TEHRAN, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Iran will manufacture four versions of the U.S. RQ-170 drone which was downed inside the country in December 2011, a top military commander said on Wednesday.
Iran plans to produce four duplicated versions of RQ-170 by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (which ends on March 20, 2015), Commander of the Aerospace Division of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.
Unlike the original American version which is a spy drone, the first Iranian models are combat drones, said Hajizadeh.
It was announced on Monday that Iran had put into operation a version of the U.S. RQ-170 drone and it had made a successful inaugural flight.
A footage of the RQ-170's flight test was also released by state TV on Wednesday.
Earlier this year, Iran aired decoded video recordings which it said were obtained from a U.S. RQ-170 stealth aircraft. The recordings had been made by the drone's underbelly camera and included views from the area surrounding the Kandahar base in Afghanistan as the drone was about to land.
In December 2011, Iranian media reported that the Iranian military downed the U.S. RQ-170 in the eastern part of Iran after finding it transgressing the eastern border. The country's state TV later showed the footage of the drone.
In April 2012, Hajizadeh said that the experts of IRGC's aerospace division were recovering data from the drone.