Increasingly Threatening Drone Weaponization by Non-State Actors

"Drones serve multiple functions, including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, as well as command and control in clashes between cartels, against Mexican state forces, or even against self-defense groups."

"They have also been used for aerial bombings, direct attacks, and propaganda or psychological warfare operations."

Robert Bunker, co-founder, Small Wars Journal 

 

"Even before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, unmanned aerial systems [UASes] and other advanced technologies were being employed by criminals, terrorists, and other non-state actors in Latin America in increasingly innovative and problematic ways."

Evan Ellis, author, “Latin America’s Drone Problem”, professor, U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute

"The adoption of drones by TCOs [transnational criminal organizations] is the latest example of how powerful criminal networks often borrow from military and insurgent tactics to challenge the state."

"Mexico, for instance, has seen the rise of so-called narcotanques, monstruos [monsters], or, more technically, Improvised Armored Fighting Vehicles—up-armored civilian trucks and cars sporting heavy weaponry and often used to spearhead cartel assaults."

"In the case of drones however, TCOs may find even more uses for cheap commercial UASes than the conventional soldiers on both sides of the war in Ukraine."

CSIS/Center for Strategic & International Studies 

Drones Fuel Criminal Arms Race in Latin America   insightcrime.org

 

There has been a revolution on battlefields in the past several years, with drones increasingly being used as unmanned vehicles of attack and destruction, a much less expensive alternative to flying warplanes and risking the loss of pilots when they're struck. Remotely controlled drones have proven indispensable in combat zones for their versatility, nimbleness, cost expendibility and ease of use. Ukraine's manufacture of technologically advanced drones has proven to be a brilliant combat success able to penetrate deep into Russian territory, wreaking havoc and demoralizing the Russian population. 

 

The battlefields in Ukraine have proven to be a military test case for the use of drones, in the country's response to the unequal combat challenge it faces through the assault of a much larger force than its own. Ukraine has managed against considerable odds, to hold its own, even while Russian troops are slowly and incrementally making inroads in capturing and annexing more Ukrainian territory as time goes by. Drone technology has given Ukraine the advantage of greater flexibility and surprise, to set Moscow back on its invasion heels, through sheer plucky counteroffense strategies. 

 

As with any innovations in military technology, all the more so when the new designs and purposes of an unmanned vehicle that can be adapted for a variety of purposes, it could never be confined to military use. Low production cost and greater market visibility made drones appealing to entrepreneurs in a variety of uses, from commercial delivery vehicles to monitoring traffic, to aerial photographic purposes, as well as appealing to amateur flight enthusiasts viewing the technology as yet another entertaining hobby.

 

And then there is the criminal class of entrepreneurs which can always find such technologies useful for a variety of purposes; sneaking drugs or arms over prison walls at their prisoner recreation sites, delivering drugs from one area of a country to another by powerful drug cartels. And the use of militarized drones to target rival gangs, and perhaps most troubling of all, manipulating drones equipped with weaponry to target police drug squads or the military.

 

Latin America appears to have taken wholeheartedly to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to make their activities even more effectively efficient; for guerrilla insurgencies and drug cartels alike. In this part of the world drone use has devolved in the past year for use in drug warfare; testing ground use has surged in frequency, lethality and sophistication, becoming a growing threat to public safety, sovereign nationality and stability of entire regions. 

 

A report authored by Professor Evan Ellis with the U.S. army War College titled "Latin America's Drone Problem" warns of the destabilization and danger presented by drone use.

 

Photo: MARCOS PIN/AFP via Getty Images

 

The use of drones readily available commercially at preferential cost, have been used to spy on authorities on border crossings, for smuggling cellphones into prisons and to deliver crude explosives to high-value targets. Their use for drug trafficking, transporting narcotics from Mexico across to the United States is not particularly new. But what is different, according to the report, is the increase in weaponization of the technology. 

 

Several months ago, a Colombian soldier was targeted in Catatumbo by a drone launched by the ELN guerrilla group. This was in response to a military operation where 80 people were killed and at least 50,000 were displaced. In Mexico, about the same time, a drone just missed assassinating General Jorge Alejandro Gutierrez in Chihuahua, during an ambush. 

 

A drone loaded with 40 pounds of explosives in Ecuador slammed into the roof of the country's maximum-security prison, La Roca, where plans were afoot to damage the prison to enable a mass prisoner escape to take place. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration identified over 150 drones used in cross-border criminal activity between 2012 and 2014. Ten years on, the numbers have increased substantially. The situation has led some Latin American governments to invest in drone detection and counter-drone technologies.

 

Countering the threat remains fragmented and underfunded, however with procurement delays, weak co-ordination between agencies and above all, limited access to cutting-edge tools which have left many countries' authorities desperate to successfully counter increasingly tech-savvy criminal adversaries.  

 

Soldiers patrol near the hamlet Plaza Vieja in the Michoacan state of Mexico. The Mexican army acknowledged for the first time on August 2, 2024, that some of its soldiers have been killed by drug cartel bomb-dropping drones in the western state of Michoacan, without providing fatality numbers. AP