Iran’s IRGC cyber-warriors take control of mock enemy’s another spy drone

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has successfully taken control of the mock enemy’s reconnaissance drone on the first day of the Payambar-e Azam 8 (The Great Prophet 8) military drills, which are being held in the southeastern province of Kerman.

The spokesman of the war games, Brigadier General Hamid Sarkheili, told reporters late on Saturday that the IRGC forces took control of the drone’s guidance system and managed to bring it down.

The IRGC Ground Force started the Payambar-e Azam 8 exercise, which includes practice maneuvers of various defense tactics, in southeastern Iran on Saturday.

Special modern warfare units conducted drills, asymmetric warfare tactics were practiced, and various types of unmanned aerial vehicles were tested on the first day of the war games.

A report published in the Wall Street Journal on December 2, 2012 quoted US officials as saying that Washington has stepped up its spying operations on the Bushehr nuclear plant in southern Iran “over the past two months.”

The report said the surveillance of the Iranian nuclear facility was being “conducted in part with the Pentagon’s fleet of drones operating over the Persian Gulf.”

On December 4, 2012, the IRGC Navy commander, Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, said his forces had captured a US ScanEagle drone over the waters of the Persian Gulf after it intruded into Iranian airspace.

In December 2011, the Iranian military took control of a US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft while it was flying over the Iranian city of Kashmar, some 225 kilometers (140 miles) from the Afghan border.

The US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft was forced to land with minimal damage by the Iranian Army’s electronic warfare unit. The aircraft is one of the United States’ most advanced spy drones.