From Foreign Policy · Faine Greenwood, Nathaniel A. Raymond · · 4m
The drone age has outrun the laws of war
Cheap drones are hunting civilians in six conflicts at once, and the rules meant to protect them were written for a slower world.
In brief
Cheap drones are hunting civilians in six conflicts at once, and the rules meant to protect them were written for a slower world. Most drone attacks on civilians are still flown by humans choosing to kill them, so the fix is legal accountability and civilian protection, not just fear of AI. Originally reported by…
Hunted from the sky
Drones are stalking civilians in Sudan, Kherson, Mexico and Papua. They are cheap, nearly impossible to ban, and also used to save lives after disasters like the Nepal floods.
“Hunting civilians from the sky is growing disturbingly common.”
A decade of the boom
More than ten years into the consumer drone boom, more people are being killed by unmanned aircraft than ever before. The world's response has not kept up.
Human safaris in Ukraine
Short-range FPV drone attacks that locals call human safaris killed 395 civilians and injured 2,635 between February 2022 and April 2025.
“human safaris”
The leading cause of death
In January 2025, U.N. data showed drones became the most common cause of death for Ukrainian civilians. By June 2026 a single month brought 89 deaths and 588 injuries.
Sudan's layered attacks
Both sides combine cheap small drones with long-range military models from Turkey and China. The U.N. human rights office recorded over 1,000 civilian deaths from drone strikes between January and May 2026.
Cartels take to the air
Mexican drug cartels aim aerial terror campaigns at Indigenous groups. Colombia's Defense Ministry counted 8,395 weaponized drone attacks by militants in 2025 alone.
Myanmar, Gaza, Papua
Small drones kill civilians on both sides in Myanmar. Hamas and the IDF both use them heavily in Gaza, and Indonesian forces surveil and attack Indigenous communities in Papua.
Aid workers in the crosshairs
A recent U.N. OCHA report found drones attacked humanitarian and healthcare workers in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza between 2024 and 2026.
Impunity is the trend
Attacks on civilians are more brazen and deliberate than ever, part of a broad global slide in respect for international humanitarian law. Without action, the violence keeps growing.
Not your Reaper drone
Twenty years ago a civilian could do nothing about an MQ-9 Reaper overhead. Today's drones fly small, cheap and low, and one Ukrainian woman famously downed one with a jar of pickles.
Civilians fight back
A Ukrainian farmer shot down Russian drones until a drone killed him. Aid groups now hand civilians drone-survival training and signal detectors.
The status civilians can lose
People build drones in living rooms, haul them to the front, and give technical support from offices abroad. Those acts can strip their protected status under IHL, and most of them have no idea.
Stale as a cookie
One Ukrainian drone factory reportedly bakes a cookie with each new design and assumes that when the cookie goes stale, the design has too. Warfare now iterates at social media speed.
Built from parts and posts
Most battlefield drones are hacked Chinese consumer models or custom builds from open-source code and cheap electronics. Fighters trade attack footage and technical tricks in public, and watch each other do it.
America is not the center
Small U.S. drones have barely mattered in Ukraine despite the marketing. Combatants now look to Ukraine, Turkey, Israel, Iran and China, so lobbying Western manufacturers no longer reaches the people who matter.
Cheap computer vision
In July, Ukrainians recovered a Russian Molniya drone that killed three civilians at a gas station. It carried an inexpensive Nvidia minicomputer that appears to have locked onto its target by sight.
The problem is still people
Focusing too hard on AI misses the source. Nearly all targeted drone attacks on civilians are flown manually by pilots who choose to hunt children, farmers and the elderly.
Rewrite the commentary
The ICRC and legal experts should issue an updated Commentary to the Geneva Conventions covering modern drone war. The current air warfare manual dates to 2009, which is prehistoric here.
Put it on the agenda
The authors want a high-level U.N. General Assembly meeting, a G-7 push from France as current president, plus a U.N. reporting mechanism and a special rapporteur on drone attacks.
A center that keeps pace
No organization tracks small-drone attacks on civilians in technical detail. A dedicated center could monitor tactics, train civilians, and help gather evidence strong enough for international court.
The headline
Most drone attacks on civilians are still flown by humans choosing to kill them, so the fix is legal accountability and civilian protection, not just fear of AI.
