Michael Knights & Crispin Smith
In quantity and quality, attacks on coalition points of presence are increasing. Unless deterrence is restored, US fatalities are increasingly likely.
The US airstrike on Iraqi militia bases in the early hours of June 28 (local Iraqi time) came in response to a growing epidemic of drone (and rocket) attacks on US and Iraqi targets inside Iraq. This short report summarizes the key trends in such “indirect fire” (drone and rocket) attacks over the last year.
Trend 1: The muqawama is escalating, deterrence is deteriorating
Indirect fire trends in Iraq spiked at 13 a month in January 2020 after the US killing of Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, then dropped to as low as two. In the summer of 2020 they spiked again at 12 in August and then dropped off to 1-2 a month as US retaliatory threats intensified and the muqawama declared a “conditional truce”. Now they are heading up again, with a major qualitative jump as drones outnumber rockets for the first time. Deterrence has very clearly deteriorated since January 2021, which may coincide with the end of the Trump administration’s threat of disproportionate retaliation. In the past, such escalation of indirect fire has typically resulted in US deaths and has only stopped when deterrence was firmly re-imposed.
Trend 2: The muqawama is accepting a greater risk of killing US persons
It is instructive to look at the percentage of muqawama attacks on coalition targets that have targeted “points of presence”, meaning sites at which coalition personnel are actually present. Until the summer of 2020, all muqawama attacks were rocket attacks aimed at coalition “points of presence” (where US forces were actually present), an inherently risky step that could cause US casualties and draw US retaliation. From July 2020, the “convoy strategy” saw the muqawama largely transfer its kinetic activities into a safer non-lethal space, which Militias Spotlight has characterized as “fake resistance”, in which convoys are struck despite there never being any coalition personnel in such convoys.
This trend may now be changing again. A key question for analysts is whether the growing number of drone and rocket attacks on coalition points of presence (making up nearly a third of attacks in May and June 2021) is a return to more risky and genuine resistance tactics. Unguided rockets are still being fired – with the inherent risk of killing personnel) – and drones are more controllable but are still not assuredly non-lethal, being guided by GPS waypoints as opposed to real-time television imagery.
Trend 3: Militia drone attacks are growing rapidly in quantity and quality
There have been more drone attacks or drone finds in Iraq than US government metrics suggest. By Militia Spotlight’s count, there have been ten drone attacks in 2021 against targets inside Iraq (plus one drone strike originating in Iraq and striking Riyadh, Saudi Arabia).
March 4 – drone penetration of leadership complexes in Baghdad and Erbil
April 14 – strike on US hangar in Erbil Internatio-nal Airport, April 28 – strike on a coalition site, May 8 – strike on Al-Asad Air Base, May 11 – strike on a coal-ition site near Erbil, June 6 – twin-drone stri-ke on Al-Asad Air Base, June 9 – strike on Bagh-dad Airport’s coalition site, June 15 – twin-drone strike on Baghdad International Airport’s coalition site, June 20 – strike on Al-Asad Air Base, June 27 – four-drone strike close to leadership complexes in Erbil
The strikes have employed three main types of drone: the main variant is a so-called KAS-04 or Sammad fixed wing drone, first employed by Iranian-supplied Houthi forces. The June 9 and June 15 drone attacks against the coalition annex in Baghdad International Airport used smaller drones that appear to be reverse-engineered US Switchblade and Coyote loitering munitions, which militias have captured in Syria. The June 27 Erbil attacks comprise a third family of drones to be exposed this year in Iraq, which marry a warhead bearing Iranian manufacturing labels with a variety of body, wing and motor components.
All the drones used appear to be GPS-guided with a preprogrammed set of waypoints. The drones also show signs of being very precisely targeted on coalition intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets and missile defenses, which is likely an effort to drive these assets out of Iraq.
