The Wall Street Journal - Iraqis Deploy Drones to Target ISIS in Mosul Battle
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June 20, 2017. Ben Kesling, Ghassan Adnan.
Off-the-shelf models are proving effective at directing airstrikes on militants in the crowded city.
BAGHDAD—Iraqi forces are using small, off-the-shelf drones to target Islamic State in the crowded and twisting streets of Mosul’s Old City, where the militants are making a last stand.
Iraq’s counterterrorism forces on Tuesday said they pushed to within a few hundred yards of the al-Nuri Mosque, where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi officially announced the creation of the Islamic State caliphate in 2014, and has been a symbol of the militants’ power. The Old City likely has some 100,000 civilians and a dwindling number of extremist fighters packed into about four square kilometers. Mosul is Iraq’s second-largest city, and Islamic State’s last major stronghold in the country.
Iraqi forces worry that this stretch of fighting could be the bloodiest of the battle for Mosul, which began in October, and that it could last for weeks longer. Iraqi and American forces are looking for any advantage to loosen Islamic State’s hold in the Old City, where militants use civilians as human shields and deploy booby traps.Though troops can see the mosque, they also see civilians fleeing the fighting and that’s slowed their advance, counterterrorism officials said.
The latest advance in Mosul was aided in part by the drones, quadcopters that are small enough to carry in a backpack, sell for about $1,500 commercially and are rigged with cameras on the underside.
Iraqi counterterrorism forces have said they used quadcopters to supply aircraft with the U.S.-led coalition with some of their first targets in the Old City. Iraq’s federal police say they do the same.
Islamic State terrorized Iraqi forces earlier in the battle for the city by using their own drones rigged to drop grenades. Now Iraq’s security forces have turned the technology against the militants.
At a command post near the front lines, American combat advisers huddled days ago around stacks of high-tech communications equipment and screens with feeds from multimillion-dollar aircraft while they waited patiently for a Iraqi quadcopter to give them the battlefield intelligence needed for an airstrike.
“Using the Iraqi drones is something new,” said Brigadier Walid Khalifa, deputy commander of the Iraqi Army’s 9th Division. “We see the enemy and we decide its location and we give the coordinates of targets. It’s faster than before.”
Lt. Col. James Browning, a battalion commander with the U.S. Army’s 82d Airborne Division, said that it can be time-consuming to have Iraqi forces spot a potential target and then pass along the coordinates for an airstrike verbally. By the time he got the requests translated from Arabic, double-checked the target and approved the strike, the opportunity had sometimes passed in the quick-moving urban warfare.
Weeks ago he realized the Iraqis already had the technology available to cut through such problems. When Iraqi drone pilots fly a quadcopter over a target—and bring that target up on screen, showing militants fighting Iraqi troops in high definition—Col. Browning said he gets what he needs to authorize a strike in seconds.
“We’re able to deliver joint fires essentially at their command,” he said, referring to airstrikes, artillery and other weapons.
Iraqi troops have been tinkering with quadcopters to make it possible for them to fly further and still provide real-time video feeds in dense parts of Mosul.
Col. Browning said Iraqi drone technicians had fitted drones with bigger batteries, giving them extended range. If one falls from the sky or gets shot down, they launch another at little cost, he said.
And if there is no Iraqi drone available, the U.S. is still able to call on its ample arsenal of high-tech drones and aircraft, which are often already in the sky, can fly longer and further and can be equipped with infrared cameras, powerful weapons and other advanced gear.
The U.S. can use those to coordinate strikes, though it may take a few minutes longer, Col. Browning said. “We can still go old-school.”
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