Since the capture of the US RQ-170, Tehran has been using the media to display its capability to reverse engineer or build its own unmanned aircraft.
However, some of them seem to be modified radio-controlled models rather than real UAS. Anyway, those made by the students at the Nasr Toosi Technical University, are believed to give a hint at where Iranians are in their Micro-UAV development.
For instance, one of the University’s micro-drones is a model helicopter modified to carry a small video camera. As the images show, the tail boom and the landing skids have the word “ALIGN” written on them in English. A quick visit to Google brings up the manufacturer as ALIGN-TREX, a British Radio controlled helicopter specialist with an online shop, while the camera set up suspiciously looks like a SONY Handycam – again commercially available.
The intended use of this device is quite hard to understand. The camera must have an internal memory as the model does not look to have a transmitter to send the real time images back to a receiver/base station (that would also need a power supply which is not visible). This discounts a urban battlespace ‘eye in the sky’ for a normal drone used to record images to view at a later date.
The second model has a twin tail boom, a size that would suggest a greater payload capacity and perhaps a real time video transmission capability.
The third model looks more like a classical UAS. Grey in colour, a rounded nose and what looks like a moveable nose area with a small camera able to move up and down in the slot giving a 180 degree field of view, the drone seems to be powered by an electric motor powering a push propeller.
Photos: YJC Photos
Source: The Aviationist
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