Israel’s Drone Swarm Over Gaza Should Worry Everyone

It’s time global leaders set new rules for these future weapons already being using to kill.


A drone views of the ruins of buildings in Gaza city that was levelled by an Israeli air strike during the recent military conflict between Israel and Palestinian ruled by Hamas on June 11, 2021. 

MAJDI FATHI/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES


BY ZAK KALLENBORN
JULY 7, 2021 
DEFENSEONE.COM


In a world first, Israel used a true drone swarm in combat during the conflict in May with Hamas in Gaza. It was a significant new benchmark in drone technology, and it should be a wakeup call for the United States and its allies to mitigate the risk these weapons create for national defense and global stability.

Israel’s use of them is just the beginning. Reporting does not suggest the Israeli Defense Forces deployed any particularly sophisticated capability. It seems a small number of drones manufactured by Elbit Systems coordinated searches, but they were used in coordination with mortars and ground-based missiles to strike “dozens” of targets miles away from the border, reportedly. The drones helped expose enemy hiding spots, relayed information back to an app, which processed the data along with other intelligence information. Future swarms will not be so simple.

Often the phrase “drone swarm” means multiple drones being used at once. But in a true drone swarm, the drones communicate and collaborate, making collective decisions about where to go and what to do. In a militarized drone swarm, instead of 10 or 100 distinct drones, the swarm forms a single, integrated weapon system guided by some form of artificial intelligence.

So, drone swarms are here, and we should be worried. But how best to reduce the risk these weapons pose?

The United States should lead the global community in a new conversation to discuss and debate whether new norms or international treaties are needed specifically to govern and limit the use of drone swarms. Current proposals to ban autonomous weapons outright would cover autonomous drone swarms; however, such a treaty would not likely cover the drone swarm Israel used. Despite some media reports to the contrary, there is no indication the swarm made autonomous decisions on who to kill (whether a small, human-controlled swarm like this should be banned is a different issue). And it’s unlikely the great powers will agree to a broad prohibition autonomous weapons. Narrow restrictions on high-risk autonomous weapons like anti-personnel drone swarms may have more appeal, particularly if they create asymmetric effects that threaten, but not help, great powers.

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Global militaries should expand work to develop, test, and share counter-swarm technology. Effective counter-drone systems need to be low cost, quick recharging, and able to hit multiple targets at once. Such systems should be deployed around high-risk target areas, like airports, critical infrastructure, and heads of state. As the threat is fundamentally international, states should also provide their cutting-edge counter-swarm capabilities to partners and allies who are at risk.

Keeping drone swarms from the hands of terrorists will require a separate effort. States may adopt measures akin to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 on preventing terrorist acquisition of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons that apply to drone swarms (or just expand UNSCR 1540). Local, national, and international law enforcement agencies should also search for indicators of terrorists seeking drone swarm capabilities, such as large drone purchases and known extremist work to develop or modify drone control systems.

In recent years, the threat of drone swarms has grown alongside their increasing sophistication. In 2016, the Department of Defense launched 103 Perdix drones out of three F/A-18 Super Hornets. The drones operated using a “collective brain,” gathering into various formations, flying across a test battlefield, and reforming into new configurations. Notably, the system was designed by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If drone swarms are simple enough students can make them, conflict zones across the world can expect to see them soon. In the past year, China, France, India, Spain, South Africa, the United States, and the United Kingdom have all unveiled or tested new drone swarm programs.

Global proliferation of drone swarms creates risks of instability. In the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict last year, Azeri use of drones contributed significantly to a rapid Armenian surrender (other factors no doubt helped too). A swarm amplifies such effects with more drones, using more complex tactics that can overwhelm existing defenses. It’s a concern the U.S. military has studied for a decade already. A 2012 study by the Naval Postgraduate School simulated eight drones attacking a U.S. Navy destroyer, finding four drones would hit the ship. Terrorists may also see great appeal in drone swarms as a more accessible air force to overcome ground-based defenses, and carry out attacks on critical infrastructure and VIPs.

Drone swarms create risks akin to traditional weapons of mass destruction. As drone swarms scale into super-swarms of 1,000 or even up to a million drones, no human could plausibly have meaningful control. That’s a problem, autonomous weapons can only make limited judgments on the civilian or military nature of their targets. The difference of a single pixel can change a stealth bomber into a dog. Errors may mean dead civilians or friendly soldiers, and accidental conflict escalation.

The reality is that virtually no current counter-drone systems are designed for counter-swarm operations. Current detections systems cannot necessarily accommodate multiple drones. They could overwhelm interdiction systems, which contain limited or slow-to-shoot interceptors. And the drone swarm may simply be too spread out. Of course, new counter-drone systems like the Air Force’s microwave-based THOR system, low cost per shot defenses like lasers, and counter-swarm swarms may eventually prove effective. While these defenses may protect great powers, smaller states and civilians are likely to be more vulnerable.

The increased autonomy of a drone swarm allows states to use many more drones at once. Human cognition limits simultaneous drone operation, because it is difficult to monitor operations of many drones, ensure they do not collide, and still achieve mission objectives. But the military is working to overcome human limitations. In one 2008 study, a single operator could handle only four drones without significant losses to mission effectiveness. By 2018, the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, confirmed a human could control an entire drone swarm telepathically, using a single microchip implanted in their brain.

The military value of drone swarms stems from enabling complexity and flexibility. Current swarms use typically small, homogenous drones. Future swarms may be of different sizes, equipped with an array of different interchangeable sensors, weapons, and other payloads. That enables combined armed tactics, where drones strike with multiple weapons from multiple angles: one may spray bullets, while another sprays a chemical weapons agent. Swarms may also have adaptive properties such as self-healing, where the swarm modifies itself to accommodate the loss of some members, or self-destruction, to complete one-way missions. Drone swarms will also likely be increasingly integrated into some form of drone mothership (and perhaps integrated into an even larger mothership in a “turducken of lethality.”)

Drone swarms are not science fiction. The technology is here, and spreading fast.

Zachary Kallenborn is a national / homeland security consultant, specializing in unmanned systems, drone swarms, homeland security, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and WMD terrorism.

 

From Ukraine To Myanmar, Drone Warfare Marks A Paradigm Shift – Analysis

Ukrainian soldiers pose with a drone. Photo Credit: Anton Sheveliov, Ukraine Ministry of Defence

 September 16, 2024

By Geopolitical Monitor

By Antonio Graceffo

On September 10, Ukrainian forces launched the largest drone attack of the war to date, targeting Moscow with 144 drones. The assault resulted in 20 drones being shot down, while several multi-story residential buildings near Moscow were set ablaze. Flights from Russia’s most important airports were temporarily suspended. In response, Russia launched a retaliatory strike using 46 drones.

The strikes from both sides highlight a now indisputable fact: drone warfare is playing a determining role in the Ukraine war.

Armed drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), are pilotless aircraft used to locate, monitor, and strike targets, including individuals and equipment. Since the September 11 attacks, the United States has significantly expanded its use of UAVs for global counterterrorism missions. Drones have key advantages over manned weapons. They can stay airborne for over 14 hours, compared to under four hours for manned aircraft like the F-16, allowing for continuous surveillance without risking pilot safety. Additionally, drones offer near-instant responsiveness, with missiles striking targets within seconds, unlike slower manned systems, such as the 1998 cruise missile strike on Osama bin Laden, which relied on hours-old intelligence.

There is much discussion in the US defense establishment regarding the use of drones, drone policy and how they should be incorporated into military strategy. According to the Marine Corps University, in order to calculate the effectiveness of a drone strike, several factors must be considered, including Tactical Military Effectiveness (TME), Operational Military Effectiveness (OME), and Strategic Military Effectiveness (SME). TME assesses how well the drone strike achieves its immediate objective, such as neutralizing a specific target. OME evaluates the broader impact on military operations, such as troop movements or operational coordination. Lastly, SME considers the long-term consequences of drone warfare, including the effects of drone strikes on enemy leadership, public opinion, and international relations. All three factors are critical in ensuring that drone strikes align with both short-term and long-term military objectives.

Drones are being deployed in large numbers in the Ukraine war, having already played a major role in the battles between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. They are also becoming an increasingly key platform in the Myanmar civil war and conflicts across the Middle East. Advanced militaries, including the Pentagon, are closely monitoring these theaters to refine their own drone strategies. For example, recently the U.S. released a ‘drone hellscape strategy’ for the defense of Taiwan, while China has been conducting simulations of a drone-only attack on the island. Yet even the world’s most advanced militaries seem to lack a definitive approach to drone warfare. And, ironically, they continue to learn valuable lessons from underfunded and undertrained rebels in other far-flung global conflicts.

Drone warfare in the Myanmar civil war

The Free Burma Rangers, a frontline aid group in the Myanmar civil war, has been reporting on the increasing incidence of drone warfare in the conflict. On September 6, 2024, a Tatmadaw drone strike resulted in the deaths of four civilians—two men and two women, and one person was also wounded in the attack. Another drone dropped a handmade bomb on a civilian home in Loi Lem Lay Village, Karenni State. During the same incident, a Tatmadaw drone with six propellers experienced mechanical issues while flying over the battlefield and was subsequently captured by the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF), a pro-democracy ethnic army. Taken together, these incidents underscore how drone warfare is still in its tactical infancy, with numerous failed deployments, and how payloads and weaponization are often being improvised by soldiers on the ground.

Other rebel armies in the Myanmar civil war, particularly the People’s Defense Forces (PDF), have developed their own drone units. For instance, a PDF unit reportedly carried out 125 drone strikes during the Battle of Loikaw in Kayah State. Another unit claims responsibility for around 80 drone strikes last year, resulting in the deaths of 80 to 100 junta troops. These forces are either manufacturing their own drones or repurposing civilian models by adding deployable explosives. The drones are inexpensive, widely available, and highly effective. Even the junta, supported by China and Russia, has adopted similar tactics by attaching mortar shells to their drones, while ethnic armiesoften use homemade explosives based on mortar shells captured from the Tatmadaw. These devices can range from 40 to 60mm, carry up to 2.5 kg of explosives and shrapnel, and are capable of killing or injuring anyone within a 100-meter radius in open terrain.

FPV drones a game-changer in the Ukraine war

In addition to homemade and modified drones, first-person view (FPV) drones can cost around $500 USD each, while reconnaissance drones equipped with advanced cameras can run into the thousands. Ukraine is deploying these drones at a rate of 100,000 per month, with plans to produce one million FPV drones in 2024. For a sense of just how important drones have become in the Ukraine war, consider the fact that this figure far exceeds the number of artillery shells supplied by the entire European Union over the past year.

FPV drones, launched from improvised platforms, can fly between 5 and 20 kilometers depending on their size, battery, and payload. Controlled by a soldier using a headset for a first-person view, with another providing guidance via maps on a tablet, these drones are often used to target vulnerable points such as tank hatches or engines. Their real-time video feed, transmitted through goggles or a headset similar to VR gaming, gives the operator precise control, especially in complex environments like urban warfare or dense terrain. FPV drones are effective for reconnaissance, targeted strikes, and even suicide missions, where they carry explosives and fly directly into a target. Unlike planes or helicopters, they are not hindered by anti-aircraft systems near the front lines. In fact, a $500 FPV drone can target the open hatch of a Russian tank worth millions of dollars, demonstrating their cost-effectiveness in modern warfare.

The rise of counter-drone and jamming technologies

As drone warfare becomes increasingly common on the battlefield, a need arises for effective drone jamming technologies. While Russian, Ukrainian, and other armies have access to jammers, ethnic armies in Myanmar lack them almost entirely. Jammers start at $2,400, but many cheap, commercially available models are essentially useless due to significant design flaws. Some have fixed antennae that point upward, despite attacks coming from the side, and many generate excessive heat without proper cooling. This raises concerns about their effectiveness in harsh environments, such as the deserts of the Middle East or the humid jungles of Myanmar.

Moreover, electronic jamming devices work on specific frequencies and drone pilots are adapting by switching to less commonly used ones. To counter this, new technologies like pocket-sized “tenchies” and backpack electronic warfare (EW) systems have emerged, jamming signals across a broader 720-1,050 MHz range, making them more effective against Russian drones. Despite Ukraine’s deployment of these newer jammers, Russia’s use of hunter-killer drone systems like the Orlan-10 for spotting and the Lancet for strikes, along with missile-equipped Orion drones, continue to challenge Ukraine’s drone defenses.

In response, Ukraine has created the Unmanned Systems Force (USF), a military branch dedicated to drone warfare. Additionally, semi-autonomous drones using AI are being developed to bypass jamming altogether. We remain in the nascent stages of drone warfare, where evolution is playing out in real time via innovations on the battlefield. In this sense, US defense spending in Ukraine is serving as an investment in research and development for the drone wars of tomorrow.

• This article was published by Geopolitical Monitor.com

Shar

Geopolitical Monitor

Geopoliticalmonitor.com is an open-source intelligence collection and forecasting service, providing research, analysis and up to date coverage on situations and events that have a substantive impact on political, military and economic affairs.

'Bayraktar!': Ukrainian army shares song celebrating Turkish-made drone fighting back at Russian invasion

The New Arab Staff
02 March, 2022
#BayraktarTB2 trends on social media platforms as the official page of the Ukrainian army shared a song celebrating the Turkish-made drone in their fight against the Russian invasion.


The Bayraktar TB2 drone is produced by Turkish defence company Baykar [Anadolu via Getty]

Ukraine’s armed forces have shared a song dedicated to the Bayraktar TB2, a Turkish-made armed drone that has been a key weapon in Ukraine's fight against the invading Russian army.

The catchy song was shared on the official Facebook page of the "Land Forces of Ukraine".

The lyrics include the promise of “Bayraktar's punishment in the name of Ukrainian children, Georgians, Syrians, Chechens, and Crimean Tatars”. This likely refers to Russia's long list of military invasions and operations against various countries and communities in recent years.

The song is going viral on social media, with dozens of users sharing the song alongside the hashtag #BayraktarTB2.

Many of the tweets include footage of the drones purportedly destroying Russian targets as Moscow tries to take the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

Ukrainian Bayraktar TB2 armed drones at work. The Russian BUK was destroyed in the area of Malina Zhytomyr region. — Ukrainian military

Bayraktar TB2 were supplied by Turkey. And they are working very smoothly against the Russian weaponry
pic.twitter.com/n5uzsyJGbK — Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) February 27, 2022

Ukraine and Turkey have been close defence partners over the past few years. Baykar, the company that produces the TB2 drones, has close ties to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and was meant to build a plant to produce these weapons within Ukraine.

The Ukrainian defence ministry said Wednesday that it had received and deployed a new batch of the drones but did not say how many it had received.

Ukrainian drone enthusiasts sign up to repel Russian forces

By MATT O'BRIEN

In better times, Ukrainian drone enthusiasts flew their gadgets into the sky to photograph weddings, fertilize soybean fields or race other drones for fun. Now some are risking their lives by forming a volunteer drone force to help their country repel the Russian invasion.

“Kyiv needs you and your drone at this moment of fury!” read a Facebook post late last week from the Ukrainian military, calling for citizens to donate hobby drones and to volunteer as experienced pilots to operate them.

One entrepreneur who runs a retail store selling consumer drones in the capital said its entire stock of some 300 drones made by Chinese company DJI has been dispersed for the cause. Others are working to get more drones across the border from friends and colleagues in Poland and elsewhere in Europe.

“Why are we doing this? We have no other choice. This is our land, our home,” said Denys Sushko, head of operations at Kyiv-based industrial drone technology company DroneUA, which before the war was helping to provide drone services to farmers and energy companies.

Sushko fled his home late last week after his family had to take cover from a nearby explosion. He spoke to The Associated Press by phone and text message Friday after climbing up a tree for better reception.

“We try to use absolutely everything that can help protect our country and drones are a great tool for getting real-time data,” said Sushko, who doesn’t have a drone with him but is providing expertise. “Now in Ukraine no one remains indifferent. Everyone does what they can.”

Unlike the much larger Turkish-built combat drones that Ukraine has in its arsenal, off-the-shelf consumer drones aren’t much use as weapons — but they can be powerful reconnaissance tools. Civilians have been using the aerial cameras to track Russian convoys and then relay the images and GPS coordinates to Ukrainian troops. Some of the machines have night vision and heat sensors.

But there’s a downside: DJI, the leading provider of consumer drones in Ukraine and around the world, provides a tool that can easily pinpoint the location of an inexperienced drone operator, and no one really knows what the Chinese firm or its customers might do with that data. That makes some volunteers uneasy. DJI declined to discuss specifics about how it has responded to the war.

Taras Troiak, a dealer of DJI drones who started the Kyiv retail store, said DJI has been sending mixed signals about whether it’s providing preferential access to — or disabling — its drone detection platform AeroScope, which both sides of the conflict can potentially use to monitor the other’s flight paths and the communication links between a drone and the device that’s controlling it.

DJI spokesperson Adam Lisberg said wartime uses were “never anticipated” when the company created AeroScope to give policing and aviation authorities — including clients in both Russia and Ukraine — a window into detecting drones flying in their immediate airspace. He said some users in Ukraine have reported technical problems but DJI has not disabled the tool or given preferential access.

In the meantime, Ukrainian drone experts said they’ve been doing whatever they can to teach operators how to protect their whereabouts.

“There are a number of tricks that allow you to increase the level of security when using them,” Sushko said.

This 2022 aerial image provided by Ukrainian security forces, taken by a drone and shown on a screen, shows a blown-up building near the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine. The exact date and time of the image are unknown. In better times, Ukrainian drone enthusiasts flew their gadgets into the sky to photograph weddings, fertilize soybean fields or race other drones for fun. Now some are risking their lives by forming a volunteer drone force to help their country repel the Russian invasion. 

(Ukrainian Security Forces via AP)

Sushko said many in the industry are now trying to get more small drones — including DJI alternatives — transported into Ukraine from neighboring European countries. They can also be used to assist search-and-rescue operations.

Ukraine has a thriving community of drone experts, some of whom were educated at the National Aviation University or the nearby Kyiv Polytechnic University and went on to found local drone and robotics startups.

“They’ve got this homebuilt industry and all these smart people who build drones,” said Faine Greenwood, a U.S.-based consultant on drones for civic uses such as disaster response.

Troiak’s DJI-branded store in Kyiv, which is now shuttered as city residents take shelter, was a hub for that community because it runs a maintenance center and hosts training sessions and a hobby club. Even the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, once paid a visit to the store to buy a drone for one of his children, Troiak said.

A public drone-focused Facebook group administered by Troiak counts more than 15,000 members who have been trading tips about how to assist Ukrainian troops. One drone photographer who belongs to the Ukrainian Association of Drone Racing team told The Associated Press he decided to donate his DJI Mavic drone to the military rather than try to fly it himself. He and others asked not to be named out of fear for their safety.

“The risk to civilian drone operators inside Ukraine is still great,” said Australian drone security expert Mike Monnik. “Locating the operator’s location could result in directed missile fire, given what we’ve seen in the fighting so far. It’s no longer rules of engagement as we have had in previous conflicts.” In recent days, Russian-language channels on the messaging app Telegram have featured discussions on ways to find Ukrainian drones, Monnik said.

Some in Ukraine’s drone community already have experience deploying their expertise in conflict zones because of the country’s long-running conflict with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Monnik’s firm, DroneSec, has tracked multiple instances just in the past year of both sides of that conflict arming small drones with explosives. One thing that Ukrainians said they’ve learned is that small quadcopter drones, such as those sold at stores, are rarely effective at hitting a target with explosive payloads.

“It would seem somewhat short-sighted to waste one,” said Greenwood, the consultant based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “I assume the chief goal would be recon. But if things are getting desperate, who knows.”

DJI also has experience in responding to warfighters trying to weaponize its drones and used so-called “geofencing” technology to block drone movements during conflicts in Syria and Iraq. It’s not clear yet if it will do the same in Ukraine; even if it does, there are ways to work around it.

Small civilian drones are no match against Russian combat power but will likely become increasingly important in a protracted war, leaving drone-makers no option to be completely neutral. Any action they take or avoid is “indirectly taking a side,” said P.W. Singer, a New America fellow who wrote a book about war robots.

“We will see ad-hoc arming of these small civilian drones much the way we’ve seen that done in conflicts around the world from Syria to Iraq and Yemen and Afghanistan,” Singer said. “Just like an IED or a Molotov cocktail, they won’t change the tide of battle but they will definitely make it difficult for Russian soldiers.”

——

AP video journalist Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.

The Drone Unit that Helped the Taliban Win the War

The work of a drone unit, reported in detail here for the first time, shows how the Taliban were able to win the war against the U.S.-backed forces in Afghanistan

Fazelminallah QazizaiFazelminallah Qazizai is an Afghan journalist and co-author with Chris Sands of “Night Letters: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Afghan Islamists who Changed the World”

September 15, 2021

Two civilian contractors prepare a US Army 14′ Shadow surveillance drone before it’s launched at Forward Operating Base Shank May 8, 2013 in Logar Province, Afghanistan / Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images

As the U.S. began its final drawdown of troops from Afghanistan in the spring, the Taliban’s drone unit moved into position for its most important mission yet. A team of 12 engineers-turned-assassins, it was tasked with firing what would turn out to be one of the decisive shots in the closing stages of the war.

The target was a regional-level official in the north of the country named Piram Qul. Like so many of Afghanistan’s now deposed ruling elite, Piram Qul was a beguiling mixture of the charismatic and corrupt, a veteran of the mujahedeen’s struggle against the Soviets in the 1980s who had come to regard his youthful principles as an impediment to power. He was an ethnic Uzbek warlord who was part of many anti-Taliban Afghan factions, including Ahmed Shah Massoud’s Jamiati-i-Islami. In the years since the U.S.-led invasion, he had served as a member of Parliament and presided over local militias accused of a range of human rights abuses, including kidnapping and murder. What mattered to the Taliban, though, was the stranglehold he had on Takhar, a province on Afghanistan’s border with Tajikistan — an area traditionally hard for them to influence. Piram Qul was one of the last dominoes that needed to fall if the insurgents were to sweep across the north and trigger a decisive advance on Kabul. Their plan to assassinate him was motivated by necessity, not vengeance.

On the morning of May 2, Piram Qul was meeting villagers in the district of Rustaq in Takhar, accompanied by his usual retinue of bodyguards. Far above, a Taliban drone filmed him using a camera connected to the internet via a satellite signal. The hit squad’s leader was stationed at an undisclosed location nearby, where he controlled the drone and monitored the camera’s video feed using a laptop computer. He knew the drone was unlikely to be spotted. Its body and wings were painted custom blue to blend into the sky, so were the mortar rounds attached to its homemade weapons rack. The drone had cost the Taliban tens of thousands of dollars to buy, and it was quieter than cheaper and easily available commercial models. Nevertheless, the lead assassin needed to hold his nerve and remember everything he had practiced. This was not the first attack his team had carried out, nor would it be the last. But for tactical and psychological reasons it was essential he got it right. Kill Piram Qul, and the Taliban would be a step closer to sweeping through the north in a matter of weeks. Miss, and Piram Qul might encourage local security forces to regroup, stalling the Taliban’s advance and leaving the drone team embarrassed and exposed.

Around 11 a.m., the unit leader uttered a prayer and keyed the launch code into his computer. Seconds later the mission was over. Piram Qul was dead before he even realized he was under attack. The war could now be won.

Soon afterward, before any of Afghanistan’s cities had fallen to the Taliban, a member of the drone unit spoke to me on condition of anonymity about the assassination. The first of two members who agreed to be interviewed for this article also hinted at the extraordinary events that were about to unfold across the country. “We are one of the main forces that has demoralized the enemy and is causing them to flee,” he said.

While images of the Taliban alongside vast stockpiles of abandoned U.S. and Afghan military equipment have featured heavily in Western media coverage of recent weeks, they do not tell the story of America’s defeat. Classic insurgent tactics and unconventional weapons won this war. The work of the drone unit, reported in detail here for the first time, shows how the Taliban were able to neutralize the technological and military superiority of the U.S. In the past few days, the drone unit has again been busy, carrying out reconnaissance in the province of Panjshir that allowed Taliban ground forces to rout remnants of the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance hiding there.

The two drone unit members interviewed for this article spoke to me in several meetings that took place in secret in Kabul. All the interviews were held before and during the nationwide offensive that led to the Taliban entering the capital on Aug. 15 and declaring victory. Both members asked for their identities to be concealed due to the nature of the work. At one meeting, the two members were among a number of insurgents who attended a dinner in the neighborhood of Khoshal Khan, where they were joined by their squad leader, or emir, for a traditional Afghan meal of rosh — a dish of boiled and dried lamb, mixed with herbs and spices, and served with potatoes. The leader opted not to be interviewed, and his colleagues declined to reveal his name.

That drones should end up becoming one of the insurgents’ most potent weapons is a fitting twist to a war that confounded U.S. expectations from the start.

That drones should end up becoming one of the insurgents’ most potent weapons is a fitting twist to a war that confounded U.S. expectations from the start. Though drones have been used for surveillance purposes far longer, armed drones did not become operational until the late 1990s. In the last two decades the technology has become synonymous with the so-called global war on terror. The CIA used drones prior to 9/11 to track the movements of Osama bin Laden under the old Taliban regime. Then, during the 2001 invasion and its aftermath, it carried out its first drone strikes inside Afghanistan. Later, it began to use drones across the border in Pakistan, targeting insurgent hideouts in areas otherwise beyond the reach of U.S. forces. At least 51 CIA drone strikes occurred in Pakistan under the Bush administration, according to the U.K.-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. This number increased significantly once Barack Obama entered the White House. From early 2009 to early 2017, the bureau estimates that more than 370 drone strikes occurred in the border areas of Pakistan. The strikes decapitated the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban and killed many militants, though they also killed hundreds of civilians.

Many states watching these developments saw the potential of drones and started developing their own. But soon enough, drone technology had also started finding its way into the hands of insurgents and militias across the Middle East. In 2006 Hezbollah used armed drones against Israel, albeit with limited efficacy. Other nonstate groups tried their luck as unrest spread across the region in the wake of the Arab Spring, with Yemeni Houthi fighters using drones to attack oil refineries in Saudi Arabia in 2019. But it was the use of drones by the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria that captured the Taliban’s imagination. Footage of the attacks was featured in the Islamic State’s slick propaganda and found its way to Afghanistan, where it was eventually seen by the future emir of the Taliban’s drone unit.

The architect of Piram Qul’s assassination was at something of a personal and professional crossroads when he began to study the Islamic State films in detail around two years ago. He had made his reputation within the Taliban as an instructor at a training camp for suicide bombers, only to find that the nature of the war was now changing. U.S. military operations were winding down, and the Taliban leadership knew that continuing to launch suicide attacks against Afghan forces risked angering the population. A more precise method of killing was needed, particularly in the north of the country where the insurgents had less support. To the man who would become the unit’s emir, drones seemed like the perfect answer. After talking through the idea with senior intelligence operatives, he started to assemble his team.

The emir is tall, with an athletic build, long hair and flecks of gray in his beard. While he spent some of his youth studying in madrassas, he reportedly excelled as a student in Kabul University’s faculty of engineering during the U.S. occupation. He carries an Italian 9mm pistol and a knife with a handle made from goat horn — a piece of artisanship distinctive to the Afghan province of Parwan. But he is also rarely seen without his laptop and two smartphones — a Huawei and a Samsung Galaxy S20. The squad leader’s team of 11 men is made in his image. Like him, several of them are from Wardak, southwest of Kabul. They are well educated, and a number of them worked for Western NGOs before joining the drone team.

“We don’t work for money, we work for our theology and ideology,” said the second unit member.

Its job was to harass and assassinate Afghan government officials in the north.

When the drone team was established sometime around 2019, its remit was clear. While other sections of the Taliban were free to use basic civilian drones for surveillance, and the Haqqani network was allowed to carry out the occasional uncoordinated drone attack in the south and east of the country using equipment it acquired independently, the hit squad was the only drone unit with official operational approval from the Taliban’s leadership. Its job was to harass and assassinate Afghan government officials in the north. In doing so, it was to report solely to senior members of the Taliban’s intelligence apparatus. No one else in the insurgency was to be given detailed information about the unit’s operations, including shadow governors and high-level military commanders. The unit would be headquartered in the northern province of Kunduz.

Although other sections within the Taliban were able to rely on Pakistan or Iran to assist with weapons supplies when necessary, the drone unit members made no mention in my interviews of receiving help from either state. Instead, they claim to have turned to a private Afghan front company that imported agricultural chemicals and farming equipment from China. The unit asked the company to find a drone that was quiet and light but strong enough to withstand adverse weather conditions and fly at relatively high altitudes. When the company identified the right drone, it cost the Taliban approximately $60,000. They purchased it in China and smuggled the parts into Afghanistan via Pakistan.

Next, the unit’s engineers set to work modifying the drone. The chemical tanks and hoses for carrying and spraying fertilizer and pesticides were removed and replaced with a makeshift plastic missile rack capable of holding four mortar rounds that could be fired via a computer-activated spring mechanism. The Talibs changed the fuses on their usual mortars for more powerful versions containing RDX, a type of explosive popularized by U.S., British and German forces during World War II. While the drone came colored black, unit members repainted it blue to camouflage it against the sky. They also painted the RDX mortars blue. The drone was set up to be controlled in flight using a combination of laptop computers and smartphones that were connected to the internet via a portable satellite terminal.

After several trial-run attacks on checkpoints of the Afghan security forces, the Taliban’s first major operation with the new drone came in the northern city of Kunduz on Nov. 1, 2020. At least four bodyguards of the provincial governor were killed in the strike, which occurred while the guards were playing volleyball in the governor’s compound. The second drone unit member interviewed for this article said another potential operation in Kunduz, this time against U.S. troops, was called off after U.S. service members spotted the drone and relayed a complaint to the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, noting that it would violate the terms of the nationwide withdrawal agreement the Trump administration struck with the Taliban in February 2020. Taliban leaders ordered a halt to the operation — a rare example of them interfering in the drone team’s work. That same month, the head of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security told Parliament in Kabul that he wanted to stop the import of commercially available camera drones. It was too late.

Unit members continued to scout for potential targets even as images of crude insurgent drones used by other Taliban fighters began to spread across social media. The pictures belied the professionalism of their work. They traveled across the country in a silver Toyota Corolla Fielder station wagon driven by a trusted colleague hired from outside the team or used motorbikes to move quickly and easily through villages and backroads. The unit also bought and weaponized a second drone. Meanwhile, two more official Taliban drone units modeled on their efforts were established for the south and east of the country.

As the Taliban edged closer to victory, the northern team stepped up its operations. When Piram Qul’s name was added to the unit’s hit list, it was only a matter of time before he was killed. His assassination on May 2 this year went exactly as planned. Local media reported that the drone strike had been triggered by a call to Piram Qul’s mobile phone, ensuring its aim was precise. Not everyone in the drone unit was happy with the result, however. In the days that followed, the team learned that Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan president, had been due to visit Takhar in early May, only for his trip to be canceled over security concerns in the wake of Piram Qul’s death. Some members rued the fact they had missed a chance to assassinate the president.

“The drone’s targeting system is very exact,” said the second unit member. “If your hat has four stars on it and the operator targets a specific one of those stars, he can hit it.”

The unit did not dwell on its missed opportunity. With Piram Qul dead, members turned their attention to an even more powerful political figure in northern Afghanistan, Atta Muhammad Noor, better known as Ustad Atta. Another ethnic Tajik veteran of the mujahedeen’s fight against the Soviets, Ustad Atta had spent much of the U.S. occupation as governor of Balkh province and the de facto ruler of the city of Mazar-e-Sharif. To his supporters, he was an ardent opponent of the Taliban whose sharp suits and opulent lifestyle were evidence of his progressive politics. But the man Afghans call Ustad Atta was notorious locally for inflaming ethnic tensions and cracking down on anyone who challenged his authority. He had used his power to amass an enormous personal fortune, cultivating lucrative patronage networks linked to Afghanistan’s cross-border trade with central Asia. Although he was no longer governor, his continuing influence meant the Taliban could not hope to control the north if he remained a key figure on the political scene.

On July 1, Ustad Atta was hosting a meeting with other warlords and politicians at his house in Mazar-e-Sharif when a Taliban drone fired one of its mortars into the yard outside. Ustad Atta escaped unhurt, but a number of people were injured and several vehicles damaged. In an interview soon afterward, the drone squad members predicted that Ustad Atta would no longer try to resist the advance of the Taliban’s ground forces, with one of them mocking him as an aspiring Bollywood movie star who was only interested in fame and fortune. Atta was clearly spooked. Six weeks later, on Aug. 14, the Taliban took control of Mazar-e-Sharif. On Aug. 15, Kabul fell. Ustad Atta and Ghani were nowhere to be seen.

The British journalist and author Chris Sands contributed to this story from London.

The first US population to experience drone delivery gives it a seal of approval

VIRGINIA TECH

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE DRONE-DELIVERY SERVICE IN CHRISTIANSBURG, VA. -- THE FIRST IN THE COUNTRY TO DELIVER GOODS DIRECTLY TO RESIDENCES ON DEMAND -- GAVE RESEARCHERS A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO STUDY HOW PEOPLE... view more 

CREDIT: VIRGINIA TECH

The week of Thanksgiving last year, a postcard arrived in mailboxes in Christiansburg. A link to a survey was on the back. On the front, there was a picture that was, by then, very familiar to the residents of a town that made history in 2019 as the first place in the U.S. to have a residential drone delivery service: a yellow-winged drone with a small cardboard box tucked underneath it.

The survey's 20 questions were designed to measure how Christiansburg's 22,000 residents felt about drone delivery -- the first time that this question had ever been posed to a community that had actually experienced the service. The survey was developed and conducted by researchers from the Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership (MAAP), a federally designated drone test site, and Lee Vinsel, an assistant professor of science, technology, and society in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences.

The primary finding: 87 percent of people who responded to the survey reported that they liked the idea of drone delivery. The resoundingly positive results, published in the spring issue of Issues in Science and Technology, plant a new stake in the ground for the future of a technology still at the beginning of its transition from research to retail.

Interest in drone delivery is rising. The service in Christiansburg, run by Wing, Alphabet's drone-delivery subsidiary, is the most advanced of the handful of trial services operating today. But drone technology -- and the laws that regulate it -- are maturing, and it's expected that services like these could become routine in the next few years.

Whether they're successful or not will depend in large part on how the public responds. Delivering packages to homes unfolds in the public eye to a greater extent than many other applications for drones: People may see the drone in the commercial area where it picks up its cargo, at the customer's house, and in the neighborhoods in between.

Accurate estimates of public opinion are critical for the regulatory agencies developing rules that will govern its use and state and local governments considering whether to encourage it, in addition to the companies pioneering these services and hoping to scale their businesses.

Until now, though, data has been limited, and usually not encouraging: The handful of surveys on this topic have pegged public support for drone delivery at around 50 percent in the U.S. and lower in Europe and the U.K..

But several factors suggest that those anemic results might not be definitive.

First, crucially, these surveys polled people who had almost certainly never received a delivery by drone, and were speculating about a service they were imagining rather than reporting on one they'd experienced. Second, many of the survey questions frame their questions in a way that implies risk, asking respondents to rate their level of concern about potential problems selected by the researchers in advance. Highlighting potential negative outcomes may prompt a more negative overall sentiment.

Christiansburg, then, represented a unique research opportunity.

"Gauging people's reactions to new technologies can be really difficult, including because it's so easy to bias respondents' views," Vinsel said. "We wanted to create a survey that was as neutral as possible to examine sentiments about drone delivery. And Christiansburg was a great opportunity for us because it was a unique population that had actually experienced these systems."

The survey asked respondents about standard demographic factors and their typical response to new technologies. It asked about how familiar they were with drone delivery, how they'd found out about it, and what their general attitude toward it was. Instead of asking about specific risks and benefits, the researchers asked open-ended questions about what the respondents saw as positive and negative aspects of the technology.

The survey was approved by the Virginia Tech Institutional Review Board; Wing helped fund the survey development and distribution through an existing research contract with MAAP, but the analysis was funded entirely by Virginia Tech. Adeline Guthrie, a graduate student in the statistics in the College of Science and collaborator with the Statistical Applications and Innovations Group, assisted with data analysis.

The results were resoundingly positive.

Not only did 87 percent of respondents report positive sentiment about drone delivery, 89 percent indicated either that they were likely to use the service or already had, and 49 percent reported liking the idea of drones used for package delivery more than drones used for other purposes.

All of these results are dramatically different from those of other surveys, in which positive sentiment never exceeded 51 percent and delivery was a relatively unpopular application when ranked against others.

The survey also asked respondents if their opinion had changed since the pandemic. When COVID-19 hit Virginia in March, the number of people signing up for Wing's service and ordering drone deliveries spiked. Wing partnered with additional local businesses and worked with a school librarian to deliver books.

The survey results suggested that these contributions had helped. The pandemic popped up frequently in the open-ended question about positive aspects of the technology. Fifty-eight percent of Christiansburg survey respondents said that their opinion of drone delivery had improved -- a much bigger boost than was measured in a 2020 survey from the Consumer Technology Association that polled a general population sample.

Here again, Christiansburg residents' experience with drone delivery may have contributed to the jump -- seeing a favorite coffee shop find a new way to reach customers without in-person shopping or a neighbor's child receiving a delivery of sidewalk chalk and crackers, may resonate more than an abstract appreciation for contact-free delivery.

MAAP worked with Wing to launch the drone delivery program under the federal UAS Integration Pilot Program, a drone-integration initiative that brought together state agencies, local governments, and companies to advance the rollout of drone applications that could have significant benefits for communities (the trial is continuing under the IPP successor program BEYOND). MAAP and Wing conducted months of community outreach before the service launched, talking to thousands of Christiansburg residents about what the service would look like.

"One of the goals of the IPP was to take a community-oriented approach to drone integration," said Tombo Jones, MAAP's director. "There's not a shortcut here. You need careful, methodical research to demonstrate that the system is safe and reliable. Then you can take that information out into the community, and talk to people to learn what they're looking for and what their concerns are. It's rewarding to see how positive the results of this survey are, because they show that, when it's done the right way, developing new applications for drones can have a genuinely positive impact on a community."

The team is hoping that future research will reveal more detail about how people's opinions evolve before and after they're exposed to drone delivery, the aspects of drone delivery that inspire the greatest enthusiasm or strongest skepticism, and what factors help determine how someone will feel about the technology.

"The key thing is that speculation about technologies is different than actual experiences with them," Vinsel said. "Lots of factors influence how we feel about the technologies in our lives, but something scholars have found repeatedly over for the last 60 years is that familiarity breeds acceptance. To be at an early point in the rollout of this technology and be able to study a population that has actually experienced it is pretty exciting."