As drones become an increasingly normal sight in some unrestricted areas, one expert warns that they may soon become a potentially deadly weapon here in the United States.
"Iran has been building drones for decades, but in the last few years it's really realized that drones are an easy machine that you can kind of disassemble, move across borders, teach proxies and terrorist groups how to use them and basically encourage those groups then to attack Americans or other U.S. allies," "Drone Wars" author Seth Frantzman said in a video interview on Newsy.
"And then it's very hard to blame Iran itself because all Iran can say is, 'Well, yeah, but you found a bunch of pieces of a machine. There's no evidence that we did it.'"
According to the story, Iran is suspected of using a drone loaded with explosives to try and assassinate Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi three weeks ago.
Similar drones, believed to come from Iran, have been involved with attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.
Frantzman told Newsy that the scope of Iran’s drone program is not known, which could mean the devices could eventually show up on American shores for terrorist attacks or could be used by domestic groups trying to cause unrest.
"We have not seen nearly enough information about the cost or the scale of the program, which means we don't even know how many are being made a year," Frantzman said.
Counterterrorism expert Bernard Hudson told the news organization that domestic use of weaponized drones here would not be surprising.
"In a country like ours, which is sort of increasingly ridden by political division, it will not be surprising if you're going to see people who at least consider, if not use, these cheap and readily available systems to carry out their own domestic violent agendas," Hudson told Newsy.
"Right now, there is no existing, easy technology that's been deployed at U.S. airports to stop somebody from maliciously attacking an aircraft at take-off or landing."
According to the news outlet, the Federal Aviation Administration said it receives more than 100 drone sighting reports each month and that in at least one case reported in an intelligence bulletin obtained by ABC News, a drone tried to attack a Pennsylvania electric substation.
"Historically, the protection of the U.S. power network has always focused on ground-based threats, somebody trying to walk past a perimeter, driving through a fence line," Hudson said in the report. "They are not designed to stop threats from above."
According to a Defense News story from May, more than 100 militias throughout the world have some level of capability with either weaponized or unarmed drones.
Lighter drones and munitions have made the technology more accessible and adaptable since it was first used by the U.S. military in 2001, increasing the danger of rapid technology proliferation by non-governmental organizations, as well as bad actor states.
The technology is becoming so accessible and common that several security experts believe it will become the weapons system of the future.
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