New data from Drone Wars UK shows that more than forty states now operate large ‘Predator-type’ armed drones, with twenty-two countries having acquired these armed drones since the beginning of 2021, more than doubling the previous number of operators.
A full list of countries that possess MALE armed drones together with details of the types of drones they operate, which countries are likely to become operators in the near future and a short narrative report on each country is available on our ‘Who Has Armed Drones?’ page.
For the first time our data shows that more countries have used these armed drones to undertake strikes within their own borders (15) than for strikes against targets within other states (12). A number of new users including Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Mali have caused significant civilian casualties in drone strikes over the past 12 months.
While the use of smaller ‘suicide’ or one-way attack drones has come to the fore in 2023, particularly for their use in Ukraine and the Red Sea, the larger re-usable systems, known as medium altitude, long endurance (MALE) drones and typified by the US Reaper and Turkish Bayraktar TB2, continues to spread. Turkey is now the main exporter of such systems with fifteen countries gaining armed drone capability for the first time from Turkey since the beginning of 2021. A further dozen countries are likely to gain the capability in the near future.
Proliferation leads to civilian casualties
Of the 22 countries that have acquired MALE armed drones since the beginning of 2021, 12 are involved in ongoing internal or external armed conflicts, while a further 7 are states which have simmering tensions with neighbouring states or are repressive regimes. At least six of the states that have acquired armed drones since 2021 have already used them to launch strikes with a number of these causing civilian casualties. While Le Monde called Africa ‘the new playground for drone exporters’ with Turkish companies winning multi-million dollar contracts, civilians on the ground continue to pay a high price. Read more