“That drone is meant to carry about 10 to 15 pounds of weight, and when you carry that type of weight, that significantly changes the distance that that drone can fly,” former US army intelligence and special operations soldier Brett Velicovich told Rudaw’s Roj Zalla.
“That drone more than likely was not flown from further than ten miles away, so whoever was flying that particular drone was probably pretty close to the target because that drone does not have a long range,” he added. “Drones that have long-range typically, you see them - they are more like a fixed-wing type of aircraft, they are not quadcopters… you typically see most quadcopters stay under ten miles, closer even to four, five miles.”
“The first thing I noticed immediately was that there was somebody probably very, very close controlling that drone, and more than likely could even potentially see the target that they were going at,” Velicovich said.
An explosives-laden drone hit Erbil International Airport, which hosts US-led coalition troops, late on Tuesday, causing a fire at the site but no casualties or physical damage. It came less than 24 hours after an "airborne threat" was shot down over the US embassy in Baghdad.
Three rockets were fired the day before at Ain al-Asad airbase.
Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, head of the United Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI), described the attacks as “an affront to the rule of law.”
Iraq’s top military spokesperson Yehia Rasool also slammed the attack, saying on Wednesday that the government will prosecute those who violate the law.
Hours before Rasool’s statement, bases in Iraq and Syria were both hit by rockets and drones. Ain al-Asad was hit by fourteen rockets, according to coalition spokesperson Col. Wayne Marotto.
Attacks on Iraqi bases, especially those hosting US troops, have increased since the US assassinated top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi) deputy commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Baghdad in January 2020.
Related: Drone wars in Iraq
Velicovich said the main issue with those quadcopter drones is that they can “evade air defenses pretty well.”
“That is very dangerous because these air defenses are out there looking for mortars, they are looking for aircraft, they are looking for massive rockets, and when a drone flies through that it is very difficult to detect,” he said.
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