Boom! This video shows a suicide drone attack launched by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Kachin People’s Defence Force (PDF) against a Myanmar military boat on the Ayeyarwady River in Kachin State, northern Myanmar. It traces a clear evolution: from the Islamic State (IS) pioneering the use of dropped grenades in combat, to the emergence of wire-guided drones in the Ukraine war to counter jamming, and now to the shift from simple drops to more certain suicide attacks. It’s a trend playing out across conflict zones worldwide.
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From dropped attacks to interference-resistant special attacks
This video shows a battle scene in which the Kachin Independence Army and other forces intercept a convoy from the riverbank as the national army tries to supply the besieged garrison of Bhamo up the Ayeyarwaddy River.
Suicide attacks using FPV drones are a tactic that has been repeated in various forms on battlefields across the country. The prototype dates back to late 2016, when ISIS used a tactic on a large scale during the Battle of Mosul, Iraq, in which 40mm grenades were attached to civilian quadcopters and dropped over the heads of security forces. Iraqi security forces responded with jamming and gunfire, shooting down about half of the aircraft they spotted. Offenses and defenses have continued since then, and in the Ukraine war starting in 2024, “unjammable” special attack drones that transmit control signals through optical fibers will be deployed to evade jamming, and some are said to be able to fly up to 100 km without being able to intercept radio signals. Similar tactics spread to both the national army and the RSF during the Sudanese civil war from around September 2023, marking an early example of their spread outside Ukraine. From bombings to special attacks that are resistant to interference – the footage from Myanmar is also an extension of this lineage.
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