According to a number of bloggers writing about Iranian aviation developments, the unmanned aerial vehicle unveiled at the beginning of the month, was not manufactured in Iran but rather by a Japanese university.
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At the beginning of the month, the Iranians boasted of a successful VTOL aircraft test flight. However, according to the USKOWI ON IRAN blog, which follows the Islamic Republic's developments, this was actually a QTW model UAV, developed in 2008 at the Chiba University in Japan.
Iranians claim to develop Japanese-made aircraft
The first to expose this was British blogger Gary Mortimer, who writes an aviation-related blog. "When I first saw it, I knew that I had seen it before, but couldn't grasp where", wrote Mortimer. The blogger later added that the Iranians may have possibly acquired the UAV, or parts of it, for experimental purposes.
Dr. Jabbar Fazeli, an Iranian blogger living out of the country, added that the Iranians outdid themselves by taking the picture of the aircraft from the Japanese university's website and publishing it in one of the country's most widely-dispersed newspapers, "Ettela'at."
Following the successful infiltration of Hezbollah's Iranian-made UAV into Israeli territory at the beginning of October, the Iranians have repeatedly issued statements regarding their 'successes' in the field.
Amongst other claims, Iranian senior military officials have said that they are currently working on a 2,000-kilometer range UAV; hinting at their ability to launch it in Israel's direction.
Iranian unmanned aircraft can fly 1,000 km (Screenshot)
A few months ago, the Iranians successfully developed an unmanned aircraft capable of flying 1,000 kilometers and published a picture of it in the local media.
Iranian Deputy Defense Minister Mohammed Eslami told Iran's Fars News Agency that, "during the Revolutionary Guards' last drill, an Iranian-made, unmanned combat aircraft was launched and as planned, we are currently at the stage of installing missiles on UAVs". Aside from the picture, no additional evidence of the aircraft's existence or capabilities has been presented.
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