TEHRAN – The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) announced on Monday that its aerospace units successfully tracked and brought down another sophisticated MQ-1 unmanned aerial vehicle over the strategic waters of the Strait of Hormuz.

In a press release issued by the IRGC Public Relations Office, military officials confirmed that the hostile aircraft was engaged and neutralized using a cutting-edge indigenous surface-to-air defense network operated by the IRGC Aerospace Force.

The engagement was coordinated entirely within the Islamic Republic’s unified integrated air defense grid.

“The advanced MQ-1 drone was intercepted and destroyed over the skies of the Strait of Hormuz,” the statement said.

The incident marks the second high-profile aerial interception in the waterway in recent days. Last week, the Iranian Army’s air defense units similarly targeted and eliminated an American MQ-1 drone in southeastern airspace after detecting and tracking its flight path across the Hormuz corridor.

As the Strait of Hormuz turns into a focal theater of escalating tensions and hostile Washington-led operations targeting Iran, Tehran has steadily reinforced its sovereignty and maritime oversight across regional waterways.

Throughout the past decade, Iranian armed forces have intercepted, neutralized, or seized a series of advanced US aerial and naval platforms, ranging from the radar-evading RQ-170 Sentinel and MQ-9 Reaper drones to specialized unmanned surface vessels and underwater submersibles deployed in the Persian Gulf.

The successful recovery and reverse-engineering of such seized assets have significantly boosted the Islamic Republic’s self-reliant defense industry, accelerating indigenous unmanned aviation and robotic naval technologies.

Independent assessments underscore the mounting toll on US unmanned aviation. According to figures reported by Bloomberg, Iranian defenses have downed over two dozen MQ-9 Reapers since the outbreak of the US-backed Israeli military aggression across the region, wiping out nearly a fifth of the Pentagon’s pre-war fleet. With each unit valued at roughly 30 million, total equipment losses have approached the one billion threshold.

Citing congressional testimony, Bloomberg and defense analysis outlet The War Zone report that the US Air Force’s active Reaper fleet has dwindled to approximately 135 airframes—falling markedly short of its mandatory operational baseline of 189.