Department 13 News

Industry analysis | Case Studies | Product & Service News

Fire From the Sky: The Afghan Taliban’s Drones

Afghan policemen in Alamgai Market lament that their Taliban foes are better equipped than they themselves (Franz J. Marty, November 21, 2020)

 

The Taliban have been weaponizing commercially available drones into their arsenal for some time.

SAYED KARAM, PAKTIA, AFGHANISTAN —  While the Taliban have since at least 2016 used camera-equipped commercial drones to film propaganda footage, it was, as far as it could be determined, only in early October 2020 that they began to use such unmanned aerial vehicles for attacks. Although, as of writing, there have been few such attacks with weaponized commercial drones, they are significant for several reasons. They exemplify that the Taliban remain — despite engaging the Afghan government and other Afghan stakeholders in peace negotiations — intent on fighting the Afghan government and employ new, ingenious tactics to do so. Furthermore, and even though the impact of such drone attacks has so far remained limited, they threaten to demoralize Afghan government forces who perceive themselves to face a better-equipped enemy. 

Another policeman from the district centre of Sayed Karam claimed that in some instances, Taliban drones had dropped improvised bomblets made out of plastic Pepsi bottles filled with explosives and closed with a trigger in the bottleneck. And a video that was later shared on Twitter and allegedly taken in Khost, a province neighbouring Paktia, showed a 40 mm M433 high-explosive dual-purpose grenade cartridge that is usually meant to be shot with a grenade launcher but was apparently modified to be triggered on impact when dropped from a drone.

Reported on diplomat.com: Read the entire article here.

How Department 13's advanced technology could assist in the commercial industry;

  • Department 13’s C-UAS solution MESMER, provides the capability for these organisations to detect and protect their critical people and assets from airborne threats such as drones.
  • MESMER intelligently listens and identifies drones/drone swarms flying within the airspace enabling users to coordinate incident response processes and forces.
  • MESMER provides the user with the ability to neutralise the drone(s) threat through non-jamming / non-kinetic and safe ‘soft kill’ control mitigations.
  • MESMER can be easily deployed to fixed Critical Infrastructure sites or in portable deployments to enable increased mobility.
  • MESMER is also easily integrated into existing C2 systems and accompanying drone sensor/mitigation platforms to provide more enhanced capabilities. 

To find out how Department 13 technology can assist your industry or specific requirements, contact us for an initial confidential discussion.

cross linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram