The shock militant offensive in northern Syria carries critical lessons for western militaries, experts say, and is an increasingly common example of rebel forces matching the combat power of state armies.
Modern militias harness 3D printing for drone construction, supplemented with commercially available parts, including guidance systems. Increasingly, these weapons are being used by special forces-style units.
This is boosted with captured arms and foreign supplies. Critical to the effort is a quasi-state-building endeavour to create an organised military force, from Hezbollah’s “state within a state” to Hayat Tahrir Al Sham’s enclave in Idlib.
Once thought of as lightly armed and vulnerable to air power and tanks, militants including the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and ISIS have proven capable of closing down international shipping lanes, firing ballistic missiles with ranges of several thousands of kilometres and even launching precision strikes on a national leaders’ house.
In the latter case, Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence was hit by a Hezbollah drone at well over 100 kilometres range on 19 October, although he wasn't present at the time. Now similar drones are being locally made by groups such as HTS. According to military analyst Michael Horton, the Houthis have already 3D-printed some drone parts.
But it is tactical drones – small quadcopters weighing a couple of kilograms or less, up to “group three” drones – according to US army classification, about 25 kilograms – which are changing war with lightning speed.
Much has been written about their role in Ukraine – a conventional state-on-state war. But they’re supercharging traditional insurgent tactics. According to a recent Canadian military study, tactical drones allow small units to control a greatly “enlarged battlespace,” which could be ideal for insurgents, who often face numerically superior foes.
For the Houthis, ISIS and HTS, tactics have revolved around what are sometimes called “light strikes” – rapid advances in fast lightly armoured vehicles, with infantry armed with anti-tank weapons, snipers and machine guns, an approach pioneered by Chadian rebels who successfully fought off well-armed Libyan invaders in the 1980s.
They speed through enemy lines to create chaos among forces with slow-moving tanks, or those entrenched in static positions. HTS has mixed this approach with drones and even a dedicated night fighting battalion, to devastating impact.
HTS, according to Jordan Linn, who works with Allen Control Systems, a counter-drone company, “distributed their production capacity across safe houses and small factories, using 3D printers to create parts [or clones] for drones like the DJI Mavic. Falcon Brigade ‘operators’ have begun to prioritise targets that can degrade command and control.”
“None of us should be surprised.” This has led to a scramble among defence companies to produce cheap solutions to down small and fast tactical drones. Allen Control Systems is the creator of Bullfrog, an AI-assisted machinegun designed to counter the fast-flying threats.
“Drones are becoming the primary tool of war. And really what we need, and this is why our company exists, is a solution to neutralise them. There are no good solutions to neutralise them. Everyone is kind of burying their heads in the sand,” Steven Simoni, the chief executive of Allen Control Systems, tells The National.
In Ukraine, he says, he saw videos of soldiers “spraying bullets into the air and trying to hit the drones, so we thought that this was a very good application for robotics and computer vision.”
The distributed production of HTS’s drones is another aspect of the new power of non-state groups with the strength of organised armies.
Infamously, ISIS took over one-third of Iraq and Syria despite facing forces with air power, cutting-edge tanks and artillery with GPS guidance, in 2014.
Hamas joined the ranks of these non-state actors with strategic power on October 7 last year, overwhelming Israeli forces by using drones to knock out cameras on the border with Israel, overrunning garrisons and communities and killing about 1,200 people.
Their operation to break through Israel’s high-tech barrier of sensors has been compared by US expert Craig Whiteside to a non-state special forces operation, rivalling the kind mounted by western militaries.
Insurgents – often lightly armed rebels – defeating better-armed government forces is a story as old as nations. Modern examples include France’s defeat in Algeria in the 1950s and the international coalition’s failure in Afghanistan. But, experts say, new technology could accelerate the trend.
Cheap mass communication such as social media can covertly rally forces. Cyber attacks can be mounted from almost anywhere. Cheap explosive drones proliferate, mainly using “dual use” civilian technology – including 3D printers.
Syria's civil war explained
Now insurgents and militants in Syria, Myanmar and Yemen are using this technology to devastating effect, says Mr Whiteside, a military professor at the US Naval War College.
“To some degree when special operations are used by planners in the campaign, violent non-state actors are getting more skill in operational art and campaign design. Some of this is experiential, but some is knowledge transfer thanks to modern sources – the internet, access to western doctrine and learning from others,” he says.
“They're sliding towards mid-level military capabilities, thanks to tech aspects of globalisation, off-the-shelf tech that used to be prohibitive for resource-poor militants.”
There has been unfounded speculation that HTS had assistance from Ukraine, based on very similar drone tactics, although the group was using the weapons to attack Khmeimim Airbase three years before the Ukraine war.
In Gaza, Hamas had its Nukhba commandos – which led the October 7 assault. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has Radwan commandos – one of the roles of which is to use drones for reconnaissance – and in Syria, HTS had “Red Band” commando forces, as well as a dedicated drone unit, the Falcons, complete with its own drone academy. The Taliban too, as they consolidated control over swathes of Afghanistan, formed their elite Red Unit in 2016.
The latest trend, the experts say, began in 2014 with the rise of ISIS, when the group used drones to locate Iraqi forces and drop grenades, sowing chaos among their ranks as the militants took over Mosul.
“ISIS was using drones to co-ordinate attacks in Mosul, and direct and correct artillery. There’s an account of them using 70 or so in a day to slow down an Iraqi operation, so I think there is prior evidence of it to some extent. I’d say it offers HTS a form of precision strike at the tactical level that can be used on people, light vehicles etc, enabling them to reserve anti-tank guided missiles for bigger targets like tanks,” says Sam Cranny-Evans, an associate fellow at RUSI and defence consultant.
But HTS appear to have used small drones from the onset. They drop small grenades – a tactic widely seen in Ukraine – and as in that conflict, are used in the First-Person View (FPV) role.
FPV drones can be fitted with anti-tank warheads, chasing down enemy troops and vehicles. HTS has released videos of their fighters training to use these systems on mock-up targets and using computer games, as well as flying larger Shaheen drones.
In Syria, it appears to have been devastating for morale, even used to target senior commanders and Iranian advisers.
The trend has left the US military playing catch-up, forming its own drone-heavy formation, the Multifunctional Reconnaissance Unit, this year.
“The Syrian rebels had the element of surprise. This allowed them to effectively deploy drones at a scale and tactics that were unprecedented in theater, achieve superior firepower - a surprise in itself - and concentrate their effort against ill prepared defensive lines,” says Oded Berkowitz, an expert on insurgency and risk consultant at MAX Security.
"Drones and the threat they pose have been known for well over a decade and exponentially increasing in recent years and conflicts. They’ve gone from simply the poor men’s air force to the poor men’s precision-guided missile. The Syrian government’s allies are on the forefront of their use, but failed to prepare themselves first and foremost in proper tactics and procedures," he says, referring to groups such as Hezbollah.
Decisive battle of Hama
But the approach of using elite commandos, drones and snipers – so-called “force multipliers,” could hit a brick wall, if the enemy decides to stand its ground and use air power, combined with its own drone forces, also possessed by Syria’s allies.
“The light strike tactic – light formations moving quickly – has its merits, but it’s very vulnerable and relies on constant motion to stay alive. If they get slowed down and start to stack up, then casualties could mount up very quickly if the Syrians and Russians are able to combine that friction with air power, and they’ll lose momentum,” Mr Cranny-Evans says.
“Equally, if they get into a pitched battle with heavier forces then they take on higher risk as a lighter force.”
This could have huge implications for the current battle of Hama, where Damascus has sent heavy reinforcements.
