Iranian Navy Captures Drone During Velayat Drills

On Sunday, the Navy’s anti-drone unit discovered, hacked and took control of the drone patrolling the Iranian waters. The unit managed to scramble the drone’s GPS signals and feed it false location data to make it think it was somewhere it wasn’t. The hacked drone was then intercepted and captured, giving the Iranian forces tactical advantages.

The aircraft was of ‘Mohajer’ class of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. After the drone attack drill, the anti-drone unit experts said they can use similar techniques to capture any other class of military drones.

Iran is running major naval wargames in its territorial waters in the Persian Gulf. The high-profile Velayat exercises is an annual event and all shipping lines and naval vessels in the region are informed of the area of the drills according to international maritime and naval standards that require all foreign ships and vessels to keep some 5 nautical miles away from the wargames zone.

On Wednesday, the US Navy warship received a serious warning from several Iranian destroyers to keep away from their drill zone near the Strait of Hormuz, an incident that can keep frictions high after Iran captured 10 US marines in the Persian Gulf earlier this month.

Also, the Iranian Navy’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a submarine recorded images of a US aircraft carrier on the third day of the main phase of the massive wargames underway along the country’s Southeastern Makran seashores on the rims of the Persian Gulf on Friday.

The Navy’s drone captured a video during the surveillance mission over the US aircraft carrier.

Meantime, a Qadir-class submarine also belonging to the Iranian Navy was also deployed close to the US aircraft carrier with a mission to gather intelligence and capture video of the US vessel’s moves.

The Iranian submarine managed to take clear pictures of the aircraft carrier without catching the attention of the staff on board.

Also on Saturday, the Iranian Naval forces launched multiple torpedoes from heavy Tareq-class and Qadir-class submarines that successfully hit the targets. Also Jamaran and Alvand destroyers fired torpedoes at surface and subsurface vessels on the forth day of the main phase of the massive wargames in the Persian Gulf.