General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the head of Iran's armed forces, launched the first production line for the Ababil-2 strike and reconnaissance drone in Dushanbe on May 17.

The facility will produce copies of Iran’s HESA Ababil-2, which can function as a surveillance drone or a loitering munition, also known as a kamikaze or “suicide” drone.

Central Asian countries have been importing an unprecedented number of armed drones since the start of the 2020s. In May, Iran inaugurated a factory in Tajikistan for manufacturing its Ababil-2 ...

The Ababil-2 was developed in the 1990s and has been described by analysts as “a cheap, easy-to-use, and flexible drone.” The Ababil-2 has a length of 2.88 meters and a wingspan of 3.25 meters.

The report said the drone is dubbed the Ababil-2 after a bird in the Quran. It is capable of carrying out attacks as well as surveillance missions from a range of 200 kilometers (124 miles) with 1 ...

A drone unit was even the subject of a 1990s-era war movie Mohajer. Modernized iterations of the Ababil and Mohajer followed in the 1990s and 2000s.

According to the initial investigation of the drone strike, Hezbollah launched two drones that entered Israeli airspace from the sea. They were Mirsad drones, known in Iran as the Ababil-T ...