Iranian Navy captured two U.S. UAVs in past: Iranian admiral

TEHRAN,Jan.5(MNA) – The Iranian Navy captured two U.S. RQ-11 unmanned aerial vehicles in the past two years, the deputy commander of the Iranian Navy announced on Wednesday. Rear Admiral Amir Rastegari said that the UAVs were captured in August 2011 and October 2012. He added that Iranian experts have cracked the codes of the UAVs. Iran had previously announced that it had brought down several U.S. drones. On December 4, 2011, Iran announced that an advanced RQ-170 unmanned U.S. spy plane had been brought down in eastern Iran near the border with Afghanistan by the armed forces of the Islamic Republic but did not say when the incident occurred. On December 10, 2012, the commander of the Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) announced that Iran had decoded all the data from the RQ-170 drone. “We have decoded all the systems and (data storage devices) of the aircraft and obtained all the data from it,” Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said. “There is nothing that we do not know about the aircraft. We know where the aircraft had gone step by step.” The commander of the IRGC Naval Force, Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, also announced on December 4, 2012 that IRGC naval forces had captured a U.S. ScanEagle drone that had violated Iranian airspace.