The Laws of War Must Change for the Drone Age

Drones Are Increasingly Targeting Civilians

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Analysis:

The Laws of War Must Change for the Drone Age

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Analysis

The Laws of War Must Change for the Drone Age

Hunting civilians from the sky is growing disturbingly common.

By **Faine Greenwood**, an expert on unmanned aerial vehicles, technology in humanitarian aid, remote sensing, spatial data, and data policy and ethics, and **Nathaniel A. Raymond**, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health.

!The 3rd Separate Assault Brigade conducts classes as students learn to assemble and fly drones at a workshop in Kyiv.

*The 3rd Separate Assault Brigade conducts classes as students learn to assemble and fly drones at a workshop in Kyiv.*

The 3rd Separate Assault Brigade conducts classes as students learn to assemble and fly drones at a workshop in Kyiv, on Sept.3, 2025. Paula Bronstein /Getty Images

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September 14, 2026, 2:28 PM

Russia’s War in Ukraine

Understanding the conflict four years on.

More on this topic

Drones are stalking civilians and aid workers in Sudan, hunting children and the elderly through the streets of Kherson in Ukraine, and terrorizing Indigenous people in Mexico and in the Indonesian province of Papua. They’re increasingly cheap and accessible, well-nigh impossible to ban, and, making matters even more confusing, are also used globally for peaceful purposes, like saving lives in the aftermath of the devastating Nepal floods. Today, over a decade into the consumer drone boom, more people than ever before are being killed by unmanned aerial vehicles—and the world is still doing far too little to stop the violence.

In Ukraine, targeted attacks with small, short-range first-person-view (FPV) drones, bleakly referred to by locals as “human safaris,” killed 395 civilians and injured 2,635 between February 2022 and April 2025. In January that year, per United Nations data, drones became the most common cause of death for Ukrainian civilians. In June 2026, drone attacks on Ukrainian civilians reached a new crescendo, with 89 deaths and 588 injuries recorded by U.N. monitors in that month alone.

Drones are stalking civilians and aid workers in Sudan, hunting children and the elderly through the streets of Kherson in Ukraine, and terrorizing Indigenous people in Mexico and in the Indonesian province of Papua. They’re increasingly cheap and accessible, well-nigh impossible to ban, and, making matters even more confusing, are also used globally for peaceful purposes, like saving lives in the aftermath of the devastating Nepal floods. Today, over a decade into the consumer drone boom, more people than ever before are being killed by unmanned aerial vehicles—and the world is still doing far too little to stop the violence.

In Ukraine, targeted attacks with small, short-range first-person-view (FPV) drones, bleakly referred to by locals as “human safaris,” killed 395 civilians and injured 2,635 between February 2022 and April 2025. In January that year, per United Nations data, drones became the most common cause of death for Ukrainian civilians. In June 2026, drone attacks on Ukrainian civilians reached a new crescendo, with 89 deaths and 588 injuries recorded by U.N. monitors in that month alone.

Drones have also become a key feature of the ongoing war in Sudan, where combatants on both sides use a layered combination of smaller, cheaper drones and sophisticated long-range military drones (sourced primarily from Turkey and China). Civilians are paying the price: According to a June statement from U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, his office recorded over 1,000 civilian deaths from drone strikes in Sudan between January and May 2026.

Drug cartels in Mexico are increasingly using small drones to attack civilians—often focusing aerial terror campaigns on Indigenous groups. Recent data from Colombia’s Ministry of Defense reported a stunning 8,395 weaponized drone attacks by militants in 2025 alone.

In Myanmar, both sides of the conflict use small drones with deadly results for civilians, and in the war in Gaza, both Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces have made extensive use of modern drone technology. In Papua, Indonesian government efforts to suppress separatist fighters now frequently involve both small consumer-type and larger military drones, which surveil and occasionally attack Indigenous communities have been killed in these attacks in the last two years.

Armed drone attacks are also becoming a key risk to humanitarian and healthcare workers, according to a recent report from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). From 2024 to 2026, drones attacked aid workers in Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza, among other locations.

In 2026, drone attacks are more brazenly and intentionally targeted at civilians than they have ever been before, as part and parcel of a marked global decline in respect for international humanitarian law itself. If the world fails to take action, this wave of mechanized violence will only continue to worsen.

What form should that action take? First, global decision-makers must reckon with just how much drone warfare has changed—technically, operationally, and legally—since the technology first rose to popular awareness during the war on terror years.

Twenty years ago, there was little realistic way for civilians to shoot down, jam, or otherwise affect the activities of a U.S