Terrorist 25 year-old us citizen has been

Terroristmilitant group Hezbollah maintains a small fleet of drones imported from Iran, including the Ababil and Mohajer. First incident of Hezbollah carrying out UAVmission was reported on November 2004, where Hezbollah flew an Iranian UAV overparts of northern Israel before returning back to Lebanon. Grossman (Lecture, 12/7/17) stated, “ The unidentified drone modelflew about 1, 000 feet above the ground, escaping detection by Israel radar dueto its small size and low altitude. In the 2006 war between Lebanon and Israel, Hezbollah launched three small Abibil drones, which some allegedly werecarrying explosive payload with the intention of carrying out attack in Israel. The drones were shot down by Israel Defense Force (IDF) F-16s.

Grossman(Lecture, 12/7/17) stated in his paper that Abibil drones could reach a topspeed of 185 mph and have an operational range of 150 miles. It also can carrya single warhead up to 50kg. Article written by David Cenciotti (2014)proclaims that the extremist militant group ISIL was shown to be operating aDJI Phantom drone. While many speculate that the demonstration is forpropaganda purposes only, there was also evidence written by Vice (2017)showing that these drones were appeared to be providing actionable ISR andattack missions. An article written by Weiss (2015) shows ISIL also posted avideo in early 2015 showing that UAV was being used for reconnaissance andbattlefield coordination during its assault with Iraqi Security Forces on BaijiOil refinery.

Organizedcrime groups and corporations are not excluded in utilizing these drones totheir own illicit use. Mexican drug traffickers were said to use drones tosmuggle drugs across the US-Mexican border since firstly documented in 2010. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) stated that there were about 160drone trips across the border since 2012. Due to the success of US lawenforcement and DEA against drug operations in the early of this century, drugsmugglers utilize the small size of drones to carry out their drugs across theborder thus reducing the threat of getting caught. The DEA said in their recentannual report that drones are not often used to smuggle drugs from Mexicobecause they can only carry a small load, but recent years the payloads thesedrones can carry have increase vastly.

In August 2017, an article from theDenver Post stated a 25 year-old US citizen has been charge for smuggling 13pounds of methamphetamine using his custom hexacopter drone to carry the drugto San Diego. Although there isn’t much documented case of corporation usingdrones for espionage or commercial advantage, the technology these drones couldcarry can “ create a broad range of threat scenario whereby these drones areintegrated into corporate espionage operations alongside cyber security andpishing attacks” as stated by Abbot (2016). A reading article from Greenberg(Lecture 9, 11/31/17) states that these drones could crack Wi-Fi password, deploya malware payload over specific Wi-Fi networks, or even copy the data packetsthat is being transmitted from the Wi-Fi.   Aslong as there is a threat for the illicit usage of unmanned drone, somecountermeasure must be introduced to mitigate the risk of an attack or ISRoperations. There is no single countermeasures can completely limit the hostileuse of drones by non-state actors.

The best strategy is to have a hierarchy ofcountermeasures that spans from regulatory to passive and activecountermeasures. 222