Angry Planet - Islamic State’s drone fleet

Episode Date: March 30, 2017

For the past decade, unmanned aerial vehicles have been a cornerstone of America’s campaign against Islamic insurgents in the Greater Middle East. Predator and Reaper drones crisscross the globe firing hellfire missiles on U.S. enemies. Other countries have operational drone fleets, but few match the might and ubiquity of America’s. But journalists on the front lines in Iraq have seen a disturbing new trend - Islamic State using retail quadcopters to drop their own munitions with surprising accuracy. Mosul is the frontline in the fight against ISIS as well as the frontline in a new arm’s race. One that pits the tiny drones of the Islamic State against the budding anti-drone technology of the West. To be clear, Islamic State’s commercial quadcopters rigged with grenades and manufactured missiles is nothing compared to the power of a Predator firing off hellfire missiles with pinpoint accuracy. But that’s cold comfort to a civilian killed by a handmade explosive dropped by a quadcopter over the streets of Mosul. This week on War College, Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Kesling walks us through the drones of Islamic State. He’s back from the fighting in Mosul and saw his share of quadcopters as well as the innovative solutions coalition and Iraqi forces are using to fight against them.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The views expressed on this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' News. So the sort of thing that you would see if you go down to the mall and want to buy something that'll carry around like small camera, You can fly around your neighborhood. Those are the same sorts of drones that Islamic State has been weaponizing.

You're listening to Reuters War College, a discussion of the world in conflict, focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Hello and welcome to War College. I'm your host, Matthew Galt. With us today is a staff reporter at the Wall Street Journal, Ben Kessling. Ben just returned from the front lines of the fight against Islamic State. in northern Iraq. He spent time in Mosul with coalition forces and did some of the early reporting on a new battlefield phenomenon, the drones of Islamic State. Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. So first of all, welcome back.

Thank you. It's good, it's good to be back. I was in Mosul for about a month. I got, or in Erbil, based out of Erbil in Kurdistan, and then was in and out of Mosul, West Mosul for the past month, yeah. And is this your first trip or have you been before? I've been going on and off to Iraq since the Islamic State sort of pushed in in 2014. So I've got to Baghdad quite a bit and then have been in Senjar, been into Amadi and some of the other places where Islamic State had been in Iraqi and Kurdish forces had pushed them out. All right. And what's your read on the situation now as opposed to the other times that you've been?

Is it worse? Is it getting better? Are the coalition forces pushing them out? Well, I mean, it's on the ground, it's still certainly Iraqi-led. So right now in West Mosul, when you're down on the front, it's primarily Iraqi Special Forces and Iraqi ERD, the Emergency Response Division, which is a type of special forces. They're really leading the push right now into Western Mosul. And as we speak, the Iraqi forces are really. really burrowing into the old town of Mosul, where the streets get narrow and Warren-like, it's hard to get vehicles in there, and it's going to be a tight fight in those areas. Ever since November, when the U.S. Department of Defense started loosening some of the

restrictions on U.S. troop involvement as far as how close they can get, when you're in Mosul now, you see both U.S. conventional forces and U.S. Special Operations Forces for getting even closer to the front and well within some of the smaller bore mortar range for both incoming and outgoing mortars. And they're not involved in any of the firefights yet. They're just doing support. Is that correct? Yeah.

I mean, I have not seen or heard of any of any U.S. troops, you know, being in these house-to-house firefighters, but they are certainly within range of ISIS indirect fires. And, I mean, that's true going back to when the offensive began in October on the east side of Mosul. I mean, even then before U.S. troops were really allowed to be pushing in with their Iraqi counterparts as advisors, they were still receiving some indirect fires from a distance. Usually, as the American troops like to say, at least a train feature away from the front, but nevertheless close enough to receive fires. Did you spend much time with the Americans and talk to them in?

I spent most of my time going out toward the front where the Iraqi forces were operating and talking to Iraqi civilians, Iraqi troops and commanders, and interacting a little bit with some of the Americans and talking with them, but it's not, it wasn't extensive. How's the morale for the Iraqis right now? Do they feel good about the fight? All the Iraqi troops that I spoke with, they were pretty confident and, and, and, you know, and happy with the progress that they've been making so far. They haven't yet gotten to a spot where their morale is getting worn down by casualties. And at this point, it's unclear whether or not that's going to happen.

Even as they do sustain casualties as they push, they were pretty confident and happy with the progress they were making and the fact that they are pushing Islamic State out of their major stronghold in Iraq. All right. Well, tell me about the twist then. Tell me about these drones that Islamic States using. To be clear, these are not on the level of predators and reapers, which is kind of what we think of when we hear the word drone in a military context.

Right. What Islamic State has been working with, over the past couple months, they've been developing the use of essentially quadcopters. So the sort of thing that you would see if you go down to the mall and want to buy something that will carry around like a small camera, You can fly around your neighborhood. Those are the same sorts of drones that Islamic State has been weaponizing and using for surveillance and also for targeted strikes on both Iraqi troops and Iraqi civilians in East and West Mosul.

So they'll take these quadcopters and they will have some sort of a real-time camera apparatus on it. and they'll also hook up a release mechanism of some sort. Now, there appears to be a couple different kind of release mechanisms that they will rig up on these things. And then they'll put some sort of a small bomb, fly those over an Iraqi position and just drop it straight down onto either personnel who have gathered or on vehicles. Now, the munitions they're using, reporting from seeing it on the ground myself,

and then some reporting that open source reporters like Bellingcat are doing, the two munitions that they're primarily using. One of them is they're using a 40-millimeter grenade, the type of thing that would be fired out of a grenade launcher. And they're hooking that up with some sort of a tail fin stabilizing device, and they will drop that. The other thing that they're using, which is more remarkable in the fact that it's done soup to nuts

in the Islamic State is they're using their own manufacturer munitions. So they will take a nose cone off of one of their homemade mortars, something that uses a blasting cap as the detonator, and then they'll attach that to a plastic body with fins attached for stabilization, and that plastic body is manufactured in the Islamic State. They'll stuff that body with homemade explosive, and then that whole thing will be dropped from these quadcopters. And it's It's pretty remarkable to see these because they're manufactured entirely within the Islamic State. A number of different places have documented this manufacturing apparatus that ISIS had over time, where they have a nice standardized manufacturing plant making military-grade weapons, mortars, and the like.

Now, where are they getting the quadcopters from? These are off the shelf, right? So do they have people in other countries walking into stores and then shipping them to them? or do we have any idea? There's not an easy way to trace these apparently, but these are the sorts of quadcopters that you could order online if you wanted to and have them shipped and then walk them across the border,

smuggle them in somehow, but these are, I mean, commercial quadcopters. And did you see any of them in action in person or just some that were downed or? I saw a couple that were down. Thankfully, I didn't see any inaction. The only one I did see was the Iraqi Army is using their own version of it for surveillance. So an Iraqi army soldier who was flying one that, I mean, again another standard sort of quadcopter. And they will fly these quadcopters over civilians as they walk from ISIS held territory

or formerly ISIS held territory towards the Iraqi soldiers as a sort of initial screening to see if anything looks amiss, if anybody looks like they're carrying something, so they're using it as their own surveillance tool. Now, how close does the operator need to be to one of these drones to fly it? So I imagine it's not like, again, our predators or reapers where there's someone halfway across the world sitting in a box in Nevada. You need to be a little bit closer, correct? Yes, I mean, the range on these things is, you know, maybe a,

maybe a couple kilometers. But, I mean, that's still well within range of a front line. So, I mean, if you're, you know, if you're a kilometer behind a front line, you're in, you know, in a decently safe spot to be able to launch something like this and create effects on target. Right. There's no great way for the coalition forces or the Iraqis to trace the signal back to the operator.

It's not doable. It doesn't seem like that's possible. But, I mean, the one thing that the coalition forces have started to do is field some anti-drone technology on the battlefield. And either sort of large jammers that are attached to sort of aerial towers that can go up over coalition vehicles. And then they'll use that to provide some sort of a blanket cover for the areas in which they're operating with Iraqi troops. and then Iraqi troops have limited man-pack anti-drone technology. So sort of like these radio wave guns that they can carry around and fire, you know, point them at these drones and they can disrupt the signal and make them fall out of the sky.

But those aren't that common. Most of the time when Iraqi troops see these drones, they'll just start shooting at them with rifles in hopes of hitting them. All right. I want to get a little bit more into the anti-drone technology and how we fight back. against this, but I need to pause for a break. My name is Matthew Galt. I am your host. We are talking to Ben Kessling of the Wall Street Journal about the fight in Mosul and the drones of Islamic State. So, Ben, just before the break, you were telling me about the ways that we are fighting back, or ways that we and the Iraqis are fighting back against these drones. And I wondered if you

would talk a little bit more about the, is these anti-drone rifles? What do they look like and how effective are they? So there's this product that is put out by an American company. It's called the drone defender. And it's, it seems to be one of the primary technologies available as far as for one foot soldier to be able to carry for anti-drone activity. It's, I mean, it looks like a beefed-up M-16 with a gigantic radio antenna instead of a barrel. And then that's connected to, that's connected to, to a power pack. And then if you just point that rifle at the, you know, at a drone, it shoots out some radio waves. Those radio waves disrupt the control mechanism on the drone and will cause it to, you know, lose control and fall from the sky. I mean, those are of limited use.

They aren't, you can't throw out a sort of blanket cover with those. But if at least until a couple months ago when I was down range near Mosul, you would see American posts where they would have a machine gun for the perimeter and also a drone defender in case a drone flew over. Now, I didn't see it that much in Mosul, but the American forces are using larger sort of more blanket technology, it seems. That's a new development that's out there. And the Air Force has recently, started procuring some anti-dron technology. Not sure where

or for what that's being used, but they've been procuring it. And then interestingly enough, in the most recent request for budget plus up that came out that the Pentagon really detailed, they have some money that they would like to allocate

toward anti-unarmed aerial vehicle technology, but it's not clear what that's going to be. So it seems like the U.S. is is trying to figure out how to best defeat these things and to field technology to do so. And it's not only the U.S. that's supplying anti-drone technology to the Iraqi forces, but also Iran, right? That's what the Iraqi forces have told us. They've said some of the Hashid Shabi or militias that are acting in concert with the stand.

Iraqi military. A lot of them are aligned fairly closely with Iran as far as equipping and training and they've told us that they are getting some anti-drone technologies from Iran or are assembling their own anti-drone technologies with the assistance of Iranian advisors. Now those those hash and shabhi groups are operating a little bit further west than Mosul so out some of these groups are operating in less densely populated areas aren't getting the same sort of coalition air cover and having to deal with some of the same technological issues. So it's unclear whether or not these Iranian anti-drone technologies are just blasting the air

with radio waves in a way that is not tenable in a densely packed combat area where you have a number of competing radio systems. I mean, you know, on one level you could just blast out technology. that would block all radio waves, but then you would kill all communications. You would have a number of ancillary problems that would come with that. So it's unclear if that technology is able to be used on a small scale to just direct against this drone threat, or if it's something that's more of a blanket block technology. Iran's involvement in this fight, why would they be helping the specific groups in Western

in Iraq and what's Iran's relationship to Islamic State? There's really no secret that Iran is helping to train and equip some of these militia units in Iraq. So the militia units, the Hashid Shabi, are primarily Shia-affiliated militias. And these Shiite groups have banded together. to assist the Iraqi military in security operations and in fighting Islamic State. Now the Iranian government of course is a Shiite government and they have been trying to project into Iraq and to assist some of these some of these hashid shabhi groups and the

Hashidhabi are happily taking some, taking advice and supplies from Iran. That's no secret. I guess one of the best ways to show the complex nature is to look at what's happening around Mosul as the fight develops. So Mosul is known as, is traditionally known as a Sunni city. And Islamic State is a Sunni militant, religious group. had their they've had a hold on Mosul for you know since 2014 as the Iraqi army works to push Islamic State out of Mosul there are a number of competing competing groups on the outside

that are trying to decide how how close they should get to Mosul how to operate without without causing sectarian strife so you'll have the Nineve a plane in which in which Mosul sits is there are a number of Christian groups Yazidi groups there are ethnic minorities there as well. You have Turkmen. You have Shebek. And inside the city itself, you you've got Sunnis who have

chafed under the Shia majority Iraqi government in the past. You have these Hashishabi groups on the outside who are trying to push in. You have Kurds. There's just a number of different competing religious and ethnic factions

all sort of converging on Mosul at this time and the central government and Mosul elders are trying to figure out how to how to keep everything balanced without letting it spin out of control. Other than the very obvious, you know, fight between Islamic State and kind of everybody else, are there any other tensions along those religious and ethnic lines that you've seen? I mean, just the same sorts of tensions that have been there for years still exist. have talking to multiple people in, to many people actually in Mosul, saying we don't want these hash and shabbi groups, these distinctly Shiite militias pushing into the city and are

worried about that. And there's concerns with how close the, how close Kurdish forces will get to the city. It's just there's a very, it's a pretty delicate. pretty delicate balancing act that the central government's having to do as they push Islamic State out to try to make sure that old resentments don't immediately flare up or new ones aren't created. Thank you for walking down that tangent with me. I think it's an important one to keep in mind as this fight continues. Getting back to the drones, how effective are they? Are they causing my many deaths or casualties or is it something that's very obvious and they just get shot out of the sky? I mean, they aren't that obvious. If you have a drone flying maybe a thousand feet over you,

you aren't going to be able to hear it. The American coalition spokesman and coalition forces, as well as the Iraqis themselves, say that the drones aren't going to, they aren't going to turn the tide. They're not going to be, they're not going to stop the fight. They're not going to ultimately defeat the Iraqi forces, but they are causing casualties. They are a nuisance, a distraction, and they cause deaths. If properly placed, a drone hit can destroy a substantial vehicle. They can also disrupt gatherings of civilians and of aid workers. I mean, on the east side of the city, so the city is divided by the Tigris River. The west side is the one where the fights happening right now. the east side of the city, which has been retaken by Iraqi forces for weeks now,

when I was reporting on that side, I'd be speaking to some civilians, and they would say, come into my shop to talk to me. I don't want to stand on the sidewalk, because if you stand out on the sidewalk too long, you know, it could be targeted by drones. So they're worried about standing around in groups. They're worried about aid groups, I spoke. who are worried about distributing uh, distributing, uh,

rations and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a hindrance and a, uh, an, uh, an, uh, death, uh, death and, and injuries. And it also sounds like it's so's fear, right? If it's making everybody nervous. That's exactly right. I mean, that's, I mean, that's one of the, that's one of the, that's one One of the main things that these things are capable of, especially with the civilian populace,

is just a constant concern, a constant dread that these things are going to be flying around overhead and dropping a 40-millimeter grenade on you. Does this mean that coalition and Iraqi forces have kind of lost control of the sky? Because I mean, for the past, you know, 10 years or more, there's been that area of the battlefield's been completely dominated. Right. I don't think you could say that they've lost control of the sky. I think this is just, it's like saying if somebody's able to,

if somebody's able to take a couple pot shots here and there that you've lost control of territory. Well, you haven't really lost control of territory. It's just, you know, you still have to deal with the, you know, the occasional pot shot or something. It's the same thing with the skies, with these drones. I mean, the Iraqi and American forces are, from my read, correct in that, This is not something that's going to turn the tide of battle. And yet it's a new irritant to something we and the Iraqis are trying to learn how to handle. And this is, you mean when you see requests for procurement, new procurement,

fielding new technologies, it's trying to get rid of the equivalent of the occasional pot shot. Ben Kessling of the Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much for joining us on War College. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this week's show. War College was created by Jason Fields and Craig Hedick. Matthew Galt hosts and Rangles the guests, and it's produced by me, Bethelhab Day.

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