The U.S. military says it is sending high-tech defenses in response to the use of commercially-available drones by the Islamic State to deliver small bombs.
The “flying IEDS” are not considered militarily significant, but at least one non-U.S. coalition soldier was injured when a small drone exploded after it was shot down and was brought back to a base for inspection.
Col. John Dorrian, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, told reporters on Wednesday that the improvised explosive may have been equipped with a delayed trigger, making it a sort of Trojan horse weapon, designed to explode after it was in the hands of coalition forces.
Dorrian said additional capabilities that can spot, track and shoot down the drones is being brought into Iraq to counter the threat.
“It’s something that we are going to move out smartly to address, that’s why we brought this additional capability into the country,” Dorrian said. “We don’t just let the enemy develop a capability that threatens our forces, and leave that threat unaddressed.”
Most of the drones flown by the Islamic State are unarmed surveillance aircraft, and are of the sort anyone could order online.
“We’ve seen the enemy use a variety of drones, and improvised drones, and modified drones. Some of those are quadcopters, and that sort of thing. We’ve seen them use items that you can just buy,” Dorrian said. “There’s nothing very high tech about them. They can just buy those as anybody else would. Some of those available are on Amazon.”
So far, no U.S. troops have been wounded by the crude flying explosive devices, and Dorrian stressed while the U.S. is taking the threat seriously, it will have no effect on military operations.
“These aren’t having any kind of strategic impact at all. So Daesh [ISIS] may use them. They may fly them. They may use them for propaganda,” Dorrian said. “Their use of these is not going to stop anything.”
