Chilling new tactic as ISIS attach bombs to spy drones that can be bought for just £400 off AMAZON
US deploys new Drone Defender technology to Iraq to protect against deadly new weapon using 'routinely available' gadgets
ISIS militants are employing the deadly new tactic of attaching bombs to drones and using them to attack their enemies in Iraq and Syria.
Earlier this week it was reported that two Kurdish fighters were killed and a pair of French special forces troops badly injured by an ISIS drone bomb in Irbil, Iraq.
The drone appeared to be carrying a C-4 charge and batteries, and may have had a timer on it, according to an anonymous US military official.
And another US official in Baghdad has now revealed the incident was not a one-off.
Air Force Col. John Dorrian – the spokesman for the US-led military coalition in Iraq – said jihadis have been using a range of improvised and modified drones.
According to The Times, Dorrian said: “Some of these are quadcopters that you can just buy.
“There’s nothing very high-tech about them. Some of those are available on Amazon.
“I don’t know exactly how they get them but they’re routinely available.
“So they can order one just like anybody else can.”
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Quadcopters can be bought on Amazon for as little as £400.
And with the terror group’s supply of recruits dwindling, explosive-laden drones may well prove an deadly effective alternative to suicide bombers.
Recently released videos also purportedly show the tactic being used by other jihadi groups in the region with links to Al-Qaeda.
Chris Woods – the head of the Airwars project, which tracks the international air war in Iraq, Syria and Libya – said: "There are a million ways you can weaponise drones - fire rockets, strap things in and crash them."
"This is the stuff everyone has been terrified about for years and now it's a reality."
Dorrian said the threat from the new tactic had forced the US military to deploy special anti-drone defence equipment capable of “detecting, identifying, tracking and defeating” the remote controlled bombers.
He confirmed the new system – called Drone Defender – had been sent to Iraq.
But for security reasons, the colonel refused to say which areas it was in operation.
Fears were raised in July that ISIS and other terror groups could use the easily-available drones to launch bomb attacks on cities in the West.
Former head of the Navy and ex-security minister Admiral Lord West said: “If they are using them there, then in fact it is probably even easier to use them here because you can get them so much easier.
“Daesh is like water at the top of a building - it spreads across and tries to find little gaps it can run through.
“This will be one of the little gaps it is looking at.
“I think it would be foolhardy for us not to look to our defences for this.”
A NATO chemical weapons expert also claimed the killer drones could be fitted with chemical weapons like World War I mustard gas.
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