Radical Middle East Actors Increasingly Turn to Drones

By Yaakov Lappin

Radical actors throughout the Middle East and beyond are increasingly turning to various types of drones to enhance their attack capabilities, and this trend looks set to accelerate. Meanwhile, the use of drones by jihadist terror elements in other areas of the world, including the West, to attack targets and disrupt sensitive facilities, forms a clear security threat around the world.

In what is becoming an increasingly common occurrence, Israeli fighter jets were scrambled on Nov. 2 toward a drone that was detected intruding from Gaza.

Israel, which has been on the frontline of hostile drone use, has intercepted repeated attempts by terror factions to fly drones into its air space. But that doesn’t mean its adversaries have given up on using the tool, or that they aren’t further developing their drone attack capability.

In recognition of the threat, the Israeli cabinet in December 2017 allocated responsibility to the Israel Defense Forces to deal with external drone threats, while the Israel Police received jurisdiction to tackle drone threats from within the country.
The term drone is used to describe many types of unmanned flying systems, though they can broadly be broken down into fixed-wing military attack aircraft and multi-rotor systems that are available on the civilian market, and which can easily be weaponized.

A milestone incident underscoring the growing reliance on drones by radical actors came on Sept. 14, 2019, when a swarm of ...