DUBAI - The "flying object" that flew over a Japanese tanker before it was rocked by a blast in strategic waters in the Middle East earlier this month could have been a reconnaissance drone, experts have said. The owner of the Kokuka Courageous said the tanker's crew saw a "flying object," just before a blast that caused a fire on board the vessel, sparking a crisis between Washington and Tehran. "The crew members are saying that they were hit by a flying object. They saw it with their own eyes," Yutaka Katada, head of Kokuka Sangyo shipping company, said the day after the mysterious June 13 attack. "We have received a report saying that something seems to have flew in, there was an explosion and it created a hole in the body of the ship," he told reporters in Tokyo.