Last month Iran showed off pictures of the Shahed 149 drone on exercises. Referred to as the “Gaza” drone, the system is almost identical to the US Reaper drone, and has impressive capabilities such as a camera with 100 times magnification and the ability to fly 1,000km or more on 35-hour missions.
It joins a long list of Iranian drones that appear to be copied from US models, from the Yasir, a copy of the US ScanEagle, to the Saeqeh, a near copy of the US RQ-170.
How then, might the systems compare? Much about drones like the Reaper and the Shahed 149 remains classified, but aerospace experts interviewed by The National were able to provide a glimpse of the capabilities of the Iranian systems.
The US Reaper
Evolving from the Predator drone – originally an unarmed reconnaissance drone first deployed during Nato’s 1995 intervention in Bosnia – the Reaper became synonymous with the US’s so-called Global War on Terror.
Conducting thousands of air strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen, among other fronts - often from controllers in the US using satellite links to control the drone - it was sought-after for its persistence surveilling small groups of militants, able to fly for 30 hours or more.
Reapers would eventually be kitted out with a Wide Area Motion Imaging (Wami) sensor, a system of cameras and image processors with a data link that could film city-size areas in "super resolution."
“Super resolution – I'm simplifying a lot here – is taking a lot of imagery from multiple cameras, and then you basically bring the imagery all together,” says Robi Sen, an independent consultant on drone technology. During Reaper deployments in Afghanistan, that could result in two-gigapixel imagery, 20 times the resolution of an iPhone 15 photograph, and based on similar civilian technology, CMOS image sensors.
In 2009, the US said its drones had captured 24 years’ worth of video feed if played continuously. Today, Wami sensors can often film areas over 100km2 at once in the right conditions and the latest available for Reapers are 8.1 gigapixels.
They can simultaneously collect infrared imagery – light invisible to the human eye, usually for night vision, but in daytime simultaneous IR collection helps detect objects in shadows. To detect infrared light, the sensor needs a cryocooler, which cools down the detector to around -150°C.
“When you stitch all that imagery together, you can get one really good image, maybe 10 times better than any of the cameras can do by themselves. So this is pretty interesting for things like intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or protecting an area, anything where you may need a lot more resolution," Mr Sen says.
"You could be filming a boat. Let's say there's a figure on the boat, and with your normal resolution you can just see the figure. And when you take the super resolution, you can then zoom in on the individual and see things like facial features.”
Reapers can also be equipped with the Lynx multi mode radar. This has two powerful capabilities, Synthetic Aperture Radar (Sar) which creates images from radar waves, meaning it can peer through clouds (the example in the X post below shows Sar from space).
Secondly, Ground-Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) which can pick out people moving at barely walking speed amid the wide image captures. The Lynx also features automatic man-made object recognition. Combined, these capabilities (which are added according to the mission) give the Reaper the ability to collect large streams of data, in some cases for over 40 hours, in the case of the SkyGuardian Reaper.
The “endurance” of 40 hours is helped by a Honeywell T76 engine, a military version of a propeller plane turboprop engine which propels the drone to speeds of over 480km/h.
Endurance is enhanced by lightweight, strong materials such as carbon fibre and titanium in the airframe, which are expensive. The Reaper therefore doesn't come cheap, at roughly $30 million per aircraft.
How Iran’s Shahed 149 compares
Experts The National spoke to said Iran’s drone is not as capable as the Reaper for several critical reasons, particularly sanctions, which limit Iran’s access to “leading edge” microchips. Sanctions also stop critical components, from camera equipment to cryocoolers for infrared detection and metals such as titanium.
But Iran has a long history of reverse engineering aircraft parts and smuggling, to the point where most components in some of its drones are of US origin. Despite lacking anything close to the US defence budget (approximately $850bn vs $16bn for 2024) Iran’s drones could therefore be “good enough” imitations.
That could be dangerous if they can be made in large enough numbers, but Iran struggles with mass production of drones like the Shahed 149, and for some drones has even resorted to stealing foreign engines. The Shahed 149 contrasts with the cheaper Shahed 136s sent to Russia for the Ukraine war and sent to the Houthis, so-called kamikaze drones.
“We have seen cryocooling equipment used for optics in the Mohaher-6,” says Taimur Khan, a researcher with Conflict Armament Research, which forensically studies Iranian drones used in Yemen by the Houthis and the Russians in Ukraine. “What we have seen are a mix of DSLR cameras, video cameras made for small commercial UAVs and other readily available commercial optics,” he says.
For sophisticated systems like inertial navigation – devices which navigate by calculating changes in speed and altitude, rather than relying on GPS – “we don’t think they make them from scratch, they still require a lot of smuggled non-domestic technology from the US, Japan and China,” Mr Khan says.
“Inertial navigation devices are not the only critical component but a very important one. Iran does still try to domesticate some component production,” Mr Khan adds.
“They have produced their own copies of electromechanical systems such as servo motors to try to be a bit more independent from external supply chains but they will always be dependent on those supply chains when it comes to more sophisticated technology and semiconductors. Even though those components are made by Western manufacturers, they are still in a position to acquire them relatively easily from Chinese distributors.”
For Iran, rapid advances in microchip technology could enable the Shahed 149’s S-813 Sar radar. Iran's advertised capability for the system is much lower-fidelity than the Lynx radar's claimed ability. Mr Sen says that advances in civilian cameras and image processing also mean basic Wami sensors could be within reach.
“Synthetic Aperture Radar is relatively old technology. I'm not surprised the Iranians can do it because a good radar engineer can build one of these things. For drones, it's perfect, because you're flying along and the act of flying creates this artificially large antenna. You need a good processor to do it. But that's not impossible with the chips you can buy now,” says Thomas Withington, an expert on electronic warfare and radar, and an associate fellow at London's Rusi think tank.
Sanctions busting
Daniel Salisbury has studied Iran’s efforts to circumvent sanctions. He says that it is extremely difficult for the West to curtail defence supplies to Iran when it comes to drones.
“The sheer amount of trade moving around the globe makes uncovering, tracking and interdicting even large shipments difficult. There are a number of ways that large shipments are undertaken to avoid scrutiny. If using containerised or commercial shipping, goods are frequently mislabelled on the manifest (something benign like 'machinery') and associated paperwork,” he says.
“Shipments might also be broken up into smaller parts to avoid scrutiny. The states involved in these networks also often use state-controlled assets to move goods rather than commercial logistics. This allows them to remain more in control of the shipments, and reduces the chance of interdiction.
“The dual-use nature of many of these goods make countering the trade even more challenging, making it difficult to uncover shipments destined for military programmes, and also making it difficult to ask countries like China to act and shut down procurement channels," Mr Salisbury says. “The number of states that both seriously care about these transfers and have the means to do something about them is quite low.”
Mr Salisbury says microchip smuggling – and supplies from allies like China – is Iran’s great hope for scaling up drone capability. “Chips are much smaller and easier to transfer," he says.
"We have seen cases where procurement agents are personally trafficking them in suitcases on commercial flights, for example, or in diplomatic pouches. Supply chains for semiconductors are long and complex. They seem to – at least for the lower-end, off-the-shelf chips – involve many intermediaries and distributors. These firms often stock thousands of variants of the chips and have less understanding of what the goods can be used for.”
Despite these opportunities for Iran, Mr Withington cautions that copying only gets you so far, as the US fields next-generation technology. The drone-mounted T-Soar pod, for example, records an enemy radar wave, instantly copies it and broadcasts it back, meaning a Reaper could be almost invisible on radar. “The problem for the Iranians is that they're in danger of not just falling a generation behind, but actually being two generations behind in radar technology,” Mr Withington says.
