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Iran is trying to reverse-engineer advanced US weapons recovered from recent US-Israeli air strikes, and is likely to be getting help from Russia and China, according to CIA veterans and regional security experts.
Iranian media claims that hundreds of munitions used against the country during the ongoing conflict are being studied “to utilise aspects of their technology”, including Tomahawk missiles, Reaper drones, GBU-39 small diametre bombs and AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) missiles, as well as 14-tonne GBU-57 bunker busters used against its nuclear sites last year.
Jim Lamson, a former CIA analyst specialising in Iranian weapons, said Tehran’s military has several departments that work on reverse-engineering and has recorded notable achievements in the past, such as cloning jet engines.
“The Iranians have reverse-engineered a pretty advanced US turbofan engine that was used in drones,” he told The i Paper. “They have decades of experience in studying and reverse-engineering complete weapon systems, as well as the critical technologies involved in them.”
The US and Israel fired munitions at a record rate during the war, and deployed some of their most cutting-edge technology, which could give Iran an opportunity to advance its own weapons and find weaknesses in its enemies’ systems.
The Pentagon is said to be concerned about the development. A spokesperson declined to comment.
Iran has a long record of imitating foreign weapons systems, which has allowed the regime to mitigate the effects of sanctions that prohibit other countries from selling it arms.
Iran’s military has developed its own versions of captured US weapons such as the RQ-170 Sentinel drone and BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missile, and produced missiles based on Russian and Korean designs.
Michael Knights, a regional security analyst at the Washington Institute who advises the US government and military, says Tehran has already made use of earlier versions of US missiles that were recovered during the first Gulf War.
“A lot of their cruise missile technology owes something to the Tomahawk,” he said.
The Iranian military revealing a copy of an American RQ-170 Sentinel drone in Tehran in 2019 (Photo: AFP)
Iran’s priority in studying US weapons is likely to be long-range strike capabilities, said Lamson, both in developing its own systems and identifying weaknesses.
The analyst pointed to new-generation versions of Tomahawks, as well as JASSM, as weapons Iran could learn from, including their “guidance and control systems, propulsion systems and the advanced materials involved in their low radar cross-section”. The low radar signature makes missiles harder to detect.
The Pentagon has deployed some of its latest technology against Iran, including the first-known use of the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM).
Reproducing advanced US technology is likely to be a long process, said Lamson, who suggested that it could take more than five years to build an equivalent to the JASSM’s engine. But it could be a much shorter timeline, potentially just months, to develop counter-measures against enemy systems that could allow for greater detection and jamming, he said.
Iran could also lean on the greater expertise of Russia and China – both of which have security partnerships with Tehran – to identify vulnerabilities, Lamson added.
“That’s one aspect where the Russians and Chinese would probably be even better than the Iranians if they get their hands on” the weapons, he said.
The US military is said ot be concerned about enemy regimes learning from some of its most advanced weaponry and has safeguards in place to try to mitigate the risks.
Steven Ward, a former CIA intelligence official and author of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, pointed to the recent operation to save a pilot after his aircraft crashed in Iran, which involved the deliberate destruction of several helicopters.
“Sensitive electronics should have been removed from the destroyed aircraft or had their own destruction protocol,” he said.
Wreckage of US aircraft after an operation to save a downed pilot in Iran. It is believed the Americans destroyed their own planes after they became inoperable, to avoid them falling into enemy hands and their technology replicated (Photo: IRGC/Getty)
But other forms of technology could be useful to Iran, such as missiles or aircraft that were shot down, Ward said.
“Any dud missiles or a drone that got lost might be available to the Iranians and could be fully exploited”, he added, while suggesting that the avionics in the lost fighter jets “might be the systems most at risk”.
Knights believes the greatest concern for the Pentagon is likely to be compromised signals intelligence, such as communications or data connected to weaponry.
“What we are really worried about is that we demonstrate a capability that makes the enemy more resistant to that capability,” he said, suggesting this could affect the use of precision strike weapons or anti-drone capabilities.
Iran’s alliance with two other US adversaries in China and Russia is deepening, and both are likely to benefit from lessons learned about US military technology.
“Those three are working now in tight collaboration when it comes to missile and drone technology,” says Knights, who added that any Iranian discovery would “100 per cent” be shared with Moscow and Beijing.
The two hostile powers could seek to enhance their own weapons based on a better understanding of US hardware, he added.
Other analysts agree. Ward believes that Tehran will consult its allies “for the most sophisticated systems” it recovers. Lamson suggests they could be working together on a case-by-case basis.
“I think the Iranians would agree to hand over one or more systems to the Russians or to the Chinese, and perhaps get something in return,” he added.
US soldiers with the 14-tonne Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb, the heaviest conventional munition in the world, that was used in strikes on Iran in June 2025 (Photo: US Air Force/AP)
Iran still faces major limits, despite its reverse-engineering prowess. Lamson said Western equipment is “decades ahead” of Iran in key areas such as accuracy and reliability, and recovered weapons will not enable Tehran to bridge that gap.
“They are not going to catch up with the US and Israel,” he said.
Some of Iran’s claims are also likely to be exaggerated, analysts believe, such as its progress in replicating the world’s largest conventional bomb, the GBU-57.
Tehran lacks a delivery system even close to the B2 stealth bomber that is used to drop the bunker busters, and it has not demonstrated the ability to fire a missile from a ground-based launcher with a warhead the size of the GBU-57’s, which weighs 2.5 tonnes.
But Iran has shown the ability to mix and match parts from different systems to create a composite weapon.
“If they were able to reverse-engineer and copy a JASSM engine, that doesn’t mean they are going to make a JASSM missile,” Lamson said. “They are also good at integrating disparate technologies into their own design for a weapon system.”
In a future conflict with Iran, the US could be facing more of its own weaponry.
DefinitelyNotMeee on April 24th, 2026 at 19:32 UTC »
Wasn't there a nearly intact THAAD interceptor found there as well?
wreckchain on April 24th, 2026 at 18:15 UTC »
Any time you put your military out in the field you reveal your weapons and capability, the advantage of keeping adversaries in the mystique of your unknown potential shouldn't be an easy position to throw away. Asserting miltary strength in the case of the the United states is weaking its global power.
theipaper on April 24th, 2026 at 16:02 UTC »
Iran is trying to reverse-engineer advanced US weapons recovered from recent US-Israeli air strikes, and is likely to be getting help from Russia and China, according to CIA veterans and regional security experts.
Iranian media claims that hundreds of munitions used against the country during the ongoing conflict are being studied “to utilise aspects of their technology”, including Tomahawk missiles, Reaper drones, GBU-39 small diametre bombs and AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) missiles, as well as 14-tonne GBU-57 bunker busters used against its nuclear sites last year.
Jim Lamson, a former CIA analyst specialising in Iranian weapons, said Tehran’s military has several departments that work on reverse-engineering and has recorded notable achievements in the past, such as cloning jet engines.
“The Iranians have reverse-engineered a pretty advanced US turbofan engine that was used in drones,” he told The i Paper. “They have decades of experience in studying and reverse-engineering complete weapon systems, as well as the critical technologies involved in them.”
The US and Israel fired munitions at a record rate during the war, and deployed some of their most cutting-edge technology, which could give Iran an opportunity to advance its own weapons and find weaknesses in its enemies’ systems.
The Pentagon is said to be concerned about the development. A spokesperson declined to comment.
A tried-and-tested Iranian approachIran has a long record of imitating foreign weapons systems, which has allowed the regime to mitigate the effects of sanctions that prohibit other countries from selling it arms.
Iran’s military has developed its own versions of captured US weapons such as the RQ-170 Sentinel drone and BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missile, and produced missiles based on Russian and Korean designs.
Michael Knights, a regional security analyst at the Washington Institute who advises the US government and military, says Tehran has already made use of earlier versions of US missiles that were recovered during the first Gulf War.
“A lot of their cruise missile technology owes something to the Tomahawk,” he said.