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Sean Gallagher-February 24, 2017 at 8:22 PM UTC

Update on March 3: Bellingcat's Nick Waters found evidence that the drone reported in this report was actually operated by the Iraqi Federal Police. Our original story below attributed the drone to IS based on a report by the French news agency. 

On the morning of February 23, the Iraqi army began an attack on the Mosul Airport controlled by the Islamic State (IS), passing through Al-Buseif in Iraq. For a long time, a four-rotor drone buzzed overhead. AFP reporter Sarah Hussein reported on the Mosul attack via Twitter that the Iraqi army shot down the weaponized drone and her driver managed to take a picture of it after it was grounded.

After we moved forward, #Iraq troop shot down the armed IS drone that was buzzing above us. The picture is credited to our driver Alaa. pic.twitter.com/Pzo8E3MqJv

This drone is equipped with a pair of small bombs composed of 40mm grenades-the type fired by an infantry grenade launcher. The main body of the bomb is made of PVC pipe, and the tail is made of badminton.

Another photo of our weaponized IS drone flying by outside Al-Buseif this morning was shot down by the #Iraq troop pic.twitter.com/n5mW6DpJJn

Anyone considering buying a consumer-grade drone may recognize the logo on the top antenna of the downed drone: it belongs to DJI, the Chinese company that made the Mirage drone that flew (and crashed) in 2014 Ars' Lee Hutchinson. However, in this case, it is Matrice 100, an industrial drone manufactured by DJI as a pre-built platform for drone developers and sold as part of the "Smart Agriculture Kit." The Matrice 100 is priced at US$3,300 separately in the United States, and the kit is priced at US$8,300, which is not entirely within the price range of most military drones. But its flight time per battery can reach 35 minutes, and it has enough power to carry up to 1.2 kg of additional payload-and a UART interface for inserting accessories such as the bomb release servo system.

IS has been quite aggressive in the use of drones, especially the DJI Phantom drone, which is equipped with a single bomb in a temporary cup bomb bay. As reported by the open source intelligence website Bellingcat, many of them dropped bombs with plastic tails made with CNC milling machines.

Examples of 4 different types of ammunition dropped by IS operated quadcopters pic.twitter.com/1l5AHMKTZs

But the more expensive and more powerful Matrice 100 is a major advancement over some other drones used by other warring parties, especially in terms of hover time and payload. Its use indicated that IS had been rapidly advancing its interim air force before the Battle of Mosul.

Armed drones in Syria and Iraq have aroused great interest in anti-drone technology, including equipment such as DroneDefender and DroneBuster. These devices have been developed to interfere with drone communications or to force them to land by interfering with GPS guidance.

DroneShield, headquartered in Australia, announced this week that it has sold its DroneGun to "a Middle Eastern country’s Ministry of Defense...closely aligned with Western countries." A company spokesperson said that this transaction was the first for a customer in the Middle East.

DroneShield claims to have a competitive advantage over other anti-drone technologies on the market because it does not rely on trying to "hack" drones. For example, the technology used by DroneBuster attempts to overwhelm the drone operator's remote control protocol, using known loopholes in the protocol to deactivate the drone or force it to land. But DroneShield’s spokesperson stated that “Such network solutions are specific to the make and model of each drone-and are usually not effective for frequency hopping models such as DJI Phantom 4, which are the most popular on the market today. One of the drone models."

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