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rangerrebew

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ISIL & Drones: Understand the Network to Defeat the Network
« on: February 17, 2017, 11:30:55 am »
ISIL & Drones: Understand the Network to Defeat the Network
by Noah B. Cooper

Journal Article | February 15, 2017 - 6:40pm

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ISIL & Drones: Understand the Network to Defeat the Network

Noah B. Cooper

The employment of weaponized drone technology by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a unique innovation that demands the mobilization of the defense industry to develop an immediate solution. Well, not exactly. This sensationalistic narrative contains both fact and hyperbole - there exists documented evidence of an ISIL drone program and there have been several instances of ISIL successfully dropping small munitions on Iraqi military positions, but the enemy’s use of drones is yet another demonstration of a materially weaker opponent adapting technology to exploit the vulnerabilities of a stronger foe.

Exaggerations of the problem statement aside, the weaponization of drones by ISIL is an operational issue that necessitates scrutiny and effort to degrade the enemy’s employment of this capability. However, the various entities compromising the collective organizations addressing this matter will no doubt seek diverging approaches. The U.S. military’s development and fielding of expensive, technological solutions to contend with low-technology implements adapted for battlefield use by the enemy has emerged as consistent practice for an institution that leverages the nearly unlimited financial resources of the U.S. government. Nevertheless, and particularly in fiscally austere times, high-cost systems that have long production times are not ideal solutions. A partial solution to this problem is not expensive, created from exotic materials, or overly glamorous, but rather, an approach that requires only the slightest redirection of priorities: the use of the intelligence process to discern the enemy network.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/isil-drones-understand-the-network-to-defeat-the-network
« Last Edit: February 17, 2017, 11:31:50 am by rangerrebew »