Iran Hacks into Three Foreign Aircraft near its Airspace

Iranian experts employed an array of electronic warfare (EW) tactics to hack into three hostile foreign aircraft as they were on a reconnaissance missions in the country's airspace, a top official has claimed.

“A while ago, a hostile aircraft breached our flight information region (FIR) and started emitting waves in order to collect information. We confronted the plane straight away. The enemy pilot thought there was a technical glitch with his aircraft system; so he contacted his command center and informed them of the problem and the decision to return. That communication is in our possession,” Brigadier General Amir Rastegari, chief executive officer of Iran Electronics Industries (IEI), was quoted as saying by semi-official Tasnim news agency on Monday.

IEI is a state-owned subsidiary of Iran's Ministry of Defense.

In aviation, FIR is a specified region of airspace in which a flight information service and an alerting service (ALRS) are provided.

Rastegari added, “The following day, two more enemy aircraft flew over the area in close proximity to each other. We disrupted their activities in yet another hacking operation as we had already detected and uncovered the bandwidth.”

“As soon as we started jamming, the two planes realized that Iranian ground systems were disrupting them. They, therefore, informed their command center about the presence of a jamming system in the area and their inability to operate there,” he added.

Rastegari claimed that the capability now exists in all units of the Iranian Armed Forces, and Iranian forces can at anytime jam hostile aircraft from a distance of several hundred kilometers away.

Earlier this month, the Iranian Army's Ground Force unveiled its first indigenously-manufactured jammer drone, which is designed to disrupt the communication between hostile unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and their controllers.

Mohajer-6 jammer drone, equipped with a high-tech system capable of transmitting interfering radio signals, was inaugurated in a ceremony attended by Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi, the chief commander of the Iranian Army, and a number of senior commanders of the Army's Ground Force on April 11.

The jammer drone is the Army’s first UAV with the capability to operate and support electronic warfare and electronic offense against the enemy’s communication networks.