Second Brigadier General Abbas Farajpour highlighted the main features of the annual drill dubbed ‘Modafean Aseman Velayat’ (The Defenders of Velayat Skies), which began earlier in the day, saying that units from the Iranian Army and the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) have taken part in the joint military exercise.

He noted that both domestic air defense systems, including the Army’s “Khordad 15th and the IRGC’s Khordad 3rd” successfully brought down the targeted flying objects.

General Farajpour noted that the first stage of the drill involves the expansion and deployment of defense systems, including missile and radar systems with a focus on the mobility and rapid response of the operational forces.”

It also covers the principles of passive defense to deceive the enemy and in the next step to establish secure and multi-layered communication between defense systems through an integrated air defense network to make decisions appropriate to the threat, he added.

The Anadolu news agency reported on Thursday that the United States had submitted a proposal to sell Patriot missile systems to Ankara. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency said on December 18 the US State Department had approved a possible sale to Turkey of 80 Patriot MIM-104E Guidance Enhanced Missiles (GEM-T), 60 PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) missiles and other related equipment for an estimated cost of $3.5 billion.

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on December 19 that there was no connection between the possible acquisition by Turkey of the US Patriot missile systems and the purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense systems, stressing that Moscow and Ankara will continue implementing the contract on S-400 deliveries, Sputnik reported.

The S-400 is a next-generation mobile missile system which can carry three different types of missiles capable of destroying a variety of aerial targets at a short-to-extremely-long range, from reconnaissance aircraft to ballistic missiles.