DE FAAKTO INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH OBSERVATORY
SITUATION-UNITED STATES DRONE SHOT DOWN BY IRAN OVER STRAIT OF HORMUZ
BACKGROUND-IRAN SAYS DRONE WAS IN IRANIAN AIRSPACE
METHODOLOGY-OSINT research
What Do We Know?
- June 20, 2019-Iran shot down a United States unmanned aerial vehicle over the Strait of Hormuz, which runs between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman
- Iran identified the drone as an RQ-4A Global Hawk, a $220 million UAV that acts as a massive aerial surveillance platform
- Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps says the Northrup Grumman-made Global Hawk had entered Iranian airspace
- US Central Command insists that the drone was flying in international airspace
- The US also said that Iran had attempted to shoot down a different UAV—an MQ-9 Reaper drone—but failed
- The Pentagon also linked Iran to an attack on a Reaper drone in Yemen two weeks ago that caused the vehicle to crash (Wired, 2019)
How Was the Drone Shot Down?
- The drone was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile
- UAV was located in international airspace at an altitude of 22,209 ft (6,769 m) over the Gulf of Oman immediately before it was hit (Janes, 2019)
- Iran credited a 3 Khordad, one of several new indigenous surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems, with the shoot-down of the US Global Hawk (Janes, 2019)
- Both United States Central Command and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps say the high-altitude drone was shot down by a surface-to-air missile
- This demonstrates that Iran has effective surface-to-air missile technology
What Do We Know About the RQ-4A Global Hawk?
- The Drone shot down is a U.S. Navy Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS-D) aircraft
- It is the Navy’s version of the Air Force’s high-flying RQ-4A Global Hawk
- It is an unmanned aircraft that is intended for surveillance at sea
- Global Hawk drones are unarmed and only used to collect intelligence
- The drone flies at altitudes of up to 60,000 feet, almost twice as high as a commercial airliner
- The cost of a single Global Hawk drone was more than $176 million in 2011
- Global Hawks are not stealth aircraft (Time, 2019)
- The Global Hawk has a 130-ft wingspan, similar to a Boeing 737 passenger jet
- The Global Hawk is easily observable on radar
- The Drone is designed to fly slowly at high altitudes
- Global Hawks loiter over areas to collect as much information as possible (Time, 2019)
- A drone such as the one shot down is suspected to be carrying advanced technology such as high definition and infra-red cameras and sensors that can intercept telephone and radio chatter
Resources
THE DRONE IRAN SHOT DOWN WAS A $220M SURVEILLANCE MONSTER-Wired (2019) https://www.wired.com/story/iran-global-hawk-drone-surveillance/
What We Know About Iran Shooting Down a U.S. Drone-The New York Times (2019) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/us/politics/drone-shot-down-iran-us.html
Global Hawk shootdown validates Iran’s indigenous SAM capabilities-Janes Defense Weekly (2019) https://www.janes.com/article/89422/global-hawk-shootdown-validates-iran-s-indigenous-sam-capabilities
Iran Shot Down a $176 Million U.S. Drone. Here’s What to Know About the RQ-4 Global Hawk-Time (2019) https://time.com/5611222/rq-4-global-hawk-iran-shot-down/