14 September 2022

Remnants of Iranian UAV found in Ukraine

by Jeremy Binnie

A photograph tweeted by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence on 13 September 2022 shows what it identified as the remnants of an Iranian Shahed-136 UAV that was shot down near Kupiansk. (Ukrainian Ministry of Defence)

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence tweeted photographs on 13 September showing what it said was an Iranian Shahed-136 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that its forces shot down near Kupiansk in the eastern province of Kharkiv.

The photographs, which were posted on Twitter earlier that day by a Ukrainian explosives ordnance disposal officer, showed wreckage that appeared to be identical to the vertical stabilisers fitted to the ends of the wings of a UAV seen in media coverage of an exercise held by Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) in December 2021.

The six that were launched from a truck in the exercise had serial numbers between A401 and A522 on their vertical stabilisers, while the one recovered in Ukraine was labelled as M214 in what appeared to be the same font with the name Geran-2 added in Cyrillic below.

A similar vertical stabiliser was seen in photographs that the US Central Command (CENTCOM) released, which showed the remnants of a UAV that hit the tanker Mercer Street in the Arabian Sea on 30 July 2021. US CENTCOM identified it as coming from the same Iranian UAV family that was used against Saudi oil infrastructure in 2019, saying there are small and large versions. It earlier identified the small version as having the designation IRN-05, but it is unclear if this is also used for the larger one.

In a speech to the United Nations Security Council on 27 September 2021, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett identified the type used against Mercer Street

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence tweeted photographs on 13 September showing what it said was an Ir...

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