In the past few years, Tehran and its proxies have carried out a number of attacks on Israeli, American, and Saudi targets using drones. Unlike America’s Predator drones, which can fire missiles and then return to their bases, these are laden within explosives and simply crashed into their intended targets. The Wall Street Journal reports that these aircraft are “often made with widely available components used in the ever-growing commercial drone market and by hobbyists,” but some borrow engines or other design features from U.S. and Israeli models, likely based on pirated blueprints or, in at least one case, reverse-engineering components of a downed drone. Seth Frantzman observes:
Iran’s drone program, unlike its nuclear-weapons program, is not secretive. The Islamic Republic openly brags about its drone capabilities. It highlights every new drone and makes outrageous claims about [them]. Iran has claimed that its drones can fly thousands of kilometers and that it can arm some of them with missiles.
What we know is that Iranian drones can carry out precision attacks, pre-programmed using a set of coordinates. They can wreak havoc, but they are not a weapon that wins wars. . . . The drones themselves . . . can be transported or assembled in different places. For instance, Iran launched drones from its T-4 base in Syria and used them to target Israel in February 2018 and May 2021. It has provided drone-making technology to the Houthis in Yemen.
The drones [give Tehran both] plausible deniability and an ability to overcome air defenses and radar by using swarm attacks of large numbers of drones. Iran has shown proficiency in getting around Saudi and U.S. air defenses in some cases. Israel has used the Iron Dome and missiles fired from aircraft and helicopters to shoot down the relatively slow drones. . . . But there are not enough radar and air-defense systems around the region to defend everything.
Read more on Jerusalem Post: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/the-world-is-waking-up-to-irans-drone-threat-681312