Iran
continued to tout its technical prowess in bringing down a US drone
Thursday, with one Iranian engineer saying the Islamic Republic was able
to reconfigure the RQ-170's GPS system causing it to land in Iran
instead of its homebase in Afghanistan, according to the Christian
Science Monitor.
"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the
Iranian engineer told the paper, speaking on condition of anonymity for
safety purposes, according the Monitor.
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According
to the
engineer, the Iranian military was able to "confuse" the drone's
navigational network in order to make it land "where we wanted to." Iranian scientists crafted the technical
trick based on technology taken from previously captured US drones. The
information provided by the Iranian scientist - the most complete
explanation of how Iran managed to down the US drone without shooting it
out of the sky - came as Iran announced it plans to put several foreign
unmanned spy planes it has in its possession on display in the near
future, including four Israeli drones.
Earlier Thursday, the
Tehran Times
quoted an informed source as saying that Iran also has three US drones
in its possession, including the RQ-170 unmanned aircraft that Iran
displayed on television last week.
According to the report, Iranian reporters and foreign ambassadors will be allowed to visit the exhibit.
The
Tehran Times quoted the source as saying that the Israeli drones had entered Iran's airspace along its eastern border.
The US drone, which Iran claims to have brought down on December 4, is
the most advanced of the unmanned spy planes in Tehran's possession, the
source stated.
Iran stated
earlier this week that it planned to "reverse-engineer" the RQ-170 drone and mass produce it in the near future.
On Tuesday,
US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers was quoted as
saying by AFP that, while "it's not a good day for the United States"
when a hostile nation obtains US technology, the threat of Iran
"reverse-engineering" the technology and mass producing the drone, as it
has promised, does not pose that great a threat to the US.
""The good news is, while they're spending time re-engineering, we will
be spending time engineering, and that's the biggest difference," Rogers
stated.
"They're very proud that they're going to re-engineer this, and I hope
they spend five, six, seven, eight years doing that, that would be
great, because we'll be long past that," he added.
