In recent years, the armed forces of Turkey, Israel, and Iran have produced an array of loitering munitions, often dubbed “suicide” or “kamikaze” drones, that could very soon revolutionize the way wars are fought in that extremely volatile part of the world.
The proliferation of armed drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), in the Middle East over the past decade is alarming. A significant number of Chinese-made drones have been imported by the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and Jordan and been used in combat.
On the other hand, Turkey, Israel, and Iran design and manufacture their own drones and have made significant progress in developing ever more sophisticated ones.
In one field these three countries have made significant progress in is the building of loitering munitions, drones that could very soon fundamentally change the way wars are fought in the region.
A few recent examples of loitering munitions built by these countries aptly demonstrates this.
The Turkish military plans to buy 500 Kargu-2 loitering munitions.
The 15-pound ‘multicopers’ are designed so they can operate in ‘swarms’ of 20 and attack their target, evade or penetrate its defenses and detonate their three-pound warheads.
The drones carry three different types of warheads, each designed to exert maximum damage on its specific target.
The tiny unmanned aircraft can operate autonomously, meaning they can search for and destroy targets using computer algorithms rather than completely relying on their operator’s guidance.
When the drones acquire their targets, they can increase their speed up to 90 miles per hour (mph) on their final attack run.
The CEO of the Defense Technologies and Trade Inc. (STM) that builds the Kargu-2 claimed that the tiny drones even have facial recognition technology, meaning they can seek out and identify individual human targets and then assassinate them.
Such technology would be useful for Turkey, which has been assassinating senior members of its Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) adversary with targeted airstrikes over the past two years.
STM has stated that the drone “has been engineered specifically for anti-terror and asymmetric warfare scenarios.”
The use of the drones for swarm attacks could well give the Turkish military a new capability that one analyst described as “game-changing.”
Israel has also developed a similar drone called the FireFly, designed for use in close quarters urban fighting.
The FireFly has a much smaller warhead compared to the Kargu-2, weighing a mere 400 grams. It will likely prove lethal against the opponents its designed to eliminate in support of its operators in combat, such as insurgents using sniper rifles or suppressing machine gun fire.
When the FireFly locates its target, it can reach a top speed of over 40 mph on its attack run.
The drones may soon be operated from infantry vehicles.
Israel already has similar loitering drones in operational use. The Uvision company makes the Hero-30 loitering munition, which is also designed to enable troops in combat environments to launch pinprick strikes against their opponents.
The Hero-30 can reach a top speed of over 100 mph and deliver a 3-kilogram warhead to its target. It is launched from a portable canister carried by infantry or special forces that produces no fire or smoke and, therefore, doesn’t potentially expose the position of the troops using it to their nearby opponents.
Larger Israeli loitering munitions are often designed for anti-radiation attacks, which is destroying enemy radars as part of Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) operations. IAI Harpy and the larger IAI Harop (also known as the Harpy 2) drones are designed primarily in order to fulfill these roles.
The Harop has a flying time of 6 hours and an impressive range of over 600 miles.
Iran also operates an array of loitering munitions and has supplied some to non-state actors in the region.
Iranian Ra’ad 85 drones reportedly have an operational range of around 80 miles and reportedly can reach a top speed of about 250 mph.
Unlike the tiny Kargu-2 or Hero-30 loitering munitions, the Ra’ad 85s are designed to strike larger targets with precision. Tehran showcased the drone’s capabilities during military drills in December 2016.
Three months earlier, the Iranian Navy unveiled another drone that officials claimed “can carry payloads of explosives for combat missions” and “collide with the target and destroy it, (whether) a vessel or an onshore command center.”
However, the officials also pointed out this is a secondary role of the unmanned aircraft, the primary role being maritime surveillance. The drone has a purported range of about 600 miles.
Iran’s Ababil family of drones can also be used as large loitering munitions, although their primary function is also surveillance, especially the most modern variant the Ababil-3. The older Ababil-2s are mostly used as target drones for training air defense personnel.
In September, loitering munitions and cruise missiles damaged Saudi oil facilities after managing to evade the kingdom’s air defenses. That attack aptly demonstrated the effectiveness of, and threat posed by, such weapons.
Tehran has also supplied such drones to non-state actors across the region, such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, giving these groups an edge over their more heavily armed adversaries Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The Houthis, for example, operate the Qasef-1 loitering munition that is based on the Ababil-2 and have used them to target Saudi MIM-104 Patriot air defense missile systems, which the kingdom relies upon to intercept ballistic missiles fired into the kingdom from its southern neighbor.
As a Conflict Armament Research report explained, the Houthi Qasef-1s crash “into the systems’ radar sets (specifically the circular main phased arrays) – directing the UAVs by programming their systems with open-source GPS coordinates of the Patriots’ positions.”
Knocking out the Patriot’s radars then enables the Houthis “to target Coalition assets with volleys of missile fire unhindered.”
On July 13, the Houthis also claimed they struck a large oil facility in southern Saudi Arabia. The announcement came shortly after the Saudi-led anti-Houthi coalition claimed it shot down four missiles and six loitering munitions fired at the kingdom by the Houthis.
Those loitering munitions in question could well have been Qasef-1s.
All of this demonstrates that loitering munitions are growing ever more lethally sophisticated and could well change the cost and outcome of conflicts in the Middle East and beyond in the not-too-distant future.
By Paul Iddon
Follow me on Twitter. Paul Iddon
I am a journalist/columnist based in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan from where I’ve been writing about regional affairs for five years now.
Source: Forbes
