Iraq attack shows deadly potential of 'off-the-shelf' drones
Imagine you have 100 of these drones in one area during a battle all at once. The men targeted on the ground might bring down 1 to 5 of these drones with little plastic sheiths containing one grenade (that explodes in contact with anything solid like the ground) These are fragmentation devices so anything within 10 to 15 or even 20 feet of where one of these explodes is either dead or wounded. 95 of these 100 get through and drop their payloads. How many soldiers or civilians or usually both will be killed or maimed in Mosul or wherever this is adopted as a strategic method for eliminating soldiers or civilians on earth?
Then about 90 of those 100 drones get away back to their base a mile or so away and reload their plastic sheith with another fragmentation grenade change to another rechargable battery and the same 90 go out and 80 come back. They keep doing this again and again as long as they have replacement batteries or fragmentation grenades available or drones that have not malfunctioned or been blown out of the sky.
For any army or drug lord the beauty of this for them would be none of their soldiers would be lost doing this only drones.
This is why this is so very very deadly because killing people without limit becomes only a video game where no one dies on the drone side, theoretically.
This is how most of the human race likely will be eliminated in 3rd world countries worldwide during the next 100 years by dictators and drug lords.
This is the problem and one of many reasons the human race will be decimated by global warming, dictators like Trump and Putin, little drones from the sky, land, or sea, bad food, bad water etc.
We may be looking at how populations will drop to eventually 100 million or less here on earth.
Oct 13, 2016 ... The killing of two Peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq last week highlights the potential of turning cheap-to-buy, easily available drones into ...
Jan 31, 2017 ...Iraqi Special Operations soldiers try to shoot down an Islamic State drone ... They show how the group has institutionalized a program using off-the-shelf technology to ... But an increase in attacks since October — mostly targeting Iraqi ... [In deadly Yemen raid, a lesson for Trump's national security team].
Jan 12, 2017 ... Here's a pretty close look at one recently picked off by Iraqi special ... from commercial off the shelf UAVs https://t.co/Lj8Ltx0arQ pic.twitter.com/KCuzhUbndb ... One showing other quadcopter drones captured by Iraqi forces, date and ... injured in the attack, “believed to be one of the first times the Islamic ...
Jan 28, 2017 ... They have the potential to be used as terror weapons on civilian ... from Mosul to attack Iraqi ground forces attempting to free the city. ... The Iraqi ground forces call the drones “tieyara,” (Arabic shorthand for UAV). ... Most commercial counter- measures are configured to counter off the shelf unmodified UAVs ...
Image copyrightReutersImage caption
Drones are widely used by enthusiasts for racing, filmmaking or photography
You could call it a demonstration of the proliferation of drone use with frightening possibilities.
Last
week's attack in northern Iraq in which a small drone exploded killing
two Peshmerga fighters and badly wounding two members of the French
special forces, marks something of an innovation in modern warfare.
The
US launched the first armed drone attack back in October 2001. Since
then the use of armed drones has been the preserve of the most
sophisticated military actors in the world.
Israel and the US had
the early technological lead with Russia and China rapidly developing
their own drone industries. Modern military drones can operate over huge
distances and remain aloft for extended periods.
They have
become an invaluable means of gathering intelligence and conducting
surveillance. Their armed counterparts can strike with an array of
precision-guided weapons. That is, if you like, the high-end of drone
technology.
'Off-the-shelf' terror tool
But
as cheaper drones have become available on the high street for amateur
photographers and enthusiasts, so the technology has been used by
militant groups as well.
So-called Islamic State (IS) and groups
like the formerly-named Nusra Front (with close links to al-Qaeda) have
been using cheap off-the-shelf drones for some time for surveillance
purposes or to shoot propaganda videos. But now they are turning them
into weapons.
The exact details of last week's lethal attack in
northern Iraq are still unclear. Some reports suggest that the drone
exploded as it was being dismantled. It is not clear if these are simply
flying booby-traps; other reports suggest that on a separate occasion
one was crashed into a building which then exploded.
This is a
long way from the sophisticated weaponry deployed daily by the Americans
and some of their allies. Indeed the small commercial drones cannot
carry much of a pay-load, so their destructive potential is limited, but
they clearly can kill, as last week's incident shows. Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption
The US and Europe use state-of-the art drone technology - like this Reaper drone - in warfare
US troops in the region have been warned to take
cover when small drones are observed - up to now they have been regarded
as relatively harmless. This kind of weaponised commercial drone is
expected to figure in the IS defence of Mosul, though there are no clear
estimates of how many of these drones they may have purchased.
How to disarm a drone?
There
have been a variety of technical responses to this new drone threat,
which alarms police and security officials even more than commanders on
the battlefield. Relatively cheap commercial drones are now on sale
almost everywhere and anything that can carry a small camera can carry a
small explosive device.
Countering this new drone threat
involves two main approaches. One is to try to shoot it down or capture
it in some way. The other is to interfere with the signals by which it
is guided to its intended target.
An anti-drone rifle was spotted
in an American position in Iraq earlier this year. The device is called
the Drone Defender. It works by disrupting the drone's guidance signal
and it looks like a standard military rifle but with two antennae
projecting from the front.
The advantage of this type of system -
especially for police or security applications - is that it is
non-kinetic, in other words it does not send bullets or shells up into
the sky, which would clearly be impossible in anything other than a war
zone.
Other defensive systems seek to take over control of a drone
by cyber means, while others take a more direct route - one
manufacturer has even developed a projectile that captures the drone -
like spider-man - in a weighted mesh net.
'Drone genie is out of the bottle'
What
is alarming is that this new threat has come as something of a
surprise. It has been widely predicted by both security officials and
military futurologists. There have long been fears that major sporting
events, like the last European football championships in France for
example, or indeed any major public event - could become the target for a
terrorist using some kind of easily-available drone.
And while
technologies are available to counter these "improvised flying explosive
devices" they are probably not yet reliable enough or available in
sufficient numbers. As ever, for now, the attackers may have a
temporary advantage as the defenders struggle to catch up.
That of
course does not apply in the world of sophisticated military drones
where the US and the West in general has a huge advantage. But this is
changing too. The US is exporting the weapons to some of its allies.
China
too is becoming an exporter of armed drones. And efforts to try to draw
up some kind of international treaty to govern the sale and spread of
these weapons have so far foundered.
Indeed the proliferation of
these weapons is going in two ways - at the top-end of the market
sophisticated military systems are spreading relatively quickly and at
the bottom-end guerrilla groups, terrorists, drug cartels and so on are
beginning to use less sophisticated drones for a variety of purposes.
The
drone genie is clearly out of the bottle. As online retailers make
plans for the widespread delivery of packages by drone, it is easy to
see how those with malign intentions could use the self-same technology
for deadly purposes.
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