Iran has drones capable of traveling 7,000 km, Major General Hossein Salami, commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic, said on Sunday (June 27), without giving any further details.
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"
We have drones that cover 7000 kilometers, fly, have no pilot and land in the same place [where they took off from] or anywhere else,
" General Salami said in a broadcast speech. by state television. The officer cited the case of these drones among other examples to illustrate the technical progress made by the Guardians, during a ceremony dedicated to the presentation of a vaccine project against Covid-19 soon to enter phase clinical tests. General Salami's statement seems to indicate that the Islamic Republic would have drones with a range of 3,500 km.
So far, according to an article published a little over a month ago by the Club of Young Journalists, an agency dependent on state television, the maximum known range of Iranian drones was 2,000 km (for “
Gaza
”
type aircraft
).
Iran, whose Air Force has an aging fleet, made up mostly of American aircraft acquired under the Shah before the 1979 revolution and whose maintenance is made difficult by international sanctions targeting Tehran , develops numerous drone programs. In July 2019, the Revolutionary Guards, which oversee these programs, announced that they had used drones in a raid against Kurdish fighters based in Iraq, near the Iranian border, and accused by Tehran of "
terrorist acts. .] in the west and north-west of the country
”.