Iran’s aerospatial division commander, Amir Ali Hajizadeh announced that they have built a drone from the recovered “codes” of RQ-170 Sentinal, a U.S surveillance drone that went down last December.
US officials have acknowledged that it went down while it was on a spy mission over Iran.
Iranian engineers claim that they were successful in hacking the control system of the unmanned aircraft, which enabled them to land the aircraft in Iranian territory.
American officials continue to insist that there was a malfunction causing the UAV to go down.
There is also huge scepticism among U.S officials who doubt that Iran has the technological capability to pull off an operation of this nature.
Joe Lieberman, chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee doubts that “they are really able to make a copy of it.”
Dennis M. Gormley, an expert on drones and cruise missiles at the University of Pittsburgh, dismissed Iran’s claims.
Speaking to the New York Times he said “As someone who does monitor Iranian airspace and missile claims closely, let me simply observe that they are preternaturally disposed to exaggeration.”
According to some news outlets, Russia and China have requested Iran to share information regarding the drone, but the Iran’s Defence Ministry has denied these claims.
