The Israeli military said an Iranian drone it shot down over the weekend was based on an American stealth drone that was intercepted by Iran six years ago.
Israeli Army spokesman Lt. Col Jonathan Conricus told CNN that the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or drone, had been dispatched on a specific mission inside Israel.
The Israeli military had tracked the drone from its launch inside Syria, entering Israeli air space at 4.50 a.m. local time Saturday. The drone was shot down by an Apache attack helicopter and its remains fell north of the Israeli town of Beit She’an.
Iran said the claims regarding the downed drone were “too ridiculous to be addressed,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi.
“The government and army of Syria as an independent country have a legitimate right to defend [the country’s] territorial integrity and counter any type of foreign aggression,” Qassemi said on Saturday as quoted by state channel PRESS TV.
The drone was based on the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 “Sentinel,” which Iran intercepted in December 2011, on what the U.S. said was a reconnaissance mission.
In May 2014, Iran said it had built a copy of the drone after reverse engineering most of the technology.
Conricus said the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) knew from the drone’s flightpath that it had a particular mission, but he wouldn’t give any details, nor would he tell CNN if the drone had been armed.
He confirmed that it was the first time an Iranian drone had crossed into Israeli airspace since the start of the Syrian civil war.
