Drones: A new weapon for Colombia’s guerrillas

The video shows a mortar bomb that falls from the sky and then explodes on the ground. It was filmed in Catatumbo, an area in the North Santander department in northeastern Colombia, and it was first posted online in March. Just after the explosion, a person can be seen running away. 

The projectile that you can see in the video was dropped by a drone. Armed groups in Colombia are increasingly using this method. 

Catatumbo is a region that borders Venezuela. It’s known as a region where coca is grown – the plant used to produce cocaine. Since January, bloody clashes have been taking place in the region between the ELN (the National Liberation Army), a guerrilla group that has been active since the 1960s, and Frente 33, a group made up of dissidents from FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). 

Read more‘There’s no one left’: Renewed guerrilla violence forces Colombian civilians to flee

Catatumbo is far from the only region that has experienced violence in Colombia, where an armed conflict has been ongoing for more than 60 years. In late 2024, there were armed groups in 71 percent of the country’s municipalities. 

In 2016, the government and the former guerrillas from the FARC movement signed peace agreements. But some FARC militants then picked up their weapons again. And, what’s more, this agreement didn’t include groups like the ELN, who just continued on with their activities. 

In 2022, the country’s first leftwing president, Gustavo Petro, took office. And despite his ambitions of “total peace”, which would involve demobilising all armed groups through dialogue, the violence has continued. 

Increase in drone attacks since 2024

Against this backdrop, drone attacks have been on the rise since 2024. Most of the armed groups use commercial drones made by the Chinese manufacturer DJI, which they sometimes modify, or homemade drones. Projectiles, both homemade and conventional, are then attached to the drones, which then drop them. 

Drones were being used, however, well before 2024. Our team spoke to Camilo Mendoza, a former Colombian fighter turned defence consultant, who says that a drone was used in 2018 in Barranco Minas, a town in the department of Guainía. 

“A commercial drone dropped explosives on a unit in the army,” Mendoza said. “Just by chance, it didn’t explode.” 

The army reported back in 2019 that it had discovered “two Syma drones [Editor’s note: a Chinese brand] carrying explosives” in the department of Nariño. They shared images of the drones. 

While the increase in drone attacks is a relatively recent phenomenon, armed groups were using them at least as far back as 2015, often for reconnaissance.

The country’s security forces have also been using drones since at least 2015 (see here and here). But, for the time being, they don’t seem to be using them to attack. 

Armed groups, on the other hand, have been using drones to target the army, the police and rival groups. But civilians have also been paying the price for this violence, as is the case in any armed conflict. It is estimated that around 80 percent of deaths in the recent decades of the conflict were civilians.

‘Drones are different from the anti-personnel mines and the gunfire that we are used to’

Drones represent a new threat to civilians, says Miguel (not his real name), who lives in Catatumbo. We gave him a pseudonym because of the risks to people who criticise the armed groups. 

Up until now, we’ve gotten used to the threat of anti-personnel mines and exchanges of gunfire. When it comes to mines, the armed groups often leave signs saying where they have placed them so that the population doesn’t go there. So it is something we can see.

In a similar vein, you can hear the sound of gunfire when there are clashes. So we can get down on the ground or get behind a tree or a wall and, sometimes, that’s enough to stay safe.

With drones, it's different. You don't know when they might appear, or where they might drop their explosives. They're in the sky. You don't see them. Usually, when we realise they are there, they are already above our heads. Residents have already been killed.

These drones and the fighting have forced us to leave our homes, to abandon our land. Some people have left the department entirely, others have sought refuge in town. What we have in this region is terrorism, and it is civilians who pay the price, as always.

‘These attacks violate the principles of proportionality and distinction’

Lina Mejía Torres works for “Vivamos Humanos”, a Colombian NGO and human rights organisation that is monitoring the situation in Catatumbo. She agrees with Miguel about the specific dangers caused by drones and worries about a certain category of people – those who are already under protection due to the threats they receive, including from armed groups. 

There are armoured vehicles for some of these people. But mostly, the armour is underneath the carriage of the vehicle, to protect them from anti-personnel mines and bombs. The national protection unit isn’t ready for these drone attacks [Editor’s note: an estimated 15,000 people benefit from protection measures through this unit. About 10,000 of them are social leaders and human rights defenders.]

We still have not seen an attack that directly targeted civilians. It seems more like they are collateral victims. But any attack in a densely populated area should be considered an attack on the civilian population. Homes were destroyed, and I’m not just talking about just a bit of damage. All of this violates the principles of proportionality and distinction, rules of war that armed groups are supposed to respect.

Mendoza says that most of the civilian victims weren’t targeted as such: “These are mostly piloting errors, which could be linked to a lack of training or to weather conditions.”

In order to estimate the number of victims of drone attacks, our team cross-referenced a number of sources. First, we looked at cases reported by the local press and on social media. We also looked at numbers given to our team by experts, as well as those recorded by the army and the police in the departments of Cauca and North Santander. 

According to our estimates, at least six people were killed – three civilians and three soldiers – between January 1, 2024, and May 13, 2025. 

One of the victims was 73-year-old Luis Ernesto Mendoza, whose home in Catatumbo was hit on March 27. Mendoza was brought to the hospital with serious injuries to his neck and arms. One of his arms was amputated, but it wasn’t enough to save him: Mendoza died two days later. 

According to one of our sources, the projectile was dropped by a drone, a version that was also reported by the Colombian press. Moreover, the local police shared with our team a list of victims of attacks committed by drones. The second-to-last line seems to refer to Mendoza. 

This list includes the case of another civilian killed in Catatumbo on April 12. This is likely referring to Farid Alonso López, age 72, whose case also appeared in the Colombian press.

In July 2024, a ten-year-old child, Dylan Camilo Erazo Yela, was also killed by a drone. He was on a sports field in the department of Cauca, located in the southeast of the country. His death was widely reported by the Colombian media. 

The three soldiers were all killed in Catatumbo between March and May 2025.

Though, for the time being, there haven’t been too many deaths, there have been dozens of people injured. We counted at least 92 people injured in drone attacks, including 30 civilians, 48 soldiers and 14 police officers, between January 1, 2024, and May 20, 2025. 

During the same period, anti-personnel mines injured or killed 173 people, including 85 civilians and 88 soldiers or policemen, according to information published by the Colombian government on May 31. 

Violence and narcotrafficking 

Most of the drone victims were in the department of Cauca. That’s also where most of the drone attacks were documented: 100 in 2024, and then 59 between January 1 and May 6, 2025, according to the police from this department. The attacks took place in five municipalities. All of them are places where coca is grown, like Catatumbo, where drone attacks have been on the rise since March.  

There is nothing surprising about this. The regions where coca and cocaine are produced are infected by armed groups. These groups have been fighting for control of the territory in an attempt to maximise profits from this lucrative industry. They also periodically attack security forces when, for example, they attempt to take back control of certain zones. 

‘The drone is the poor man’s missile’

Currently, most of the attacks have come from guerrilla forces like the FARC dissidents and the ELN. These groups have always had to use unconventional weapons in their fight against the security forces, according to experts who spoke to our team. They use anti-personnel mines, booby-trapped vehicles, bombs made from gas cannisters and filled – sometimes – with scrap metal to cause more serious damage, and homemade projectiles. Drones – especially homemade ones – fit within this way of doing things. 

As for commercial drones, Camilo Mendoza says: “Buying a drone is easy and also cheap, especially when compared with conventional weapons. They call drones ‘the poor man's missile’. They're a way of having a mini air force. Pretty much anyone, in about a week, can learn to pilot them effectively. And they reduce the risks for the attackers, who no longer need to be on the front lines, and can cause extensive damage from five kilometres away.” 

A slow response from the authorities

Faced with this new threat, Colombia is starting to equip itself with anti-drone systems. The aim is to detect drones and then scramble their signal so as to neutralise them. However, experts say that the government is late in adopting them and that there aren’t nearly enough. 

Our team spoke to Erich Saumeth, another Colombian analyst specialising in defence. “Up until now, a number of local authorities bought anti-drone equipment in Singapore (see here and here) and Australia,” he said. “But there are very few to have done it, and they only bought a few, mostly because of their price – more than $100,000.” 

He says that it is too bad that the defence ministry – which oversees the army and the police – has not invested in more anti-drone equipment, outside those bought in China (2019), in France (2022) and in the United States (2024).

“A Colombian company developed its own system, but I think the Air Force only used one,” he said.  

Our team contacted the army’s communication service, which said on May 20 that they had bought anti-drone equipment, but didn’t specify how much. 

Moreover, police in the department of North Santander said that the national police had a “global plan” to manage drones and mentioned anti-drone equipment, but did not provide further information.

In early June, the defence ministry spent $25 million buying equipment from a US company. However, it seems as if the equipment has not yet arrived in Colombia.

“I think that the government failed to prepare, even though we’ve been talking about drones for years. The armed groups have an upper hand,” Mendoza says. 

Manfred Grautoff, another Colombian security expert who spoke to our team, said, “Each unit should already have anti-drone equipment and people trained to use it, but that isn’t the case.”  

Will Colombians soon start using FPV drones?

Another concern is that Colombians could soon begin using more sophisticated drones, like those seen on the front lines in Ukraine. 

“For now, the techniques used and the extent to which drones are used there isn’t being reflected here… thankfully,” Mendoza said. “We don’t yet have FPV (first-person view) drones. But I think that the armed groups will start buying this technology before the end of the year. However, we currently don’t have any systems that would be effective against FPV drones. Moreover, armed groups will certainly begin to use anti-drone equipment as well, to neutralise drones used by security forces.” 

He is also concerned that, in Ukraine, people have started to use fibre optic drones that seem immune to electronic jamming.

If all of these drones start to be used in Colombia, experts think that the internal conflict could be profoundly transformed and that armed groups could gain further advantage. 

Thanks to Camilo Mendoza, Erich Saumeth, Manfred Grautoff, and Rafael Padilla.