Our good friend Mohajer-4 A041-65 does not appear to have seen much action outside of the occasional expo appearance over the last eight years. 2013 vs 2021. Few scratches but still good enough for dog and pony shows. 
Same cannot be said for A041-65's buddy, A041-66. A041-66 had a very Forrest Gump like existence.
See, A041-66 was seen at that same 2013 delivery ceremony for the Yasir drone. Only unlike his number neighbor, 66 was in a bucket of parts and not fully assembled like 65.
And there 66 lay, in the spare parts bucket of the Vali-e-Asr Drone Unit of the Artesh Ground Forces until the ISIS invasion of Iraq.
The next time we saw 66 was slapped onto another, more prestigious Mohajer-4. December 2014, ISIS has captured Mosul and is bearing down on central Iraq. We're getting some of our first glimpses of Iranian drones in the wild when ISIS shoots down A041-112.
A041-112 was a display model once too. It had done the runway shows. Paris, Milan, Sacred Defense Week, the cover of Fars. But duty calls and 112 was pressed into service.
112 apparently had a problem though: it was missing a tail rudder on its twin tail boom. 66 stepped up. And apparently someone forgot to repaint it before slapping it onto 112.
Neither were in ISIS custody for very long. Entire drone was recovered not long after.
It's fun to be able to trace parts and their journey through battles but the reason I find this one interesting is that bucket of parts belonged to the Artesh, not the IRGC.
Suggests to me that the Artesh, which has a portfolio for defending Iran's borders that pointedly included a few miles outside them, was conducting at least some of the drone operations within Iraq during the ISIS war.
This would be consistent with some of what we saw on the ground. Scattered reports that M-60 tanks from Artesh Ground Forces 81st Armored Division moved into Jalawla early on in the conflict—exact same place where A041-112/66 went down in those pics. medium.com/war-is-boring/…
I really should write that damn piece.
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