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Yes but I don't expect to see them in numbers soon without a turbofan engine serial produced. Until that subsystem is ready Saeghe drones can be produced in numbers and become operational in units.
The 1:1 scale prototype most likely has just a Toloue mini turbojet, its underpowered might only be able to carry 1/3 of the fuel load and half of the speed for testing. A huge feat for the IRGCASF but without the critical subsystem=turbofan it wont become operational in units. With the Owj engine - afterburner, it would still lack the endurance, so I doubt they went that way. Lets hope the promise is kept and the master turbofan engines in 2 years so that by then S-171 Simorghs appear in operational condition.
That exhaust looks bigger than Toloue engine.and that engine is not designed for sustained use.Sure I have not and if I had I wouldn't talk about it and potentially endanger the security of Iran. This is just open source speculation on the basis of photo data published and available. I have to take a pessimistic stance to remain objective.
But whats more: Just check the exhaust area of the S-171, to me it looks like a Toloue nozzle sticking out. The Toloue would be perfectly sufficient for 80% of the necessary flight testing to get it reliably working. For high altitude, long-range/high endurance and high speed testing a copy of the original turbofan engine or something in the same class is necessary.
Whats a mystery for such long range systems is the communications. My bet is that a directional narrow pencil beam AESA antenna based data link system is used, some advanced black project subsystem available the skunk works. This would have a very long LOS range, it would relay the data to a drone in Iranian airspace equipped with such antennas and this would relay it back to ground station.
Its true that its not more deadly than a fighter jet, the main argument is that a drone is as if you are playing a video game while striking, though most fighter jets today get their coordinates through UAV's marking the position too so i dont agree with this argument anyway but that how it is over here.It's what you do with the weapon that matters!! UAV & UCAV are no less or no more dangerous than an fighter jet!!!
And they all have UAV's if it's not homemade it's an American UAV
we dont know whats inside of the reverse engineered sentinel rq-170 drone.
we also dont know if the outside material of the iran version is the same as american version.
we dont know if iran is able to reverse engineer all electronics/radars/materials the amreican version had.
what we see here on pics and videos is only a covering/outershell of an drone which looks like the american version.
But whats inside (electronic components, radars, engine, sensors) we dont know.
I have respect for iranian engineers, but I dont believe they can make an exact 100%, 1 to 1 clone of if without help from china/russia.
turboprop version of saeqeh with landing gear