An Israeli military drone crashed Sunday morning during a test flight.

Army Radio said that the Heron TP, the most advanced unmanned aerial vehicle currently operated by the Israel Air Force (IAF), went down in an open field near a farming community shortly after taking off from the Tel Nof Air base in central Israel.

No injuries were reported in the incident.

A military spokeswoman told Xinhua that the test flight was jointly conducted by the IAF and Israel Aerospace Industries, the drone's developer, and that an investigation into the circumstances of the crash has been launched.

The military declined to comment on the model that crashed. Local media, however, said it was the Heron TP II, an all-weather drone inaugurated by the IAF last February with a cruising altitude of about 13,700 meters and a maximal payload of one ton that can remain aloft for 36 hours - features that enable it to fly strategic reconnaissance missions over countries as far away as Iran.

In a similar incident in late 2010, a far less sophisticated drone operated by the military's artillery corps crashed in the northern Gaza Strip. Troops were hastily dispatched to retrieve the debris before Hamas militants or locals could get their hands on the classified technology, according to the Ha'aretz daily.

Drones officially entered service with the IAF in 1971, making Israel the world's first operator of pilotless aircraft for gathering real-time battlefield intelligence. They currently shoulder the bulk of the IAF's reconnaissance missions, logging more flight hours annually than all of its manned aircraft combined, and are regularly tasked with overflying Gaza to hunt for rocket launchers and hidden arms caches.

Military observers have claimed that Israel also deploys missile-armed drones and kamikaze craft that carry explosives for striking targets far beyond its borders.