“Controlling the flight routes and corridors above the country’s crucial and nuclear sensitive regions are among the Air Defense base’s duties, and the Air Defense is several times more sensitive about those areas,” Lieutenant Commander of Khatam al-Anbia Air Defense Base General Ali Reza Sabahi-Fard said on Sunday.
He made the comments on the sidelines of large-scale military exercises, now underway across the southeastern and southern Iranian provinces of Sistan and Balouchestan and Hormozgan.
Codenamed “Muhammad Rasulullah” (Muhammad, the messenger of God), the wargames began on Thursday with the participation of different Army units and is expected to run until December 31.
On the third day of the drills on Saturday, the Air Defense successfully hit a number of aerial targets using a home-grown missile defense system paired with Shalamcheh missiles.
The upgraded and locally made missile defense system, dubbed Mersad, launched three Shalamcheh missiles after radars covering the wargame zone's airspace identified, tracked and intercepted the hypothetical enemy’s intruding aircraft.
Later, each of the three ground-to-air Iranian Shalamcheh missiles destroyed the point targets, namely three Unmanned Aerial vehicles (UAVs).