South American drug cartels are deliberately sending some of their best fighting men and women to Ukraine, to learn how to use drones against an enemy, and how to convert ordinary civilian models into killing machines. Because this is a growing danger within the USA as well, I'll provide an extended quote from the article.
Mexican intelligence officials tipped off their Ukrainian counterparts in July.
They warned Kyiv that cartel members were infiltrating Ukraine’s foreign fighter cadres to learn how to fly first-person view (FPV) kamikaze drones, which give pilots a bird’s-eye view of the target as they close in with an explosive payload.
Mexico’s warring drug cartels, who are engaged in their own drone arms race, now appear to be adopting the technology.
Last week, footage emerged for the first time of Sinaloa cartel sicarios, or hitmen, brandishing a new “fibre-optic” FPV drone, a model pioneered in Ukraine that is controlled by cable rather than radio signal to evade jamming devices.
“Ukraine has become a platform for the global dissemination of FPV tactics,” a security official in Kyiv told Intelligence Online, a French security website that first broke news of the investigation into Eagle 7.
“Some come to learn how to kill with a $400 drone, then sell that knowledge to whoever pays the highest price.”
Quite how many cartel hitmen have gone to Ukraine for drone “training” remains a mystery. The investigation in the summer is understood to have discovered at least three former members of Colombia’s disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) guerrilla movement, heavily involved in cocaine trafficking.
It would not be hard for a cartel member to blend in these days in Ukraine, as the International Legion is increasingly relying on Latin American recruits.
Most are from Colombia, where large numbers of former security personnel have found themselves jobless in the wake of the landmark 2016 peace deal with the Farc.
. . .
It is thought that several thousand have served in the International Legion over the past three years, with up to 300 killed.
Cartel members are understood to be taking advantage of the fact that Kyiv has limited means to vet overseas recruits properly.
“We’re seeing reports in recent months that both Mexican cartels and Colombian criminal groups are trying to infiltrate the Ukrainian military to learn techniques that they can take back to Latin America,” Alexander Marciniak, a Latin American intelligence analyst for Sibylline, a private intelligence firm, told The Telegraph.
“The cartels can use drones for all sorts of purposes, attacks and surveillance on each other and on the security forces, and for smuggling contraband.”
Mexico has seen a huge surge in the use of attack drones in recent years, from just a handful of incidents in 2020 up to more than 40 per month by 2023. It reflects a growing militarisation of the drug gangs, with cartels hiring professional ex-soldiers, many of them from Colombia, to give them an edge.
. . .
As well as getting access to vast arrays of weaponry, foreign volunteers can also learn a range of techniques for building home-made attack drones, many of them circulated on DIY-style instruction videos.
Meanwhile, both Colombia and Mexico face growing US pressure to crack down on cartels, following Donald Trump’s announcement that designated Mexican cartels would now be treated as “narco-terrorist” groups rather than street gangs because of their growing firepower.
Four suspected drug boats have been destroyed by US drone strikes in the Caribbean, and Mr Trump has also hinted he could send US troops into Mexico. Colombia is considering a bill to outlaw its soldiers from enlisting as mercenaries.
Critics, however, say that banning them from legitimate work could simply drive more into the ranks of the cartels.
There's more at the link.
This would also help to explain why the USA is ramping up its operations against drug cartels in several South American countries, including (that we know of) Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela. If US forces and law enforcement agencies can "get ahead" of such technological advances, they can keep the danger at arms' length, so to speak. However, if cartels are already carrying out tens of operations every month (again, those are just the ones we know about), it may be too late for such delaying tactics to succeed - and drones may make such operations a lot more dangerous for those tasked with them.
This points to a growing internal security problem inside our borders. What if the current Antifa/BLM/far-left/progressive demonstrations are suddenly augmented by attack drones aimed at law enforcement trying to control the unrest? Our police aren't equipped or trained to deal with such weapons, and it's hard to see how civilian law enforcement could be so equipped without transgressing a number of constitutional rights and issues. Nevertheless, I'd say it's increasingly likely that they will face such dangers. It's in the cartels' best interests to disrupt law enforcement, for different reasons, but towards the same end - making parts of the country ungovernable, so they can take advantage of that for criminal rather than political advantage.
Those of us who regard personal preparedness and willingness to resist crime and violence have some hard thinking to do here. We don't (generally) have access to such technology; but without it, we'll be several plays behind the game, and much more vulnerable. That applies particularly to larger cities within which the users of such drones will find it easier to conceal themselves and operate untraceably.
Matt Bracken has written extensively on the growing danger of drone warfare within the USA. I highly recommend that you read his article on the subject, complete with many photographs. I think all of us will do well to consider how this danger may affect us, in our own regions and circumstances, and plan accordingly.
Peter
