Weaponized Drones: The Next Terrorist Modus Operandi in Southeast Asia?

In 2020, a series of arrests conducted by Indonesia’s anti-terror police Detachment 88 revealed the terrorists’ intention to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones. In October last year, a group of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militants based in Bekasi, a suburb of Jakarta, was found in the possession of a drone and its batteries. Two months later, research by PAKAR, an Indonesia-based NGO that studies terrorism, suggested that that an Indonesian cell that supports the Islamic State (IS), led by a long-time extremist Hanif Ali Bhasot alias Abu Dayyan, planned to conduct an attack using a weaponized drone in Jakarta, targeting police officers. But how significant is the threat of terrorist weaponization of drones in Southeast Asia?

In this region, non-government entities and individuals have used drones for non-military purposes such as to provide aerial views of political rallies, monitor illegal logging, spray fertilisers and pesticides on plantations, and conduct business advertisements, as well as for recreational usage. Despite commercial drone usage in Southeast Asia in 2019 only contributing to less than 3 percent of the $127.3 billion global drone market, it is predicted to grow in the coming years. In Indonesia, drone sales have grown by up to 25 percent annually since 2015. One of the reasons for this growth is the affordable price of drones, which ranges from about $30 up to $4000.

The jihadi rebel groups based in Syria – IS and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – have used consumer- grade drones extensively for various purposes, such as propaganda, surveillance, guiding Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED) attacks, and dropping munitions/bombs on targets.