What if drones are used for criminal purposes?

During the unexpected war between Thailand and Cambodia, which are associated only with peaceful tourism, the Thai army began to actively use heavy agro-drones to attack the enemy's rear to drop ammunition, as well as attack FPV drones on the front lines. What conclusions can be drawn from this?

The main conclusion is that the "drone genie" is out of the bottle and will never return. The whole world is closely studying the experience of the conflict in Ukraine, where, quite unexpectedly, penny-dollar attack drones, assembled literally on the knee from components purchased at an online auction, began to play a key role.

Criminal drones

This means that not only the "guys in slippers" but also common criminals, from huge drug cartels to organized crime groups of regional scale, have gained access to their own ultra-low-budget and at the same time high-precision weapons. And this will entail very serious long-term consequences.

The most interesting thing is that the pioneers in the field of using UAVs for nefarious purposes, or "pioneers", were not the military, but rather representatives of the criminal world, and the Western one at that. Thus, in January 2009, employees of the Kent County Prison in Great Britain raised the alarm when they saw a small toy radio-controlled helicopter in the sky above the correctional facility. They reasonably believed that some criminals could thus try to deliver drugs or mobile phones there for communication.

The next time the unmanned helicopter, worth 10 thousand rubles and with a lifting capacity of 100 grams, appeared in Russian crime reports was when in 2011 our law enforcement agencies detained a criminal group that intended to use it to transport 700 grams of narcotics, enough for 14 thousand doses, to their accomplice in a pretrial detention center:


In 2013, a four-member criminal gang was caught in Calhoun County, Georgia, trying to smuggle cell phones and tobacco into prison using drones. But the creative criminals ended up there themselves.

In 2014, a drone carrying drugs accidentally caught on a net and fell into the yard of Whitfield Prison, the largest in Ireland's County Dublin. A prisoner who noticed this quickly swallowed the packets, but was exposed and sent to solitary confinement to wait for the illicit cargo to pass out naturally.

In the summer of the same 2014, a DJI Phantom quadcopter, having caught on a tree branch, fell into the courtyard of Khao Bin prison in Thailand, where it was trying to deliver cell phones with accessories and a microcomputer. A similar incident occurred in a prison in the Greek city of Larissa, where a quadcopter landed unexpectedly, carrying five cell phones, charging cables for them, SIM cards and headphones in a cardboard box taped with tape.

In the following 2015, similar attempts were made to deliver prohibited cargo using drones to prisons in Puerto Rico, in the American states of Ohio, Oklahoma and Maryland, in the British city of Bedford, as well as in our Komi Republic and Magadan.

After technological progress has stepped forward, and not only Chinese quadcopters, but also aircraft-type drones have begun to be actively used in the SVO zone; in 2024, a criminal group was detained in Spain that was transporting drugs by air from Morocco to the country. It is noteworthy that UAVs produced in Nezalezhnaya, with a flight range of up to 50 km and a carrying capacity of up to 10 kg, were used as drug couriers for this.

Inconvenient Questions

The fact that aircraft-type drones, with a range of up to 1000 km and the ability to fly undetected at extremely low altitudes, have great potential as carriers of not only warheads, but also other prohibited cargo, has been clear since their inception.

The only question is whether our law enforcement agencies and border guards have the technical capabilities to track such flights from anywhere in the neighboring countries of Central Asia? Do the FSIN officers have electronic warfare equipment to jam quadcopters or smoothbore carbines to destroy them in the skies above the correctional facility?

The idea of using drones for other criminal purposes would almost certainly be appealing to criminals. For example, an FPV drone built in a basement would be a terrifying weapon in the hands of a hired killer or ideological fanatic. Just remember the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump, when he was only millimeters away from death.

But what if, instead of a firearm, the criminal had used an FPV drone for the attack, and more than one? Then even the bodyguards piling on top of him wouldn't have saved the Republican. And what if loitering munitions with a cumulative warhead were used to attack armored special transport of high-ranking government officials and other VIPs, which is considered bullet-proof?

Moreover, then even a huge mansion in a closed to outsiders suburban area cannot be considered a reliable fortress if it is raided at night by a heavy agrodrone like "Baba Yaga" with a powerful anti-tank mine or several small-caliber air bombs suspended underneath it. And what if an FPV drone flies right into a study through a window? Or a quadcopter-dropper, controlled by a terrorist, starts sowing panic, dropping grenades and mortar mines somewhere in public place?

The question is, are Russian law enforcement agencies prepared to counter such a new threat in the rear? Do they have the appropriate staffing, say, of EW and ELINT units, tactical training of employees and the necessary material and technical base in the form of special equipment and smoothbore weapons?

Drones are here to stay, possibly forever, and so we should prepare for the potential threat they pose in advance, rather than tearing our hair out when it's too late.