"The force is strong with this" new technology

ISIS targeting foreign troops with explosives-laden drones


WASHINGTON -- Militant groups like Hezbollah and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have learned how to weaponize surveillance drones and use them against each other and foreign forces, adding a new twist to Syria’s civil war, a U.S. military official and others say.

A video belonging to an al Qaeda offshoot, Jund al-Aqsa, purportedly shows a drone landing on Syrian military barracks. In another video, small explosives purportedly dropped by the Iran-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah target the Sunni militant group Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front.

In the first reported instance of Western forces being targeted with a drone, the French government confirmed Wednesday that two of the country’s special operations troops were injured by an ISIS drone rigged with explosives in northern Iraq, where they were operating alongside Kurdish Peshmerga. Two of the Peshmerga fighters were killed in the attack.

A U.S. military official, who spoke anonymously because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said the U.S. military is aware of the development. Commanders have warned troops to take cover if they see what they might have once dismissed as a surveillance drone, he said.

U.S. troops’ vital role in major battle looming with ISIS
The head of the Airwars project, which tracks the international air war in Iraq, Syria and Libya, said the weaponized drones are clumsy but will scare people.

“There are a million ways you can weaponize drones - fire rockets, strap things in and crash them,” Chris Woods said. He added: “This is the stuff everyone has been terrified about for years, and now it’s a reality.”

The U.S. military official couldn’t immediately authenticate the videos in question, adding that most of the incidents they are aware of involved weaponized drones that simply crash into their targets. But another former senior U.S. military official who viewed the videos said there was nothing to suggest they were fake.

A number of militant groups in the Middle East, including ISIS, Jund al-Aqsa and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, as well as Hezbollah and Hamas, have all released videos indicating that they have surveillance and reconnaissance drones. Syrian anti-government rebels and militias loyal to President Bashar Assad were also flying cheap quad- and hexacopters as early as 2014 to spy on each other.

The surveillance drones allowed those groups to collect data on enemy bases, battlefield positioning and weaponry and improve targeting.

The extremist group ISIS launched a sophisticated propaganda video in 2014, “The Clanging of the Swords, Part 4,” boasting about its capture of the Iraqi city of Fallujah. The video opens with drone footage over the western Iraqi city before cutting to violent ground footage depicting its advance across Iraq.

Lebanon-based Hezbollah has claimed to have armed-drone capabilities for nearly two years, but a recent video of bomblets hitting a militant camp near the Syrian town of Hama is the first known documentation.

The majority of these groups have access only to store-bought drones, similar to those available in the U.S., ranging in price from $1,000 to $3,000 and weighing between 5 to 10 pounds - certainly not enough to support a large bomb or rocket. Hezbollah is an exception, receiving most of its munitions - including its drones - from Iran.

“It’s not going to change the overall balance of power in the region, but it matters by the very fact that these are things that are normally beyond the capability of insurgents or terrorists groups,” said Peter Singer, author of the book “Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century,” and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

Syrian skies are already bustling with traffic. Coalition forces have launched some 5,400 airstrikes on ISIS targets since September 2014. Drones account for only about 7 percent of America’s total air operations in Iraq and Syria because the U.S. is “stretched really thin” with drone operations in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere, Woods said.

Russia is also showing off its own drone capabilities - albeit somewhat primitive compared to the U.S. Last month, the Russian Defense Ministry launched a live online broadcast of drone footage of the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo to “provide transparency of ceasefire regime implementation.”

There is no question the militant groups are outmatched in the sky. But as cells linked to ISIS pop up across Europe and the United States, the real concern is the potential impact these experimental small, flying bombs could have if launched over crowded cities.

“You already see things happening in Ukraine, gangs in Mexico are using drones, and in Ireland, gangs there are using surveillance,” said Wim Zwijnenburg, a security and disarmament policy adviser at Netherlands-based PAX for Peace. “Add a small amount of explosives to a small drone, and even the psychological factor is pretty significant.”

CBS NEWS

The life-saving potential of drones in Africa


JOHANNESBURG At first, the drone took some explaining. Anxious villagers buzzed with rumors of a new blood-sucking thing that would fly above their homes. Witchcraft, some said.

The truth was more practical: A United Nations project would explore whether a small unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, could deliver HIV test samples more efficiently than land transport in rural Malawi.

Once understanding dawned and work began, young students and their teachers would spill out of the nearby school, cheering, each time they heard the drone approaching. “It was very exciting,” UNICEF official Judith Sherman said.

As drones quickly pick up momentum around the world in everything from military strikes to pizza delivery, Africa, the continent with some of the most entrenched humanitarian crises, hopes the technology will bring progress.

This second-largest continent, with harsh landscapes of desert and rain forest and extremes of rainy seasons and drought, is burdened with what the World Bank has called “the worst infrastructure endowment of any developing region today.” Rural highways, often unpaved, disintegrate. In many countries, access to electricity has actually declined. Taking to the air to soar over such challenges, much as Africa embraced mobile phones to bypass often dismal landline service, is a tempting goal.

Those trying out drones for humanitarian uses in Africa warn that the technology is no quick fix, but several new projects are exploring what can be achieved.

The highest-profile one yet begins this week in Rwanda, as the government and U.S. company Zipline launch a drone network to deliver blood supplies and medicines to remote hospitals and clinics. Even in one of Africa’s smallest countries, such deliveries can take weeks by land. With drones, it will take hours.

The speed and limited space of drones have focused aid groups and businesses on how to deliver small, sensitive and potentially life-saving cargo. Earlier this year, a partnership was announced between Zipline and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

Off Africa’s eastern coast in Madagascar, another U.S. company, Vayu, has completed drone flights to deliver blood and stool samples from rural villages with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Africa has certain benefits for such projects, said Sid Rupani, who from his South Africa office studies how drones could be used effectively in supply chains. His U.S.-based employer, Llamasoft, has run a virtual pilot for Zipline in Tanzania.

“It’s not crowded airspace. Not many urban areas to deal with,” Rupani said. Already, drones are being used in parts of the continent as visual aids in mapping and anti-poaching.

Drones also face multiple challenges. Some models are limited in range or need frequent recharging. If they crash, retrieval in remote areas can be difficult. Some governments are wary of the technology as a possible invasion of their sovereignty, or they have no regulations in place.

Even aid workers have reservations. In a survey of workers in 61 countries released last month by the Humanitarian UAV Network and other groups, the majority saw drones as positive, but 22 percent did not.

A top concern was that people on the ground would think they were under attack.

“Whether we like it or not, UAVs are confused with weaponized drones,” one Congo aid worker told the survey, pointing out the use of drones by the U.N. peacekeeping mission there.

Cost is another issue. The United Nations’ test early this year in Malawi with the help of U.S. company Matternet found that using motorcycles was cheaper as they could carry other cargo, said Sherman, UNICEF’s HIV and AIDS chief there.

But she still sees drones as “a leapfrog technology that has great potential, some we might not have thought of yet.”

Aid organizations are pushing for new breakthroughs. The Netherlands-based Wings for Aid is working on a drone prototype to carry more and go farther: Up to 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of cargo could be delivered to several points within 500 kilometers (310 miles), said Wesley Kreft, director of business development and innovation.

“The holy grail is to have a network of autonomous drones that do their work independently, with a human supervising numerous deliveries at once,” said Arthur Holland Michel, co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York.

It could take a couple of years before such drones could be entrusted with critical deliveries in challenging rural areas like Africa, he said, but the technology is there.

CBS NEWS

Hello everyone, last time, I've discussed about drones affecting our daily life when we order a parcel. Today, I'll try to examine how powerful they are according to other uses that are made.

To do so, I picked up 2 articles from CBSNEWS.com that are dealing about how people use drones and how good or bad it can be. 

The first one reports the fact that ISIS is using drones in order to lead attacks. Although these drones are the ones evryone can buy on the market and not military ones, ISIS is customizing them. In fact they add explosives on their drones to do as much damage as possible. Even if they can't carry heavy explosives, we need to take into account the fact that these drones may be used like this.

I chose this article as the second one to show that drones have a dark and a bright side. In fact, thanks to this article, we learn a lot about how drones are developped to save life. It may be different types of intervention : a drone can bring as fast as possible a lifeline or at anytime supplies in remote areas. In these missions, drones need to carry heaviest loads and have a greater autonomy. No doubt this will allow to save and help more people. However, shipments are costly.

We can clearly see how drones can scare and kill people but at the same time be used to save others. Drones are becoming common and cheaper but will this expansion lead us to a greater world or to a less secure one ? Are drones a technology that we put on the scene too early in history without thinking about controlling it ?  

It seems that according to the pace this technology is spreading we will have the answer without having to wait to long...

Have a good week Techlovers.