Al-Qaeda branch in Syria has shot down an Assad regime’s made-in-Iran drone

By David Cenciotti

Al Jazeera has posted exclusive footage of a drone shot down by Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s local branch in Syria, while it was flying over Aleppo.

The drone seems to be a Yasir drone, a small Iranian drone (that can be quickly disassembled to be carried in a suitcase) based on the American Boeing ScanEagle.
The Yasir (or the Sayeh – the version operated by the IRGC, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps) has been operating in Syria since November.

Yasir has quite a distinctive shape: it’s almost identical to a ScanEagle but it features a twin-tailboom empennage and an inverted v-tail elerudder similar to that of the RQ-7 Shadow.

Another drone of the same type was reportedly downed in the Qalamoun Mountains on Dec. 7. In this case the UAV is almost intact and easy to ID.

Source: The Aviationist