Faced with increasing loss of personnel and strongholds, ISIS and operatives from its affiliates, including Boko Haram, are nearing advanced stages in turning ‘civilian’ drones into deadly weapons of warfare, expert intelligence and counter-terrorism evaluations from the United States have warned.
A global alert from the US-based Combating Terrorism Centre based in the United States Military Academy (USMA) in West Point, New York, notes that the Islamic State has effectively reached a threatening stage in the use of modified commercial drones as weapons.
The report titled, “The Islamic State and Drones: Supply, Scale and Future Threats”
The report from the US Combating Terrorism Center, which analysed the evolving threat in ISIS and its affiliates’ deep interest in drones, notes that the terrorists have also been studying how to jam signals from American military drones.
The Islamic State is a group known for doing things a bit differently, for its capacity for innovation, and for its many ‘firsts’; two of those ‘firsts’ happened within months of each other.