A new paper on drone warfare in Africa makes an uncomfortable argument. The trafficking networks that move drugs across the continent are driven by profit, and they could become suppliers of weaponized drones, and of the skills needed to use them, to armed groups. The author, Robi Sen, published "Drone Warfare in Africa" on LinkedIn on Oct. 10. DroneXL reported on it two days later.

The paper's most striking claim is that drugs could be bartered directly for drones. Its own verification note handles that claim carefully: the barter claim "remains an investigative lead, not a confirmed finding." That caveat shapes how the argument should be read. African governments clearly use armed drones, and the cost to civilians is well documented. In Latin America, criminal groups have clearly adopted drones as weapons. What has not been shown is a trafficking pipeline that carries that capability from one setting to the other.

The author's background also matters. DroneXL identifies Sen as a senior partner at Department 13, which makes the MESMER counter-drone system. A counter-drone vendor warning about drone proliferation is not proof the warning is wrong. Readers should still keep that commercial interest in mind as they weigh the paper's projections against its evidence.

What is established: armed drones in African wars

The firmest ground in this debate is state and quasi-state use of armed drones in sub-Saharan Africa. In a March 2025 report titled "Death on Delivery", Drone Wars UK counted more than 943 civilians killed in at least 50 incidents between November 2021 and November 2024. The report examined six countries: Ethiopia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan.

DroneXL cites the SIPRI 2025 Yearbook for a matching picture. Per DroneXL, SIPRI confirmed armed drones in at least six sub-Saharan conflicts in the same six countries, with more than 940 civilians killed over the same period.

The Drone Wars UK report also shows who supplies the hardware. Five of the six states operate the Baykar Bayraktar TB2. Several also operate China's Wing Loong II and Iran's Mohajer-6. It describes individual strikes in detail:

  • In Ethiopia's Amhara region, more than 85 civilians were killed at Ch'obi village in October 2022.
  • In Nigeria, at least 85 people were killed in two misdirected strikes in December 2023. Some reports put the toll as high as 125.

The fighting has not slowed. DroneXL points to Reuters reporting from Sept. 24 on drone attacks by Sudan's Rapid Support Forces. It also cites a UN figure of more than 1,000 civilians killed by drone attacks, by both sides, in the first half of 2026.

The drones Drone Wars UK documents are imported military aircraft from manufacturers in Turkey, China and Iran, flown by the states themselves. That is a separate proliferation problem from the one Sen describes. His paper is about criminal networks supplying non-state armed groups.

Where the criminal-drone data is strongest: Latin America

Evidence that criminal organizations turn drones into weapons is far more systematic in the Americas. On Feb. 12, 2026, the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE) at the University of Nebraska Omaha published "Mapping Weaponized Drone Attacks Attributed to Mexican Drug Cartels, 2021-2025." DroneXL describes NCITE as funded by the Department of Homeland Security. The authors are Austin C. Doctor, Suat Cubukcu, Joel Elson, George Grispos and Mackenzie Harms. The abstract calls cartel exploitation of unmanned aircraft a growing threat to US homeland security and defense. It notes that several Mexican transnational criminal organizations designated as foreign terrorist organizations in 2025 use drones for surveillance, smuggling and weaponized attacks.

DroneXL's summary of the NCITE work gives the figures: 221 weaponized drone incidents attributed to Mexican cartels from 2021 through 2025, 27 of them fatal, with 77 people killed. Those counts do not appear in the report's public abstract, so they rest on DroneXL's reading of the study.

Further south, the numbers are larger. In a report by Tiziano Breda, the conflict-monitoring group ACLED says it has recorded about 670 weaponized-drone events in Latin America since 2018. More than 72% of them occurred between Jan. 1, 2025 and Aug. 21, 2026. Colombia is the center of the activity. It accounts for 97 of the 182 municipalities across Latin America where events were recorded, mostly concentrated in Cauca. ACLED reports that the ELN and FARC dissident factions are using fiber-optic-guided munitions, which resist radiofrequency jamming and are also used in trench warfare between Russia and Ukraine. ACLED identifies Ecuador and Brazil as emerging hotspots. It expects rapidly spreading know-how, falling hardware costs and porous regulation to accelerate the spread.

ACLED also records one more sign of diffusion. The number of armed groups using drones in Latin America rose from five in 2024 to 19 so far in 2026.

There is also a documented case linking narcotics smuggling to drone manufacturing on Europe's doorstep with Africa. DroneXL recounts that in July 2022, Spanish authorities arrested eight people over a workshop in Castellar de la Frontera, Cádiz, that was building underwater drones for other drug gangs. Police seized three of the underwater vehicles, each designed to carry up to 200 kg, along with six large aerial drones. The case shows that trafficking groups will invest in drone engineering for logistics. It does not show them selling armed drones to insurgents.

The gap between the two pictures

Taken together, the sources describe two well-documented trends and an unproven connection between them. African conflicts already involve armed drones, mostly fielded by states, and civilians are paying a heavy price. Criminal organizations in Latin America have shown they can weaponize commercial drones at scale and adopt battlefield techniques quickly. Sen's paper argues that the commercial logic of trafficking networks could link the two, with organizations that already move contraband across borders adding drones and training to what they sell.

That is a reasonable hypothesis about incentives. By the author's own account, it is not yet an evidenced finding. None of the sources listed here document a completed drugs-for-drones exchange in Africa.

Why It Matters

The difference between established fact and conjecture matters most for policy, because the two problems may call for different controls.

The documented civilian deaths in Africa come from military drones imported by governments. Drone Wars UK calls for a new international control regime to prevent further proliferation-related harm, and it urges the UK government to work with other states on robust international controls on armed drone transfers and use. That kind of measure targets exporters and the conditions on their sales. By inference, it would do less about the threat Sen describes, in which drones built from cheap commercial parts might be traded through smuggling networks, as in the Cádiz workshop case.

The Latin American data suggests where a more realistic risk may lie. ACLED does not treat hardware as the only driver. It points to know-how spreading rapidly, alongside falling hardware costs and porous regulation, and it notes that Colombians who joined the war in Ukraine have brought drone tactics home. ACLED's surge figures, and the jump from five drone-using armed groups to 19, show how fast diffusion can happen under those conditions. If a trafficking-driven channel to African armed groups does emerge, it may plausibly look similar: know-how and commercial components rather than finished military systems. That is an inference, not something any of these sources has documented.

For now, the honest summary is the one in the paper's own verification note. The barter claim is a lead worth investigating. The civilian deaths in Africa and the spread of cartel and guerrilla drones in Latin America are already documented.

Sources