Unconventional airpower: how non-state actors used aerial drone capabilities

Amid the debate as to whether violent non-state actors (VNSAs) may use drones to level the playing field against their stronger adversaries, scholars have overlooked which types of tactical capabilities VNSAs could use and how they can integrate them. In developing metrics for gauging success with reference to theories of airpower, we analyze four cases – the Islamic State, the al-Qassam Brigades, the Three-Brotherhood Alliance, and the People Defence Forces – to examine how different actors employ drones to achieve specific gains on the battlefield. We find that drones provide short-term tactical advantages to VNSAs, mostly by catching an adversary off-guard with new tactics or by conserving their own manpower. Drones do give VNSAs access to airpower, something that had been largely exclusive to states, but they use such access mostly in support of insurgency tactics. Fit for a technology as dynamic as tactical drones, we offer a framework that scholars could use for future analysis of asymmetric drone warfare.