Iran’s Saegheh is no ordinary UAV; it is the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ prize drone for assault and intelligence gathering. It made its debut outside Iran on Saturday, Feb. 10 when it slipped into Israeli airspace, first circling east into Jordan. Until then, the Saegheh (Storm) was not generally known to have reached the Syrian warfront. After it was brought down almost intact by an Israeli Apache helicopter, Israel Air Force jets bombed the drone’s command vehicle deep in central Syria, at the T-4 base near Palmyra, which is shared by Iran and the Russian air force. The speed of this counter-punch confirmed that Israeli intelligence had tracked the drone from the moment it took to the air from T-4 and was on standby to snag it.
The price tag for the operation was paid by the IAF F-16’s exposure to Syrian air defense fire. The two pilots flew the crippled plane back over northern Israel, before ejecting for a parachute landing. One is recovering in hospital from a serious injury; the second was slightly hurt.
The infiltrator drone was discovered to have been part of a whole fleet of advanced armed Saegheh UAVs housed at the T-4 base. The second wave of Israeli air strikes against 12 Syrian and Iranian targets decimated this fleet. Most importantly, the drone intrusion and its sequel exposed the incident to have been no one-off, but part of a calculated Iranian plot against Israel at the highest level, that was coordinated in advance with the Russian air force, which shares the use of T-4, and the Syrian air defense systems, which operate under Russian command. It is equally important to note that Iran brought its Saegheh UAV’s to Syria with Moscow’s consent.
This may be accounted for by the drone’s unique provenance. READ MORE
This may be accounted for by the drone’s unique provenance. READ MORE
