April 15, 2024 | The Daily Beast
Iran’s Cheap ‘Kamikaze’ Drones Are Actually a Global Threat
The unprecedented attack on Israel was foiled by an international force, but Iran proved it can still cause chaos with these disposable flying weapons.
April 15, 2024 | The Daily Beast
Iran’s Cheap ‘Kamikaze’ Drones Are Actually a Global Threat
The unprecedented attack on Israel was foiled by an international force, but Iran proved it can still cause chaos with these disposable flying weapons.
Excerpt
Among the weapons Iran used in its unprecedented attack on Israel on April 13 were approximately 170 armed one-way attack drones. This was part of a barrage of about 350 drones and missiles.
And while nearly all of them were shot down before reaching their targets in Israel, Iran has increasingly relied on these types of “kamikaze” drones—which now represent a much larger threat to global security. Iran has exported its delta-wing style Shahed 136 drones to Russia, where they have been used to terrorize Ukrainian cities.
Iran’s path to becoming a drone superpower goes back to the 1980s, when Iran’s new regime emerged from the Islamic Revolution without a large enough air force to fight the Iran-Iraq war. It tapped into using small remote-piloted aircraft, basically what we now know as drones, to carry out surveillance missions on the front line.
Seth J. Frantzman is the author of Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machines, Artificial Intelligence, and the Battle for the Future, and an adjunct Fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies.