FOXNews.com: DRONE SEIZED? Iranians Claim to Capture 'Enemy' Surveillance Drone

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DRONE SEIZED? Iranians Claim to Capture 'Enemy' Surveillance Drone Feb 24th 2013, 06:59 TEHRAN, Iran –  Iran's Revolutionary Guard said Saturday that it had brought down a foreign surveillance drone during a military exercise in southern Iran. Gen. Hamid Sarkheili, a spokesman for the military exercise, said the Guard's electronic warfare unit spotted signals indicating that foreign drones were trying to enter Iranian airspace.  Sarkheili said Guard experts took control of one unmanned aircraft's navigation system and brought it down near the city of Sirjan where the military drills began on Saturday. "While probing signals in the area, we spotted foreign and enemy drones which attempted to enter the area of the war game," the official IRNA news agency quoted the general as saying. "We were able to get one enemy drone to land." Sarkheili did not say whether the drone was American. In Washington, a CIA spokeswoman declined to comment on the report. State TV said the Guard's military exercise, code-named Great Prophet-8, involved ground forces of the Guard, Iran's most powerful military force. State TV showed tanks and artillery attacking hypothetical enemy positions. He said various systems, including unmanned planes that operate like suicide bombers, were tested. "Reconnaissance as well as suicide drones, which are capable of attacking the hypothetical enemies, were deployed and their operational capabilities were studied," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted him as saying. Iran has claimed to have captured several U.S. drones, including an advanced RQ-170 Sentinel CIA spy drone in December 2011 and at least three ScanEagle aircraft. Earlier this month, Iran said it had broadcast footage on state TV allegedly extracted from the Sentinel after it entered Iranian airspace near the border with Afghanistan. After initially saying only that a drone had been lost near the Afghan-Iran border, American officials eventually confirmed the Sentinel had been monitoring Iran's military and nuclear facilities. Washington asked for it back but Iran refused, and instead released photos of Iranian officials studying the aircraft. In November, Iran claimed that the U.S. drone had violated its airspace. The Pentagon said the aircraft, which came under fire but was not hit, was over international waters. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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