This image was captured by U.S. Army soldiers on post outside Mosul, Iraq and ran in Stripes. A seemingly very uninteresting image apart from the Drone Defender propped up against the concrete wall. Due to Daesh’s increasingly lethal use of drones not just for surveillance/forward observation capabilities but also dropping lethal payloads on Iraqi forces, it appears the the U.S. Army has taken this threat very seriously and is deploying purchased Drone Defenders, mounted on an AR lower receiver. I suspect that warfare is slowly going to take a huge step in the drone direction, not just for conventional usage, but also with irregular asymmetrical usage by such terrorist and insurgent groups worldwide. This is mostly due to the ease of purchase and manufacturing of drones, which also ties into the world wide proliferation of cheaper and higher quality electronic equipment. Daesh’s use of drones would have been unheard of among previous insurgent groups a decade ago, but not it is of enough concern that the U.S. Army is employing these Drone Defenders among soldiers standing post.

An excellent example of the attacks that Daesh is currently carrying out can be seen through this propaganda video. One element we need to take into consideration is that although this video is displaying good effects on target, this is representative of perhaps only the successful attacks with drones the group is carrying out, and isn’t showing the amount of attacks that were unsuccessful. Which is a large amount according to sources in Iraq.

This is some footage taken of U.S. troops training with the Drone Defender in the United States.