Islamic Iran Exercises Targeting UAVs with Hawk Missiles

Iranian air defense units exercised targeting Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with anti-aircraft Hawk missiles during the second of massive military drills underway in the Eastern parts of the country.

The Air Defense units of the Iranian Armed Forces started massive exercises, codenamed “Modafe’an-e Aseman-e Velayat 4 (Defenders of Velayat Skies 4)”, on Monday.

On the second day of the exercises on Tuesday, the air defense units fired a Hawk missile at a drone and destroyed it.

The missile was fired by a mobile air defense system on a missile-launching vehicle.

Earlier today, Commander of Khatam ol-Anbia Air Defense Base Brigadier General Farzad Esmayeeli announced that Iran has optimized the mid-range Hawk air defense missiles and planned to test the home-made version of the missile in today’s drills.

“The Hawk missiles which are good for medium altitudes have been optimized and indigenized in the country,” Esmayeeli told reporters on the sidelines of “Modafe’an-e Aseman-e Velayat 4 (Defenders of Velayat Skies 4)” air defense drills.

He pointed to the Mersad air defense system which has been used in the wargames, and said the mid-range system is “much more advanced and different” from those systems tested in the air defense drills last year.

The Mersad system equipped with mid-range Hawk missile named ‘Shahin’ is capable of tracing and targeting any enemy aircraft at 70 to 150km altitude and is considered as a mid-altitude system among the country’s missile shields.