Drones are becoming organized crime’s weapon of choice in Latin America. Governments are struggling to keep up

By Sol Amaya, CNN

(CNN) — As some 2,500 heavily armed police officers, soldiers and snipers entered through a maze of narrow streets, intense gunfire could be heard all around. The scene reached its climax when a bomb targeting the security forces was seen falling from the sky, according to footage from the raid last October.

The clip could have been from a war zone, but it happened on the hillsides of Rio de Janeiro, a favorite destination for millions of tourists.

The so-called “Operation Containment,” in the favelas of Rio’s Complexo da Penha and Complexo do Alemão, pitted security forces against the networks of one of Brazil’s largest criminal organizations, Comando Vermelho (CV). It left dozens dead and the falling bomb highlighted a concerning phenomenon: the growing use of drones by organized crime.

A report by the nongovernmental organization Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) highlights that drone technology is expanding rapidly both within and across borders in Latin America. The report recorded “around 670 armed-drone events since 2018, but more than 72% of these events occurred between January 1, 2025, and August 21, 2026.”

In Mexico, a recent wave of attacks involving drones equipped with explosives put authorities on alert. Both Mexico’s Navy and Defense Ministry confirmed to CNN an increase in drone seizures over the past year. In Colombia, the newly inaugurated president faces the growing challenge posed by armed groups, which also use drones in their attacks. Their evolution and advance are accelerating as security forces try to catch up.

From ‘carrier pigeons’ to sophisticated weapons

The first uses of drones for criminal purposes in Latin America were recorded in prisons, mainly in Brazil. “Drones replaced the pigeons that were previously used to deliver messages and small packages, offering greater advantages and easy access to goods on the black market, including weapons, packages of drugs, food, liquor, cellphones and all kinds of contraband that found an aerial route into prisons,” says InSight Crime, a website specializing in investigations into organized crime. Drones attempting to smuggle prohibited goods into prisons have been recorded since 2014.

But over the past decade, they have become a standard tool in the criminal world. Paddy Ginn, a senior expert at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), notes that their current use falls into five categories: surveillance, logistics, attack, signaling and coordination.

“We are seeing a clear transition from the experimental use of drones by criminal groups toward structured and repeatable operational use,” Ginn says. Like other experts consulted by CNN, he says this evolution is most evident – and of greatest concern – in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, while Guatemala is seeing “emerging use linked to cross-border cartel conflicts, and Venezuela is showing early indicators through seizures and possession cases.”

“In Mexico, cartels have been using drones for attacks for at least five or six years,” Ginn says. “Criminal groups now use drones to monitor police patrols, drop improvised explosive devices on rivals or security forces, and support migrant-smuggling operations along the US border.”

Ginn highlights that the use of drones for these purposes has grown not only in frequency but also in sophistication. “Few innovations have spread through conflicts and organized crime as quickly as drones.”

David Mora, a senior analyst specializing in Mexico for the NGO Crisis Group, shares this view. “There has certainly been an increase in Mexico. From small drones used for surveillance, which is highly effective for criminal groups, to larger and more sophisticated drones with greater payload capacity, to which explosives are attached.”

What concerns experts most is how easily these devices can be acquired: they can essentially be purchased online. “They adapt commercial drones, such as those used to deliver packages, to carry explosives. Some have extremely high payload capacities. And although they do not have much range, that is also changing,” Mora explains.

Another use of these drones is for trafficking, allegedly across the Mexico-US border. In fact, the Trump administration has been investing in technology to combat this problem, although Mexican officials have played it down. The most recent sign of the US push against drones is the announcement that its forces used a laser system for the first time last week to shoot down three drones allegedly linked to Mexican drug cartels that were flying near the Texas-Mexico border.

But Mora emphasizes that the largest number of drone reports come from within Mexico, particularly in the state of Sinaloa, amid the internal struggles of the powerful cartel that operates there. “There are also many reports in Michoacán, where, as in Sinaloa, they are used more for territorial control and clashes between groups.” In Tamaulipas, where there is also a certain concentration of drone activity, it is more likely related to surveillance because it is a border state, Mora says.

InSight Crime also identifies the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Guanajuato as areas where drone operations have increased. It also notes that Mexican criminal groups “have sought the expertise of former Colombian military personnel to improve and professionalize the process of attaching explosives to drones.”

In addition to sharing that expertise with Mexican cartels, the use of drones in Colombia has also become commonplace among FARC dissident groups.

ACLED notes that Colombia has become the epicenter of drone warfare. “Here, the use of armed drones is spreading most rapidly: 97 of the 182 municipalities where ACLED records events involving armed drones across the Latin American region are in Colombia, concentrated mainly in Cauca, but with a marked spread into Norte de Santander, Antioquia, Chocó, Nariño, and Bolívar.” The NGO explains that most of these events occur in rural towns “located near coca-growing enclaves or drug trafficking corridors.”

InSight Crime notes that, in Colombia’s Catatumbo region, guerrilla units of the National Liberation Army (ELN) “are equipping drones with thermal imaging sensor technology to improve round-the-clock surveillance capabilities.” The report added that “Coordinated ‘swarm’ attacks and drones flying over communities serve as weapons of psychological intimidation to control territory and undermine public confidence in state security forces.”

As already mentioned, Brazil pioneered the use of drones for smuggling between prisons, but more recently, groups have also turned to using them as tools to drop explosives and monitor police movements.

The experts consulted by CNN agree that, so far, there have been no reports in the region of organized crime using kamikaze drones, devices that have been reported, for example, on the battlefront between Ukraine and Russia.

How security forces are responding

In many of the Latin American countries that have seen high use of drones by criminal groups, governments are investing in countering them.

In Brazil, for example, the Rio Civil Police launched the Coordenadoria de Operações com Aeronaves Não Tripuladas (Coordination of Operations with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – COANT), “incorporating drones into intelligence and police operations for real-time mapping and operational monitoring,” Insight Crime reports.

In Mexico, before the recent use of lasers to shoot down drones, US Ambassador Ronald D. Johnson had announced an agreement between the two countries to strengthen “strategic and operational capabilities through defense innovation and new technologies.”

Johnson said this would allow Mexico “to access the United States Army’s digital marketplace to acquire unmanned aerial systems and counter-unmanned aircraft systems at competitive costs,” to strengthen its ability “to combat the cartels and address our shared security challenges.” US

Last Friday, Ricardo Trevilla Trejo, Mexico’s Secretary of National Defense, referred to the counter-drone technology being used by security forces during a press conference. “We have deployed 165 counter-drone systems along the northern border, and we are achieving good results with them,” he said.

In Colombia, President Abelardo de la Espriella agreed with the US to loan three MQ-9A Reaper drones to monitor drug-trafficking corridors and carry out potential precision strikes against targets of high strategic value with the corresponding authorizations, according to a Colombian Defense Ministry source who confirmed the information to CNN.

Paddy Ginn, of GI TOC, notes that some agencies are adapting quickly, “particularly where drone use has already become operationally significant.” He says that Brazilian law enforcement “has demonstrated success in dismantling prison drone networks, and Colombian security forces increasingly recognize drones as part of the threat environment in conflict-affected regions.”

He also says that Mexico has increased “seizures and public reporting of drone-delivered improvised explosive devices, indicating growing awareness of the problem.”

“However, overall preparedness remains uneven. Criminal innovation often moves faster than regulatory adaptation, especially when technologies are inexpensive and widely available,” Ginn says.

The expert emphasizes that the main problem is that “drones narrow the gap between criminal and military methods.” He points to the war in Ukraine, in which Russian and Ukrainian forces have deployed drones to strike targets.

“The conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated how effective relatively simple drone systems can be when combined with rapid adaptation and distributed learning networks,” he says. “Criminal groups are paying attention to this. They are not necessarily importing military hardware, but they are learning from the tactics and techniques being demonstrated in Ukraine.”

Experts like Ginn note that the spread of drone use across the region is a real threat for the region as criminal groups draw inspiration from foreign conflicts. “Both Russian and Ukrainian forces have perfected the use of kamikaze drones and AI-guided explosive drones, setting a precedent for criminal innovation in the (Latin American) region,” says a report by InSight Crime.

Ginn has compared the drone to what the Kalashnikov rifle (AK) once was, considering how both have become commonly used, low-cost “weapons” with high lethal power. “However, if the international arms control system has struggled to curb the proliferation of AK-type weapons, it seems even less equipped to address the rise of drone technology,” Ginn writes in an article shared on GI-TOC’s website.

Civilian toll

Compounding the difficulty of controlling the acquisition of drones by organized crime groups is the fact that some security forces have adopted them as weapons. In both cases, civilians have much to lose.

The clearest example is Haiti, where, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, “at least 1,243 people were killed by drone strikes in 141 operations (by security forces) between March 1, 2025, and January 21, 2026, including at least 43 adults who were reportedly not members of criminal groups, and 17 children.”

The country, severely affected by gangs and a serious humanitarian crisis, has spent years trying to contain crime without much success. And unlike in other countries in the region, gangs here operate while embedded among the civilian population, including in Port-au-Prince, the capital.

“Haiti demonstrates both the potential and the risks of deploying police drones in highly contested environments,” says Ginn of GI-TOC, who believes it poses an enormous challenge for security forces that criminal groups can “adapt by embedding themselves more deeply within civilian areas, increasing the complexity of strike decisions.”

The testimonies collected by HRW are chilling. One is from a woman whose 6-year-old daughter was killed in one of the security forces’ attacks on the gangs. She says she briefly went out to buy food while her daughter played nearby: “When I got near the vendor, I heard an explosion. It was chaos, people were mutilated, there were noises everywhere.… It was full of children. Many people were dead.”

A report published in 2025 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) says that drone attacks “fall disproportionately on civilians.” “The result is a climate of fear and confusion among local communities and has likely played a far from insignificant role in displacing more than 54,000 people from their homes in Catatumbo,” in Colombia, CSIS says by way of example.

Mora of Crisis Group also notes that drones serve as weapons of intimidation against the population. “There are areas of Mexico where any buzzing sound puts people on edge,” says the Crisis Group expert.

So, what can governments do?

“There is no single solution,” says Ginn. “Effective responses require a combination of regulation, detection, interdiction, intelligence, and system-wide cooperation.”

“The key point is that drones should not be treated as a purely technical problem. They are part of a broader process of criminal innovation, and responses must reflect that broader context,” Ginn emphasizes.

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CNN’s Mauricio Torres, Jhasua Razo, and Fernando Ramos contributed to this report