.

“The drone started collecting intel in a spying operation when it was returning towards the Western parts of the region near the Strait of Hormuz and it violated the airspace over the Islamic Republic of Iran’s territory,” it added.

“The IRGC Aerospace Force’s air defense system targeted and destroyed the hostile aircraft which had entered Iran’s territorial airspace at 04:05 am,” the statement said.

The IRGC had announced in a statement early Thursday that the US-made Global Hawk surveillance drone was brought down by its Air Force near the Kouh-e Mobarak region in the Central district of Jask after the aircraft violated Iran’s airspace.

The RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft system (UAS) can fly at high altitudes for more than 30 hours, gathering near-real-time, high-resolution imagery of large areas of land in all types of weather.

US officials confirmed the report that one of its drones was shot down by Iranian surface-to-air missile, but said the aircraft was a US Navy MQ-4C Triton high-altitude drone. Both types of aircraft are among highly advanced US-made unmanned planes, but the MQ series is reportedly the state-of-the-art and the best and most equipped drone ever made by the US.

Also, IRGC Commander Major General Hossein Salami confirmed downing of the US spy drone on the Southern coasts of Iran on Thursday, stressing that the move should alert Washington officials to stay away.

“At dawn, the IRGC Air Force bravely downed an enemy spy drone which had crossed our borders and was violating our national security,” General Salami said, addressing a congress in the Western province of Kurdistan.

He added that the incident sent “a clear message” to the US and other enemies that Iran will show a firm and crushing response to any aggression.

“Borders are our red lines and any enemy which violates them will not go back home and will be annihilated. The only way for enemies is to respect Iran’s territorial integrity and national interests,” General Salami said.

“We declare that we do not want war with any country but we are fully ready for war and the today incident was a clear instance of this precise message,” he underscored.