Drone Threat 2025: Taking Stock
By TorchStone VP, Scott Stewart
At the ASIS Global Security Exchange in 2018, my friend Fred Burton and I gave a presentation titled Five Terrorism Drivers and Trends to Watch in the Next Five Years. One of the terrorism trends we examined in our briefing was the growing proliferation of drone technology. My assessment of the terrorist drone threat in 2018 was that, although drones were becoming more widely available, the threat they posed outside of active war zones remained limited. One of the critical factors shaping this assessment was that the attacks by non-state actors involving drones, to that point in time, had mostly involved small commercial drones dropping military ordnance like hand grenades and 40mm grenades on targets, and these items of ordnance are difficult to obtain outside of war zones. We did see some use of low explosive “papabombas”—potato bombs—in Mexico, but that still did not pose a significant threat at the time.
That assessment held up over the ensuing years, but drone technology has changed dramatically since 2018, as evidenced by the massive proliferation of drones in the war in Ukraine and their deadly impact on the battlefield. Because of these changes, it seems like an appropriate time to re-examine the terrorist drone threat. I also want to open the aperture just a bit to consider some of the implications of advancements in drone technology beyond terrorist attacks.
Changes
War has often resulted in rapid technological advances. World War I brought the world machine guns, air combat, and tanks, and World War II saw the emergence of aircraft carriers and atomic weapons. The current war in Ukraine has been noteworthy for huge leaps in drone technology. In fact, at the present time, short-range first-person view (FPV) drones are causing some 70 percent of the casualties on the battlefield. Drones have become the defining weapon system of this war.
While the United States has been using large, expensive drones like the MQ-1 Predator to conduct strikes since shortly after the 9/11 attacks, and the Islamic State used some small commercial drones in Iraq in 2017 to drop grenades on attacking coalition forces, it has been since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine that small, commercially available drones have really emerged as effective (and much feared) weapons.
Many of these small, cheap drones are first-person view (FPV) drones, which are flown by a pilot who wears a headset that allows them to see what the drone’s camera is seeing to maneuver the drone beyond line of sight. FPV drones were first developed for drone racing. These drones are fast, robust, and extremely maneuverable, which makes them very effective at attacking moving targets like vehicles and soldiers. They are also much cheaper and much more expendable than the multi-million-dollar Predator platforms.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, FPV drones were being used to conduct reconnaissance for small units and to drop grenades and other small ordnance on targets, much like the Islamic State had used drones in Iraq. However, as the war progressed and drones became cheaper and more plentiful, FPV drones became considered expendable and began to be used in one-way “kamikaze” attack missions, outfitted with a variety of military ordnance for attacks against different targets.
Some FPV drones are outfitted with RPG warheads to attack armored vehicles, while others are outfitted with fragmentation bombs to target troops in the open. So-called “dragon drones” are used to drop molten thermite on enemy soldiers and equipment, while thermobaric munitions are strapped to FPV drones to attack troops hiding in bunkers or buildings. In some instances, hundreds of these small drones have been used in a single day and have served to make it very difficult for both sides to conduct offensive operations.
Another major advancement connected to FPV drones is the emergence of 3D-printed drones. Instead of importing finished drone systems, small workshops located all over Ukraine use 3D printers to fabricate drones—some military units can even print drones in their positions near the front lines. Ukraine has also made efforts to expand the local production of drone flight controllers, motors, and cameras so that they are not reliant on China and other foreign sources of those components. The locally sourced drones also cost less than imported systems.
Consequently, drones are now cheaper, faster, and easier to acquire, and thousands of small drones are expended every day for reconnaissance, attacks, and even to destroy enemy drones. Additionally, drone technology has advanced during the war to make drones stealthier. New propeller designs have resulted in quieter drones that are harder to hear, giving targets less time to react and take cover.
In response to the massive expansion in drone warfare, both sides dramatically increased their use of electronic warfare to jam drones. They increased their efforts to triangulate and target the locations of opposing drone operators. To adapt to the increase in jamming, drone operators began to employ frequency-hopping. In a deadly game of cat and mouse, electronic warfare systems have improved to help protect against frequency-hopping drones.
This improvement in jamming technology resulted in yet another leap in drone technology, the use of fiber optic strands to control FPV drones. Fiber optic strands render the drones impervious to radio frequency jamming while also making it more difficult to identify the drone operator’s position. This is because the drones don’t use radio signals that can be intercepted and triangulated by traditional means.
Another way to combat the increased effectiveness of frequency jamming is the use of AI-enabled drones that are not reliant upon a pilot to drive them.
Implications
These advancements in drone technology have had incredible implications for war fighters, but they also have security implications that reach outside of active war zones. However, it is important to note that while drones are now more plentiful and easier to acquire than ever, munitions availability will continue to constrain the deadliness of FPV drones. FPV drones are only as lethal as the weapons they carry, and outside of war zones like Ukraine, it remains difficult to obtain destructive items like RPG warheads and military-grade high explosives.
As evidenced by many failed or thwarted bombing plots in the West in recent years, threat actors have struggled to obtain or synthesize explosives. As a result, we have witnessed an increase in terrorist attack plans involving armed assaults, vehicular assaults, and edged weapons instead of bombings.
While many Ukrainian drones do in fact use 3D printed munitions, these munitions are filled with military-grade high explosives that are harvested from landmines, artillery shells, or bulk shipments from arms factories. They are not using homemade explosives to fill these munitions.
Conversely, non-state groups are increasingly using drones. We continue to see groups such as the Mexican cartels using low-explosive chlorate mixtures in their locally fabricated drone munitions. These are not nearly as powerful and deadly as munitions filled with military grade high explosives.
Certainly, it is necessary to continue to develop effective countermeasures to protect against FPV drone attacks, and efforts must be made to stop the proliferation of military ordnance from active war zones and the diversion of ordnance from military use. However, we have not yet reached the point where drones pose as great a threat to people and armored vehicles as they do on the battlefield.
I can foresee some ways in which cheap FPV drones could be used against infrastructure and aviation targets, even accounting for munition constraints, but I don’t really want to delve too deeply into that topic in a public forum.
But aside from using drones for attacks, the drone advancements we have seen on the battlefield in Ukraine also bring some other implications.
Drones have appeared in increasing numbers over private estates, corporate headquarters, government facilities, airports, and public events. In addition to causing significant havoc by shutting down airports and disrupting major events, drones have become a serious threat to privacy and proprietary information.
While California passed legislation in 2015 to prevent aerial snooping using drones, paparazzi continue to use them to pry into the private lives of celebrities. Police also report that high-end robbery crews are using drones to conduct preoperational surveillance of estates to help in planning robberies.
The use of quieter drones will make it harder for security teams to detect paparazzi, criminals, or corporate spies using drones, and using fiber optic drones will make it more difficult to track and arrest illegal drone operators. Fiber optic-equipped drones specifically will also provide higher definition video feeds, which will serve to embolden such actors to behave even more brazenly.
These implications underscore a hard truth: if we don’t keep advancing drone detection and defeat systems, we will be flying blind to the emerging threats they pose.