Photo of drone published in Iran's Etalaat newspaper. Photo: uskowioniran.com

At the beginning of November reports from Iranian media said that “experts” in that country had developed  a drone that “enjoys ultra-advanced technology and has been manufactured for the first time in the world,” this according to Abbas Jam, who was in charge of the research team.

A few days later the Iranians boasted of a successful test flight of the VTOL drone. But Iran’s “accomplishments” were unable to escape the worldwide web, and recently bloggers established that the drone Iran was claiming as its own was actually developed in 2008 at the Chiba University in Japan.

The first to catch on to the falsehood was British blogger Gary Mortimer, a writer for suasnews.com. “When I first saw it I knew it was something I had seen before but just could not think where,” wrote Mortimer. It turns out that Mortimer had seen it on Chiba University’s website, which is exactly the place that Iran took a photo of the pilotless aircraft from.

Iran often boasts of its military’s technological developments. As Ynet reported, a few months ago the Iranians claimed that they successfully developed an unmanned aircraft capable of flying 1,000 kilometers and published a picture of it in the local media.

At the time Iranian Deputy Defense Minister Mohammed Eslami told Iran’s Fars News Agency that, “during the Revolutionary Guards’ last drill, an Iranian-made, unmanned combat aircraft was launched and as planned, we are currently at the stage of installing missiles on UAVs.” But aside from the picture, no additional evidence of the aircraft’s existence has been shown.