Mexican cartels present new security threat with drone IEDs
A shift in tactics by Mexico’s drug cartels is underway, incorporating unmanned technology into their armed wings instead of simply using the devices for surveillance, reconnaissance or smuggling, according to country experts.
The Mexico-based magazine Zeta reported how, in July 2018, an armed UAS was used to try and bomb the domestic property of Baja California state public safety secretary Gerardo Sosa Olachea in the US-Mexico border city of Tecate.
The attack comes on the heels of the arrest in 2017 of several suspected cartel members in Mexico’s central Guanajuato state. Four suspects were apprehended by federal police at
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