Drones are re-shaping armed group warfare in Latin America 

Drones are becoming not only cheaper and faster to deploy in Latin America, but increasingly diffuse and lethal. 

Executive summary

Drones have evolved from peripheral smuggling tools into a core capability of Latin America’s armed groups and criminal organizations. Colombia has become the region’s laboratory for weaponized-drone innovation. Here, the National Liberation Army (ELN) and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dissident factions have been fielding fiber-optic-guided munitions that have already made security forces’ efforts to cope with this threat obsolete. In Mexico, where the use of weaponized drones was first recorded, they have become a key component of war tactics and territorial surveillance. But the issue is no longer confined to these two epicenters: Ecuador and Brazil are emerging as new frontiers, where organized crime groups are increasingly resorting to using drones to target adversaries in prisons and urban communities.

The current trajectory points toward faster, cheaper, and more lethal diffusion. Rapidly spreading know-how, coupled with falling hardware costs and porous regulation, will likely accelerate the spread of advanced drone tactics into new territories, outpacing state counter-drone investment and complicating security responses across the hemisphere.

(…) Armed groups have also been diversifying the ways in which they obtain and equip drones. Most are still commercial drones that have been artisanally equipped to carry objects and explosives, which limits their precision and lethality, so far leading to roughly one death in every three events. But in Colombia, ELN and FARC dissidents have been using drones with night-vision cameras and fiber-optic drones that resist radiofrequency jamming. These drones are used in trench warfare between Russia and Ukraine. Many Colombians have temporarily joined Ukraine in the war, where they have been learning drone tactics before bringing them back home. (ACLED - Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, USA, 27.08.2026)

https://acleddata.com/report/drones-are-re-shaping-armed-group-warfare-latin-america