Syria militants are weaponising drones, adding new twist to civil war

A number of militant groups in the Middle East, including the ISIL extremist group, Jund Al Aqsa and Jabhat Fatah Al Sham, as well as Hizbollah and Hamas, have all released videos indicating that they have surveillance and reconnaissance drones.

WASHINGTON // Militant groups such as Hizbollah and ISIL have learnt how to weaponise surveillance drones and are using them against each other, adding another twist to Syria’s civil war, a US military official said.

A video belonging to an Al Qaeda offshoot, Jund Al Aqsa, purportedly shows a drone landing at a Syrian military barracks.

In another video, small explosives purportedly dropped by the Iran-backed Shiite militant group Hizbollah target the Sunni militant group Jabhat Fatah Al Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front.

A US military official, who spoke anonymously, said the US military was aware of the development.

Commanders have warned troops to take cover if they see what they might have once dismissed as a surveillance drone, he said.

The head of the Airwars project, which tracks the international air war in Iraq, Syria and Libya, said the weaponised drones are clumsy but will frighten people.

“There are a million ways you can weaponise drones – fire rockets, strap things in and crash them,” Chris Woods said.

“This is the stuff everyone has been terrified about for years, and now it’s a reality.”

One US military official said the videos in question could not be authenticated and that most of the incidents they are aware of involved weaponised drones that simply crash into their targets. But another former senior US military official who viewed the videos said there was nothing to suggest they were fake.

A number of militant groups in the Middle East, including ISIL, Jund Al Aqsa and Jabhat Fatah Al Sham, as well as Hizbollah and Hamas, have all released videos indicating that they have surveillance and reconnaissance drones.

Syrian anti-government rebels and militias loyal to president Bashar Assad were also flying quad- and hexacopters as early as 2014 to spy on each other.

The surveillance drones allowed those groups to collect data on enemy bases, battlefield positioning and weaponry and improve targeting.

ISIL launched a propaganda video in 2014, The Clanging of the Swords, Part 4, boasting about its capture of the Iraqi city of Fallujah. The video opens with drone footage over the western Iraqi city before cutting to violent ground footage depicting its advance across Iraq.

Lebanon-based Hizbollah has claimed to have armed-drone capabilities for nearly two years, but a recent video of bomblets hitting a militant camp near the Syrian town of Hama is the first known documentation.

The majority of these groups have access only to retail drones ranging in price from $1,000 to $3,000 (Dh3,670 to Dh11,020) and weighing between2.3 to 4.5kg – certainly not enough to support a large bomb or rocket.

Hizbollah is an exception, receiving most of its munitions – including its drones – from Iran.

"It's not going to change the overall balance of power in the region, but it matters by the very fact that these are things that are normally beyond the capability of insurgents or terrorists groups," said Peter Singer, author of the book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

Syrian skies are bustling with traffic. Coalition forces have launched about 5,400 air strikes on ISIL targets since September 2014.

Drones account for only about 7 per cent of America’s total air operations in Iraq and Syria because the US is “stretched really thin” with drone operations in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere, Mr Woods said.

Russia is also showing off its own drone capabilities – albeit somewhat primitive compared to the US. Last month, the Russian defence ministry launched a live online broadcast of drone footage of the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo to “provide transparency of ceasefire regime implementation”.

There is no question the militant groups are outmatched in the sky. But as cells linked to ISIL pop up across Europe and the US, the real concern is the potential impact these experimental small, flying bombs could have if launched over crowded cities.

“You already see things happening in Ukraine, gangs in Mexico are using drones, and in Ireland, gangs there are using surveillance,” said Wim Zwijnenburg, a security and disarmament policy adviser at Netherlands-based PAX for Peace.

“Add a small amount of explosives to a small drone, and even the psychological factor is pretty significant.”

* Associated Press