FPV Attack Drone Proliferation: Unfreezing Conflict in Syria
Part 1 of a Series on FPV Drone Warfare and Loitering Munitions
Recently, Syrian rebels launched a fresh assault on Aleppo, upending the status quo in a relatively frozen conflict. Initial footage and reports suggest that first-person view (FPV) drones played a prominent role in the offensive. As in the footage below, rebel forces appear to have used kinetic FPV drones as shaping fires to attack Syrian Army forces before the operation and to support maneuvering forces during the operation itself.
This article explores the rebel FPV employment as a proliferation of FPV technology and tactics from Ukraine.
Organization
Reports indicate that rebel forces are employing significant numbers of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and have task-organized their UAS and FPV forces into al Shaheed (Falcon) Brigades. From a practical perspective, consolidating UAS capabilities into a special unit enables more control by the operational commander to support his attack. Keeping drone teams in a centralized unit allows the command to send individual teams from the drone brigades to support different ground maneuver units as required to defeat counter-attacks or neutralize a tough target.
Training
From rebel social media posts, the FPV and UAS operator training pipeline seems relatively advanced and standardized. Pictures from X show a classroom setting with simulators to conduct training and prepare operators.
Types of Drones
Emerging videos from the battlefield show three types of UAS: sensor UAS for surveillance, FPV drones for one-way attack, and bomber drones with gravity-dropped payloads.
Employment
Rebel forces appear to be using these UAS for two different mission sets, with the potential to create combined arms effects through the coordination of UAS and maneuver units.
Mission 1: Static Position Reduction
Before forces cross the line of departure into the assault, loitering munitions and one-way attack drones can reduce static positions along the frontline. Enemy strong points, staging areas, and observation posts are all particularly vulnerable targets, especially on a long-term static front. Positions that have been in place for years are easily mapped and vulnerable. In this case, the Syrian rebels appear to have achieved operational and technological surprise against an unprepared Syrian army. From a 30 October frontlines snapshot, the rebels were confined to a relatively small area of Idlib before the offensive. The frontlines in northern Syria had been static for years.
By reducing static positions along the frontline, the rebels removed the Syrian Army response options and set conditions for rebel maneuver forces to advance with significantly less risk. Syrian army commanders accustomed to minor skirmishes along the front probably awoke to critical assets like main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles disabled and unable to respond.
Based on aggregated open-source reporting from Liveuamap, shaping fires began on 25 November with Turkish strikes against Syrian positions north of Aleppo. Combined with FPV strikes, these fires may have neutralized defensive positions and made maneuvering difficult for Syrian forces.
Once these fires were complete, rebel forces appear to have launched ground attacks on 26 November towards Aleppo, and targeted the Aleppo airport with UAS.
Similarly, on 29 November, rebel groups attacked south towards Hama and employed UAS to strike the Hama airport.
Mission 2: Hunter-Killer Dynamic Targeting
Once the static frontlines were breached and forces began more extensive maneuvers along the Aleppo and Hama axis, rebels appear to have switched their UAS tactics to dynamic targeting. In this case, evidence suggests UAS teams employed all three types of UAS to find and engage Syrian regime forces as they responded to rebel attacks. According to open-source posts on Liveuamap, these attacks occurred most frequently around Hama.
FVP Trends
The rebel success with FPVs in Syria extends more significant trends in worldwide conflict. FPVs appeal to both state and non-state actors for three reasons:
FPVs have a lower technical barrier to entry than most modern military technologies. Many are little more than flying improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that allow precision strikes. Engineers can design and build FPVs relatively quickly with open-source tools.
FPVs are expensive to defend against, and both kinetic and non-kinetic kill options are limited. As seen in Ukraine, FPVs rely on a communication link to the controller, which may be vulnerable to jamming. Jammers can be complex to field in sufficient mass to cover every vulnerability. Few nation-states, let alone non-state actors, are known to have these capabilities in sufficient capacities to make a difference.
FPVs provide a low cost of entry into precision strike and inject complexity into conflict, even for belligerents with relatively unsophisticated technological baselines. If a $2000 FPV drone can destroy a BMP-2 worth $400,000, it achieves a 200x cost-per-kill ratio. The FPV is 1/200th of the cost of what it destroys.
Conclusion
The re-escalation of the conflict in Syria marks a significant moment — not only for the Syrian conflict but for the proliferation of novel technology and tactics from other conflicts. We first saw the emergence of mass FPV employment and tactics in Ukraine, and the use of FPVs by Syrian rebels may be a sign of the broader proliferation of FPV attack drone technology. FPV attack drones increasingly appear to herald a new wave of artificial intelligence, automation, and robotics on the battlefield that will shape the character of coming conflicts.
In future articles and as more data becomes available, we will model FPV employment to provide users with a probabilistic way to think about drone strikes and mission modeling.
The views and opinions expressed on War Quants are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the United States Government, the Department of Defense, or any other agency or organization.