Did Iran Shoot Down a U.S. MQ-1? What the Sirik Claim Says

Iran’s Army has claimed that a new air defence system operated by its navy shot down and destroyed a U.S. MQ-1 unmanned aerial vehicle over the Kuhestak area of Sirik County in Hormozgan province, near the Strait of Hormuz, on November 13. The Army’s public relations office announced the shootdown a few hours after the engagement it described, without naming the new system, identifying the drone’s variant or publishing radar data, while pledging to take all necessary measures to protect the country’s territorial integrity, maritime borders and national interests. U.S. Central Command declined to comment on the Iranian claim on November 13. The announcement is significant less for the single airframe than for its source, crediting the regular military’s navy rather than the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with an air defence kill along the coast facing the strait.

The claim came hours after the Guard Corps said it had destroyed a U.S. early warning radar in Bahrain, describing the strike as retaliation for an attack on a telecommunications tower in Sirik on November 12. A week earlier, on November 6, the Guard Corps Aerospace Force said it had shot down over Qeshm Island what it called the 16th U.S. MQ-1 of the war, and put its overall tally at 56 MQ-9 Reaper and 16 MQ-1 drones, 72 American unmanned aircraft in all since the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28. Washington has not confirmed the Iranian tally, but a Department of Defense Inspector General report released in mid-September stated that as many as 30 MQ-9s were destroyed in various circumstances between February 28 and June 30, a count that includes aircraft hit on the ground.

The MQ-1 designation itself raises questions that the Iranian Army’s announcement did not address on November 13. The U.S. Air Force retired its last MQ-1B Predators in March 2018 after more than two decades of service, leaving the U.S. Army’s MQ-1C Gray Eagle, a larger derivative of the Predator with a heavy fuel engine and the ability to carry four AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, as the only aircraft of the MQ-1 family still flown by American forces. If the claim and its label are accurate, they would point to the U.S. Army flying medium altitude drones in a theatre where the Air Force’s Reapers have suffered heavy attrition, although the designation may also be applied loosely to American drones that cannot be identified from wreckage, and the shootdown itself remains unconfirmed. Images of damaged hardware circulated by Iranian state media after the announcement have not been independently verified.

The claim adds to a run of Iranian announcements around the waterway, including the Guard Corps’ strikes on navigation installations on Didamar Island and repeated statements that tankers have struck mines in the strait, some of which Central Command has disputed. The best documented precedent over the strait remains June 20, 2019, when the Guard Corps brought down a U.S. Navy RQ-4A Global Hawk, a high altitude surveillance aircraft with a wingspan of almost 40 metres, using its domestically produced Khordad-3 surface to air missile system, with U.S. officials confirming the loss while insisting the aircraft had been flying in international airspace.