Iranian media have released high-quality footage that shows a surveillance drone belonging to the elite Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) flying over an American aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf and capturing images of the aircraft parked on its deck.
The video, which was released Saturday by Iran’s Tasnim News Agency, shows a domestically-built Ababil-III drone operated by the IRGC’s Navy capturing close-up shots from above USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Besides the aircraft carrier, a destroyer and another, apparently logistical, vessel were also filmed.
The footage, the agency said, “bears special features not seen in videos previously [captured and] released of these vessels.” The report added, “The IRGC’s Navy maintains [surveillance] command over all terrorist US forces in the region, including the Persian Gulf, and closely monitors their movements.”
The report did not specify the date of the footage, which emerged a month after the IRGC’s Aerospace Division held offensive-combat drone exercises in the Persian Gulf region, involving dozens of RQ-170 stealth unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which Iran has manufactured based on a model of a US Sentinel drone it captured unharmed in 2011.
