There was a time, between 2001 and 2015, when (mostly) only the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel were using medium altitude, long endurance (MALE) drones. Those countries have claimed that MALE drones allow for precision strikes that, in their words, minimize civilian deaths and injuries on the ground.
That time is no more, according to “Death on Delivery,” a new report that the Drone Wars UK watchdog published earlier this month. Since 2015, MALE drones have gone to — thanks, in large part, to China and Turkey — several African countries, where they became a component of many armed conflicts on the continent.
That report estimates that the proliferation of MALE drones in Africa was responsible for the deaths of at least 943 civilians across 50 incidents between November 2021 and November 2024.
The US and Israel were the first countries to “develop and deploy armed drones,” according to the watchdog, and although they liberally exported surveillance drones, “they have to a large extent limited exporting such [armed] capabilities.”
For their part, China and Turkey have exported armed drones, including MALEs, to countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Indonesia, but also to a slate of governments around Africa. Among those recipients are Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Libya, and Burkina Faso.
Though Tehran’s frequent use of propaganda and misinformation make it much more difficult “to get an accurate picture of Iran’s armed drone capabilities,” a 2023 incident suggests that an Iranian armed drone wound up in Sudan, as well.
Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2, for instance, is attractive because it is comparably cheaper to import, as are China’s Wing Loong I and CH-4 unmanned aerial vehicles.
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Drone Wars UK confirmed the use of these drones in six armed conflicts across Africa — in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, and Sudan. Strikes in Ethiopia accounted for more than half of the incidents and deaths the group documented. In other words, Ethiopian military forces used such MALE drones in at least 26 incidents that killed nearly 500 people.
In one incident in Mali, in March 2024, a drone strike killed at least 13 people and injured another 10 when it “first targeted a health center vehicle and then a house where civilians were sheltering,” the report said. The strike happened amid Ramadan gatherings, and the death toll included seven children.
An even more lethal strike took place amid Sudan’s civil war, in Khartoum, on Sept. 10, 2023. It killed 46 people and injured 55, per the report, and local reporting suggests that government forces were behind it.
Drone Wars UK called on “diplomats, state parties, civil society, and all people of goodwill” to band together and “support initiatives to reduce and ultimately end the harm” that the spread of these drones causes.
Citing the widespread harm to civilians, the watchdog also urged the international community to “move rapidly” in instituting a “new international control regime” that should focus on preventing the violence these drones have bolstered.
