4 Member IS Wilayat Kavkaz Returning Foreign Fighter Cell Killed; Drone and other weapons seized in Dagestan, Russia
On 22 August, the Russian Air Force announced that it had destroyed Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) underground drone facility in Idlib, Syria. Organizations such as Islamic State, Jund al-Aqsa, Houthi Movement (Ansarallah) and HTS are among non-state actors who use weaponized drones. Mexican drug cartels have been experimenting with weaponized drones too but to date they have yet to do so successfully. Besides the organized groups who have been utilizing drones, of particular concern are the small cells and lone wolf reports of modifying commercially available drones for attacks. One recent example occurred on 29 July 2020, when Hisham Muhammad, modified the “release mechanism” of a commercial drone to plot attacks in the name of Islamic State in Manchester, England. As commercial drones become more advanced and the use of drones as delivery mechanisms for retail purchases become more commonplace, so the do the opportunities for malicious actors to transform them into weapons of terror.