U.S. Middle East command CENTCOM published a compilation of footage showing strikes on various iranian equipment using strike drones. At one moment in this video, one can see destruction of a certain large drone with flying wing design that was on the ground at the moment of strike.
This drone turned out to be the iranian Shahed-171 reconnaissance drone, which has quite an interesting origin story. It’s a complete copy of the American ultra-secret RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone, created through its reverse engineering.
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In 2011, the American RQ-170 Sentinel was conducting flights over western Afghanistan. However, communication with it was suddenly lost. As later turned out, iran conducted an entire operation to intercept it.
First, iranians jammed the communication channel with the RQ-170 Sentinel. Immediately after this, it should have returned in autonomous mode to its takeoff point. However, along with jamming communications, iranians also began spoofing its coordinates, leading the RQ-170 Sentinel to their airfield.
After which it landed and ended up in iranian hands. The American side was outraged by this incident. Then-President Barack Obama even asked for the machine’s return. However, iran refused the request, reporting they planned to create their own copy of the RQ-170 Sentinel that would be even better than the original.
Several years later, iran published recordings from the RQ-170 Sentinel’s camera, indicating iranians managed to figure out its electronics and decrypt certain data. This possibility initially raised doubts among U.S. experts.
There’s a claim that electronic warfare systems iran used to suppress signal and spoof the RQ-170 Sentinel’s coordinates were allegedly provided by russians. This sounds quite logical, considering the level of russia-iran cooperation, as well as iranians’ lack of their own powerful EW systems.
Regarding Shahed-171 itself, it has been mass-produced in iran for a long time. Externally it’s identical to the original, but how close iranians managed to get to the RQ-170 Sentinel’s technical characteristics, let alone exceed them, is questionable.
While they may have surpassed flight capabilities in some ways, in terms of onboard sensors and reconnaissance equipment, the iranian Shahed-171 obviously lags far behind.
Speaking of its original the RQ-170 Sentinel this is currently perhaps the most secret American drone. Its existence was first publicly announced only in 2009, although it’s been in operation much longer. Despite this, very little information about it still exists. Even an extremely limited number of photographs exist.
It’s known it was used during the Afghanistan war (from 2007), Osama bin Laden’s elimination in 2011, Operation Midnight Hammer in 2025. In 2022, it could have been hunting russians in temporarily occupied Crimea.
Besides this, this year it already participated in Operation Absolute Resolve, during which it conducted live broadcast specifically for Trump. Now it’s probably also participating in Operation Epic Fury.
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