It turns out Iran and small-town Colorado aren’t entirely different. According to the Associated Press, Iranian newspaper Etemad daily is reporting that students in the middle-eastern country may be taught to hunt drones in school. General Ali Fazli, acting commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’s Basij militia, said the anti-drone classes will be taught as a part of a larger “Defensive Readiness” program.
Wired.co.uk offers some context.
What the lessons might consist of is unknown, but Iran has had some success in neutralising and capturing US drones in the past. In 2011 it captured an RQ-170 Sentinel drone with what it claimed was a sophisticated GPS spoofing attack. In 2012, it was discovered that many US drones openly broadcast their video feeds.
The Basij militia is a subset of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards. They owe direct loyalty to the Ayatollah and it’s not for nothing that the word “thugs” usually follows the words “Basij militia”. During the 2011-2012 Iranian pro-democracy protests, Basij militia members were bussed into the capital Tehran from around the country to ruthlessly put down the protests.
If I was a kid growing up in the Middle East, I’d probably want to learn how to take down drones, too.
