<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> WorldTribune.com: Mobile Ñ Ahmadinejad says high-flying drones disrupted satellite launch

Ahmadinejad says high-flying drones disrupted satellite launch

Thursday, March 12, 2009   E-Mail this story   Free Headline Alerts

NICOSIA Ñ Iran said unmanned aerial vehicles penetrated its air space and interrupted the launch sequence of the nation's first indigenous satellite.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said several UAVs regarded as hostile entered Iran air space and disrupted the communications center of a satellite launch site in February 2009. Ahmadinejad said the UAVs sought to jam systems at the communications center as Iran was preparing to fire its space-launch vehicle.

"This caused a delay of several hours to the launch of the SLV," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the state-owned Islamic Republic News Agency on March 10.

The president did not identify the UAVs but said they flew at an extremely high altitude.

Over the last two years, Teheran has reported the intrusion of UAVs from Iraq into Iranian air space. In late 2008, Israel and the United States were said to have intensified intelligence collection of Iran's missile and nuclear sites.

The February launch marked the first satellite sent by Iran into space orbit. The Safir SLV was said to have been a variant of Iran's Shihab-3B intermediate-range ballistic missile, which could travel more than 2,000 kilometers.

Ahmadinejad said the SLV, which carried the experimental satellite, was launched by a backup system.

At one point, the president said, the Iranian Air Force was ordered to fire air-to-air missiles toward the UAVs. But he said, without elaboration, that no missiles were fired.

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