Episode 190 - Game of Drones

There’s a new kind of war shaping up in the Middle East, and it’s taking to the skies.  We’ll learn more on today’s episode of the Hot Zone.

 

Hi folks, Well many of you know I’m a big drone enthusiast.  I have owned them for years, and the kind of footage you can get with these amazing flying cameras is really unlike anything else out there.  But whenever some new technology takes the world by storm, you can be sure bad guys out there will find a way to use it for nefarious purposes.  

 

We’re going to take a deep dive into that subject today, but before we get to that I just want to point out one small thing that isn’t worth a whole podcast, but are certainly interesting.  First, there were violent clashes in Tapachula Mexico a couple days ago, when African migrants were thwarted in their attempts to keep traveling north to the United States.  Mexican national police forces barred their way, because Mexico is trying to make a show of reducing the numbers entering the US from their country, since Donald Trump threatened sanctions on Mexico that would cost the country billions.  But these migrants, who we have been following from Africa to Ecuador then up through Central America, were really put out.  They are demanding not just food and water, but money and transportation to get to the US.  Just the kind of people we want in our country, right?  Well as I’ve said before, many of these men - and they are almost all military aged males - hail from countries that are essentially failed states.  That means they don’t really know how to handle being in a place that is governed by rule of law, and so when confronted with something like this their first response is to get violent.  

 

I’ve met a lot of these migrants, and while you have to empathize with their desire for a better life, the sense of entitlement many of them display is really off-putting.  They have expectations - that they will be able to travel from their countries halfway across the globe and that they will be fed and sheltered and given free transportation just by virtue of the fact that they call themselves immigrants.  They’ve traveled without papers, many of them receiving money from relatives and friends who are already in the states, and they expect to be allowed in because so many before them were allowed in.  But times are changing and all the countries along the route are feeling the effects of being part of this pipeline.  I would expect we’ll see even more of this violence as many of these men figure out they will not make it to the US and are now stuck in limbo in a country where they never intended to live.

 

Okay, let’s lighten things up a bit - In Spain the streets were running red this week - but not from blood. There’s a little-known tomato festival where thousands crowd the streets and pelt each other with the fruits, or vegetables or whatever they are.  Before long there was about six inches of tomato sauce that I’m sure had a little zing to it - tasted like bare Spanish feet - and everyone had a good time wrestling and swimming around in the muck.  Hey, whatever makes you happy.

 

Now, let’s look at the drone war that is happening in the Middle East.  We saw it starting back a few years ago when ISIS started using off the shelf drones to drop hand grenades on unsuspecting Iraqi troops in the fight for Mosul.  They also used them for reconnaissance to vector in car bombs, with very lethal effects.  The captured video of this stuff is chilling.  So because of these jackasses, my drone won’t even take off anymore anywhere inside Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan.  And the list of places you can’t fly grows almost every day.  Thanks a lot, ISIS.

 

The Houthi rebels in Yemen have been using drones for some time to hit targets inside the borders of their arch-enemy, Saudi Arabia.  

 

But now it’s getting more serious.  This week Israel says they thwarted a killer drone attack by Palestinian terrorists trained by Iran.  Then in one night Israel sent killer drones into some Hezbollah outposts in Beirut that were making propellant for drones and rockets destined to attack Israel.  And the same night the Israeli Air Force bombed targets near Damascus in Syria, which it says were drone launching bases that Iran was planning to use against them.  

 

Last week some ammunition dumps in Iraq mysteriously went up in flames, the sites belonged to the Iranian-backed militias that have been operating in Iraq for years.  Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but everyone is pretty sure they were carried out by Israeli drones.

 

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, got up and made a speech about it after the attacks on Beirut:  He said ""If we remain silent on this breach, it will create a very dangerous road for Lebanon where every couple of days or three days an explosive drone or suicide drone will target a certain building, farm, field, mosque, compound and no one knows from where it comes, repeating of what is going on in Iraq now.”

 

In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, 

 

"While we are building our future there is someone who wants to destroy everything that we are building and return us to a dark past. I heard Nasrallah's remarks. I suggest that Nasrallah relax. He knows very well that the State of Israel knows how to defend itself and how to pay back its enemies. I want to tell him and the Lebanese state, which is sheltering this organization that aspires to destroy us, and I also say this to Qassem Soleimani: Be careful with your words and be even more careful with your actions."

 

So tensions are high, and the UN is asking that everyone just take a breather before things really get out of hand.

 

Jonathan Spyer, Director of Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis agreed and says this could get hot in a hurry.

 

Jon Gambrell, News Director for the Gulf and Iran at the Associated Press, says this is part of a growing trend.

 

 

So you can expect to see drones being used more and more by both sides, and the market for drone countermeasures is going to be a hot growth item in the years ahead.  And it won’t surprise me if at some point you won’t be able to fly your recreational drone anywhere but your own backyard, and that’s a real shame.

 

That’s all for today’s podcast folks.  Have a great weekend and I’ll see you back here on Monday.  I’m Chuck Holton and this has been the Hot Zone.