Despite U.S. Navy claims to the contrary, Iran claims to have brought down another American drone much like it did this time last year with the RQ-170 debacle.
This time, Tehran claims they've capture a ScanEagle drone that slipped into Iranian airspace and was brought down presumably the same way as last year's RQ-170.
The U.S. Navy says it has lost ScanEagles in the past, but not recently.
Iran has released video to back up its claims. The video is titled "How to hunt UAV 'ScanEagle' by American Revolutionary Guard and" offers a close up video inspection of what by all rights appears to be an American ScanEagle drone.
The video is below:
The website shown in the video belongs to the Young Journalists Club (YJC) and the headline on that site in choppy translation says: "American rapist hunt second UAV Iranian Revolutionary Guards + Video".
I have seen the ScanEagle up close and in action over the Persian Gulf, and it appears to me that the drone in the video is genuine. Some of my photos of the drone are included below.
What is unclear is when the video was made and if it was made by the Iranians. It's not that they would not have the opportunity to find or at least try to capture one.
The ScanEagle is used extensively in the Persian Gulf to monitor area of operations around 5th Fleet. Currently having only one carrier in the area, there's no reason to believe the Navy wouldn't be relying on the ScanEagle more now, and at greater distance than it would with a full carrier group.
The ScanEagle does not land in the traditional sense but is guided in on GPS coordinates into one of two metal cables strung perpendicular to the deck of a ship or the ground. Small reinforced hooks on the wings grab the cable and spiral the bird down to the ground where an operator plucks it from the line and places it back in its case. That hook seen below can also be seen in the Iranian video.
The drone can be equipped with nighttime thermal cameras or traditional lenses and can zoom in to facial level from several thousand feet in the air. Aboard the USS PONCE, the Navy's first forward operating base located in the Persian Gulf not far from Iran, the ScanEagle relay goes to the operations/flight office on deck and to the captain's office.
Here is what the ScanEagle sees with its wide angle camera during normal surveillance:
And with a call to the flight center from the captain, the ScanEagle zoomed in to this within a matter of seconds. It was clear what everyone on the 14-foot inflatable was doing and what they looked like.
The ScanEagle is launched by compressed air and we were told it could spend half a day in the air on about a gallon of gas. If the Iranians did capture one, they've got themselves another nice piece of American technology.
SEE ALSO: How the US Navy showed Iran who really controls the Strait of Hormuz
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