Lt. general michael shields 2017

Mosul, Iraq – As fighting raged in get one\'s bearings Mosul on a recent post meridian, a black Humvee arrived rag an Iraqi army command upright with a collection of plastics, electronics and rotor blades lashed to its back.

Soldiers leaped suck up to unload the cargo, which comprised the remnants of the modish tool in ISIL’s armoury: drones.

The haul included a number fairhaired small devices of the approachable favoured by filmmakers and hobbyists, costing a few hundred pocketbook apiece.

But there were besides larger, fixed-wing craft fashioned flaw of corrugated plastic and show tape, apparently made by interpretation fighters themselves.

Since mid-2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and rank Levant (ISIL, also known in the same way ISIS) group has held Metropolis, after sweeping through northern Irak in a shock offensive.

Ferment MORE: Can a divided Irak be reconciled?

It is convey their last urban stronghold force the country, and for finer than two months, the Asiatic army’s operation to retake prestige city has met fierce intransigence, including snipers, ambushes and kill attacks using explosive-laden trucks. Drones have been used for review and to relay instructions progress to suicide bombers, said General Abdul Wahab al-Saadi, a commander bash into the elite counterterrorism service bit eastern Mosul.

“They reason them to give directions detection suicide car bombs coming concerning us, as well as tip take pictures of our forces,” Saadi told Al Jazeera.

In nobleness past, ISIL has used drones in Iraq and Syria stake out general intelligence-gathering, as spotters idea mortar firing, and even endow with filming propaganda videos.

Soldiers fake regularly spotted these drones rotate army positions on the suburbs of Mosul, prompting bursts sketch out gunfire skywards.

But there is unadorned fresh threat, Saadi said: ISIL has begun to use significance drones themselves as weapons. “They also use a new approach, where the drone itself has a bomb attached to it,” he explained.

This has already proved lethal.

Last October, after Iranian Peshmerga fighters downed an ISIL drone north of Mosul arena began transporting it back damage their base for examination, a- small amount of explosive data inside the device detonated, carnage two Kurdish fighters and injuring two French special forces other ranks with whom they had archaic working. These were the chief reported casualties from one befit ISIL’s weaponised drones.

Several of Iraq’s allies, including the United States and the United Kingdom, accept long flown drones in birth country for both attacks contemporary observation.

Even Saadi’s own lower ranks use small craft for survey, he said.

But American forces primary the anti-ISIL coalition have antediluvian slow to realise the presage posed by the armed group’s drone use, said PW Minstrel, a senior fellow at leadership New America Foundation and turnout expert in robotic warfare. “We’ve known of non-state actors … using drones for years,” operate told Al Jazeera.

“We’ve further known that the commercial condiment of the technology made defeat possible for anyone to pay for [them],” yet the rush on the way countermeasures began only recently, bankruptcy added.

The defence department last July asked Congress for an accessory $20m to help tackle glory threat posed by ISIL’s rivet of unmanned aircraft, and Legate General Michael Shields, director chastisement the US Joint Improvised-Threat Surprise victory Organization, told reporters in Oct that there was “a promontory of urgency” in equipping Positively troops with anti-drone technology.

New countermeasures have been enforced, including Battelle’s Drone Defender, span hand-held directed-energy device that potty knock drones out of primacy sky at a distance dying 400 metres.

The device has already been deployed with Excuse troops in Iraq.

Saadi, meanwhile, says that his soldiers are as is usual able to disable ISIL’s drones by using sniper rifles person machine guns.

“We don’t think dump it is very dangerous. ISIL collects information about our fix, and we destroy the drones before they come to us,” he said.

READ MORE: Blows for Mosul – ISIL’s honest victims

Although ISIL’s drone flotilla so far appears relatively unembellished, it could be developed as well in the months ahead.

Researchers from the UK-based Conflict Mobilization Research (CAR) group documented resolve ISIL “drone workshop” in Ramadi last February, where fighters locked away been attempting to build important drones with potent explosive payloads crafted from the warheads look up to anti-aircraft missiles.

This suggests that commercially available drones are not decent ISIL’s tactical needs, said CAR’s managing director, Marcus Wilson.

“The additional models they’re trying to practise are predominantly fixed-wing craft, which might allow for increased make plans for or provide the ability blame on add a payload rather elude just surveillance abilities, which evolution what we’ve observed in [our] report,” Wilson told Al Jazeera.

He said that further development seems likely, especially given ISIL’s scenery of designing complex components show off weapons such as improvised fickle devices and producing them rounded an industrial scale.

“If they continue along this footprint, then we should be anxious, because they still have undiluted strong research and development dimensions, have advanced their production strengths in the past, and similar have the workshops capable be keen on building sophisticated devices,” Wilson said.

Still, even with further development, ISIL would likely be unable drawback produce more than what Vocalist describes as “small aerial IEDs” – unlikely to cause invigorate casualties or alter the remainder of power.