Cameras over the trenches

The first Qods drones were barely more than radio-controlled models. In 1985, three years into Iran’s grinding war with Iraq, the Revolutionary Guard set up Qods Aviation and built four Mohajer-1s that same year. They carried a single still camera, flew on hobby-class radio that was easily jammed, and had no autopilot, so they could only peer at Iraqi lines from just behind the Iranian front. Yet they worked. By the end of the war the Mohajers had flown 619 sorties and taken 53,772 photographs, correcting artillery fire in operations such as Dawn 8 in 1986 and Karbala 5 in 1987. For a while they were one of only two Iranian surveillance assets at the front, alongside the RF-4 Phantom.

The Mohajer grows up

In early 1998 Qods was moved from the Revolutionary Guard into the state Aerospace Industries Organization, and its drones grew up with it. The Mohajer-2, first seen in 1996, added an autopilot, GPS and composite construction; more than 200 had been built by 2011, and Venezuela agreed in 2007 to assemble 12 from Qods kits, unveiling them in 2012 as the CAVIM Arpia. The Mohajer-4 followed into service in late 1997 with seven hours’ endurance. It was flown by the Syrian Army throughout the civil war, and one was shot down by the Turkish Air Force on 16 May 2015 after crossing the border.

A captured ScanEagle

Qods has a habit of learning from other people’s aircraft. In December 2012 Iran announced that it had captured an American-built Boeing Insitu ScanEagle over the Persian Gulf, a claim the US Navy denied for its own fleet. About ten months later, in September 2013, Qods unveiled the Yasir: a small surveillance drone with the ScanEagle’s swept wings but a twin-boom, inverted-V tail of its own. In October 2013 the Revolutionary Guard presented one to the commander of the Russian Air Force as a gift. Yasirs have since turned up with the Syrian Army and Iraqi militias, and at least three Syrian examples were shot down by the Al-Nusra Front.

Mohajer-6 goes to war abroad

The Mohajer-6, unveiled in April 2016 and in mass production from February 2018, turned the reconnaissance line into a strike aircraft. It carries a stabilised sensor turret and two or four precision-guided munitions such as the Qaem and Almas missiles, with up to 12 hours’ endurance. Iran used it against Kurdish militants in 2019 and 2022, and in 2022 it went to Russia: on 23 September that year a Mohajer-6 crashed into the Black Sea off Odesa, the first physical confirmation of Iranian drones in Russian hands. It has since been supplied to the Sudanese Army in the civil war there.

Rivals under one roof

Qods does not work alone, and it does not always work on its own products. Several sources report that the Mohajer-6, though designed by Qods, is manufactured by HESA, its longtime rival within the same state Aerospace Industries Organization. Qods also builds the parachutes and powered paragliders that sit in the shadow of its drones, along with ground control stations and optical tracking systems. As of 2011 it had a few hundred employees. The company is subject to US Treasury (OFAC) sanctions, and its drones’ appearance over Ukraine has kept it firmly on Western lists.