25 January 2016
Thus far, drones have been used by terrorist, insurgent, criminal, corporate and activist groups for two broad purposes – to stage IED-type attacks and gather intelligence. Today, Chris Abbott and others provide specific details on how “threat groups” have exploited drones in the past and how they might rely on them in the future.
By Chris Abbott and Matthew Clarke and Steve Hathorn and Scott Hickie for Oxford Research Group (ORG)
The following extract is part of a larger report ("Hostile Drones: The Hostile Use of Drones by Non-State Actors against British Targets") which the Oxford Research Group (ORG) published on 11 January 2016. If you are interested in the broader text, which additionally explores the attributes of many commercially available unmanned vehicles and how to counter the potential threats they pose, go here.
A review of the known use of drones by various terrorist, insurgent, criminal, corporate and activist threat groups around the world has identified two principal categories of hostile use: attack and intelligence gathering. There are particular concerns that that drones will be used as simple, affordable and effective airborne Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). Governments are also concerned by the decentralisation and democratisation of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities made possible by the widespread availability of drones. In contrast, this is a development that is welcomed by activists working to hold governments and corporations to account. A brief summary of the review is presented in the following pages. The majority of drones used are unmanned aerial vehicles, as they are more readily commercially available and offer more options than land- or sea-based platforms.
Lone wolf
There are many examples of individuals using drones for purposes beyond authorised and accepted use, and these suggest scenarios for future lone wolf attacks.
In September 2011, a 26-year-old American man was arrested by undercover FBI agents planning to fly explosives-laden model aeroplanes into the Pentagon and US Capitol and rig mobile phones to detonate improvised explosive devices (IEDs). In January 2015, an off-duty employee of the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency lost control of a friend’s DJI Phantom quadcopter, which then crashed onto the White House lawn. The incident raised concerns about the extent to which the Secret Service is prepared for drone activity. Four months later, a man was arrested for trying to fly a Parrot Bebop drone over the White House fence. In France, unidentified drones have been flown over the US embassy, the Eiffel Tower, the Invalides military museum, the submarine communications base at Sainte-Assise, the Place de la Concorde, the Elysee Palace and multiple nuclear power stations. In June 2014, an unidentified drone was used to monitor the French national football team during a closed training session at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. In July 2014, an unidentified drone came within six metres of an Airbus A320 as it landed at London’s Heathrow Airport, prompting the Civil Aviation Authority to issue new safety guidelines, known as the ‘dronecode’. In October 2015, an unidentified drone crashed into the Sydney Opera House.
Fortunately, there has so far been very few instances of individual terrorists using drones to undertake attacks. What could be was demonstrated in April 2015 when a man landed a drone on the Japanese prime minister’s office in Tokyo. The drone was carrying a bottle containing radioactive sand from Fukushima, which was emanating up to 1.0 microsievert per hour.
In a response to a freedom of information request by Open Briefing, the Metropolitan Police Service revealed that between January 2013 and August 2015, 20 suspicious drone related incidents had been recorded in and around London.[1] Sixty per cent of the disclosed incidents related to air navigation orders where civil aviation requirements had been breached; the rest related to criminal or illegal activity. In one case, a UAV was used to smuggle drugs into a prison and in another case a drone was flown over 200,000 people on 20 December 2014.
Terrorist organisations
The Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah has the longest history of drone use by a nonstate group. Hezbollah reportedly maintains a small fleet of UAVs, including Iranian Ababil and Mirsad platforms and their Hezbollah derivatives.[2] Some reports estimate that the fleet includes upwards of 200 platforms for ISR and combat missions.[3] In November 2004, Hezbollah allegedly flew an Iranian UAV over parts of northern Israel before returning to Lebanese territory. In August 2006, Hezbollah launched three small Ababil drones, some allegedly carrying explosive payloads, with the intention of attacking Israeli military targets. The drones were shot down by Israeli F-16s. In October 2012, Hezbollah allegedly flew a small Ayub drone 35 miles into Israeli airspace with the intention of undertaking reconnaissance on a nuclear reactor. An Israeli aircraft shot the drone down before it returned to Lebanon.
More recently, it is possible that Hezbollah has more consistent access to Iranian UAVs, including the Ababil-3, and are using UAVs against al-Nusra Front fighters in Lebanon. In September 2014, the Fars News Agency reported that Hezbollah had achieved its first successful drone strike, killing an estimated 23 ‘Syrian rebels’.[4] In April 2015, IHS Jane’s published evidence of a Hezbollah UAV airfield in the northern Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, that included a UAV ground command station.[5] The group is thought to be continuing to use UAVs for ISR in the border region between Syria and Lebanon.
Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian organisation Hamas, is suspected of having a small fleet of UAVs and a crude production workshop. During Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Israeli forces shot down a potentially armed Hamas-controlled Arbabil-1 UAV with a Patriot surface-to-air missile. Al-Qassam Brigades advised that the drone was only one of three that breached Israeli airspace, though the Israeli military deny this claim. In December 2014, a drone flyover of a Hamas military parade resulted in Israel scrambling fighters that returned to base after the drone did not enter Israeli airspace.
More recently, Al-Qassam Brigades announced that it had captured an Israeli Skylark 1 that came down in Gaza in July 2015. The group claimed that the drone had been repaired and was operational. Al-Qassam Brigades also claims to have developed three UAV platforms, two with combat payloads and one for surveillance.
The extremist militant group Islamic State were shown to be using DJI Phantom UAV platforms in Fallujah, Iraq, from early 2014. While the early demonstrations of commercially available drones appeared to be for propaganda purposes only, there is emerging evidence that these platforms are now providing actionable ISR and target acquisition capabilities to Islamic State.[6] There are some indications that IS used hobbyist drones to gain situational awareness ahead of the campaign to capture the Tabqa military airfield in northern Syria in August 2014. In March 2015, US military forces launched an airstrike against an IS militant who had been flying a UAV over Fallujah. In April 2015, Islamic State released a video showing UAVs being used for reconnaissance and battlefield coordination during its assault on the Baiji oil refinery complex in Iraq. [7] In May 2015, the Kurdish Peshmerga shot down an IS drone that had been filming their positions. In August 2015, there were reports that Kurdish soldiers had captured a remote controlled car carrying explosives that had failed to detonate. In the same month, US Central Command released a list of airstrike targets around the world, including ‘an ISIL drone’ near Ramadi in Iraq. [8]
There are significant barriers to planning and carrying out a major terrorist attack of any sort. The intelligence work carried out by the British security services provides a robust line of defence against terrorist groups. There have been no known examples in the United Kingdom, Europe or the United States of terrorist organisations using drones for either attack or intelligence gathering. However, Islamic State is reportedly obsessed with launching a synchronised multi-drone attack on large numbers of people in order to recreate the horrors of 9/11.
Insurgent groups
Insurgent groups have many of the same capabilities and intentions as terrorist organisations, but do not face the same regulatory and law enforcement barriers to attacks on British interests as groups attempting to use drones to launch attacks within the United Kingdom. Drones therefore have the potential to become significant components of insurgents’ armouries. Obtaining aerial, ground and marine reconnaissance and attack capabilities would mark a step change for many insurgent groups.
Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) militias in eastern Ukraine reportedly possess and deploy sophisticated Russian-made Eleron- 3SV drones for ISR campaigns. In contrast, the Ukrainian military has been using a range of modified and tailor-made hobbyist UAVs for ISR support. There are reports that the DPR militias are using signal jamming and GPS spoofing countermeasures against some Ukrainian drones; however, more advanced autopilot software in the tailor-made models is more resilient against these countermeasures. The Ukrainians have requested US military drones, such as Reapers, and jamming equipment and radar to better intercept the Russian-made drones.
In August 2002, a Colombian Army unit allegedly discovered remote-controlled aeroplanes during a raid on a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) camp. The intended use of the aircraft remains unclear.
Organised crime groups
Mexican drug trafficking organisations (DTOs) have been documented using drones to smuggle illicit drugs across the US-Mexican border since 2010. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has recorded around 150 drone trips across the border since 2012. Nearly two tonnes of cocaine and other drugs are estimated to have been trafficked into the United States in this way, with an average of 13 kilograms of drugs per shipment. [9] In January 2015, a drone that crashed in Tijuana, Mexico, was carrying over three kilograms of methamphetamine. In August 2015, two men pleaded guilty to trafficking 12 kilograms of heroin across the US-Mexican border in the first cross-border seizure involving a drone.
In the face of increasingly successful military and law enforcement operations against illicit drug smuggling in the early 1990s, Colombian drug cartels began to invest in producing narcosubmarines as an alternate to small planes and go-fast boats. In August 2005, US authorities captured an unmanned semi-submersible in the Pacific Ocean. This was a torpedo-style cargo container, rather than a self-propelled vessel, which was towed underwater behind a boat and released if a patrol ship was spotted. The narco-torpedo would then release a buoy with a location transmitter system so that it could be retrieved later. In July 2010, the Ecuadorian police and navy found a jungle shipyard containing a 22.5-metre long narco-submarine. The advanced ‘supersub’ had a camouflaged hull made of Kevlar and carbon fibre and a cargo bay capable of holding over eight tonnes of cocaine. The high level of sophistication apparent in the various captured nacrosubmarines and the huge resources available to the DTOs means that it is highly likely that they are now investing in remotely-piloted submersible vessels in addition to custommade UAVs.
Corporations
There have been isolated examples of drones being used to obtain commercially sensitive information, such as drones flying over the filming of Game of Thrones in Ireland, Apple’s new campus site being built in Cupertino in the United States and the BAE Systems facility in northern England that builds submarines for the Royal Navy. However, there have been no documented examples of corporations using drones for commercial advantage or espionage. However, there is a broad range of threat scenarios whereby drones are integrated into corporate espionage operations alongside cyber offensives and spear phishing campaigns. A likely scenario involves using drones as a means to deploy a malware payload over specific Wi-Fi networks. The leaked emails of Italian spyware vendor Hacking Team suggest that early concept plans for using drones for airborne malware delivery over Wi-Fi networks were being discussed with Insitu, a division of Boeing.[10]
One offensive scenario is the use of crowd control drones by British companies against strikers or demonstrators threatening foreign operations. An example of such a drone is the Desert Wolf Skunk, which is equipped with four high-capacity paint ball barrels that can fire a variety of ammunition, including pepper spray balls and plastic balls. The drones can be flown in formation by a single operator. In what the South African company calls a ‘life threatening situation’, each drone can fire 80 balls per second, allowing for ‘real stopping power’.[11] Desert Wolf reportedly sold 25 Skunks to an international mining company after a photo of the drone was featured on a military news website in May 2014.
Activist groups
Although clearly not presenting a threat of the same type or magnitude as the other threat groups discussed in this briefing, activists have employed drones to support their political campaigns on a number of occasions. In September 2013, the German political party the Pirate Party flew a Parrot quadcopter towards the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, during a campaign rally in Dresden.[12] The stunt was in protest against the German government’s surveillance policies. In October 2014, Greater Albania activists flew a drone carrying the Greater Albania flag over an Albania-Serbia football match.[13] Greater Albanian’s claim territory from Albania’s neighbours, including Serbia. In July 2015, Women on Waves delivered pregnancy termination pills by drone from Germany to Poland to highlight restrictive abortion laws in Poland. Animal rights activist groups have used UAVs to remotely capture farming, animal husbandry and animal testing practices in the United States. In April 2015, a man protesting over the Japanese government’s nuclear energy policy landed a drone containing radioactive sand on the roof of the Japanese prime minister’s office in Tokyo.
Although the use of drones by activists is still uncommon, the most likely way in which drones will be used by such groups in future is in undertaking publicity-seeking exercises in front of the media or filmed using onboard cameras. Activists could also use drones to assist existing campaign efforts through reconnaissance and surveillance.
Notes
[1] https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/counter_drone_measures#incoming-702249.
[2] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/thisnew-airstrip-could-be-home-to-hezbollah-s-dronesbdec97ff36a8.
[3] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4457653,00.html.
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUSGNApl9XQ.
[5] http://www.janes.com/article/50922/hizbullahairstrip-revealed.
[6] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/islamic-statehas-drones-7827987c1755.
[7] http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2015/04/islamic-state-uses-drones-to-coordinate-fighting-in-baiji.php.
[8] http://www.centcom.mil/en/news/articles/august-3-military-airstrikes-continue-against-isil-terrorists-in-syriaand.
[9] http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/mexicos-cartels-building-custom-made-narco-drones-dea.
[10] https://theintercept.com/2015/07/18/hackingteam-wanted-infect-computers-drone/.
[11] http://www.desert-wolf.com/dw/products/unmanned-aerial-systems/skunk-riot-control-copter.html.
[12] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcFiMCMbUHo.
[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJSQf737Agw.
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Chris Abbott is the founder and executive director of Open Briefing. He is also an honorary visiting research fellow in the School of Social and International Studies at the University of Bradford and was the deputy director of the Oxford Research Group until 2009.
Matthew Clarke is an associate researcher at Open Briefing. He is also a freelance campaigner and Analyst. He has worked in business, politics and the European NGO community.
Steve Hathorn is a senior analyst at Open Briefing. He is an intelligence analyst with nearly 30 years' experience in the British Army, Defence Intelligence Staff, National Criminal Intelligence Service, United Nations, International Criminal Court and the National Crime Agency.
Scott Hickie is a senior analyst at Open Briefing. He is also a senior policy officer for the New South Wales government. He is a former political adviser and lawyer.
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