Drones changed this civil war, linked rebels to world
In flip-flops and shorts, one of the finest soldiers in a resistance force battling the military junta in Myanmar showed off his weaponry. It was, he apologized, mostly in pieces.
The rebel, Shan Gyi, glued panels of plastic shaped by a 3D printer. Nearby, electrical innards foraged from Chinesemade drones used for agricultural purposes were arrayed on the ground, their wires exposed as if awaiting surgery.
Other parts needed to construct homemade drones, including chunks of Styrofoam studded with propellers, crowded a pair of leaf-walled shacks. Together, they could somewhat grandly be considered the armory of the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force. A laser cutter was poised halfway through carving out a flight control unit. The generator powering the workshop had quit. It wasn’t clear when there would be electricity again.
Despite the ragtag conditions, rebel drone units have managed to upend the power balance in Myanmar. By most measures, the military that wrested power from a civilian administration in Myanmar three years ago is far bigger and better equipped than the hundreds of militias fighting to reclaim the country. The junta has at its disposal Russian fighter jets and Chinese missiles.
But with little more than instructions crowdsourced online and parts ordered from China, the resistance forces have added ballast to what might seem a hopelessly asymmetrical civil war. The techniques they are using would not be unfamiliar to soldiers in Ukraine, Yemen or Sudan.
Across the world, the new abilities packed into consumer technology are changing conflict. Starlink connections provide internet. 3D printers can mass produce parts. But no single product is more important than the cheap drone.
In the Gaza Strip last year, Hamas used low-cost drones to blind Israel’s surveillance-studded checkpoints. In Syria and Yemen, drones fly alongside missiles, forcing American troops to make difficult decisions about whether to use expensive countermeasures to swat down a $500 toy. On both sides of the war in Ukraine, innovation has turned the unassuming drone into a human-guided missile.
The world’s outgunned forces are often learning from each
other. Drone pilots in Myanmar describe turning to groups on chat apps like Discord and Telegram to download 3D printing blueprints for fixed-wing drones. They also gain insight on how to hack through the default software on commercial drones that could give away their locations.
Many also take advantage of the original use of these hobbyist gadgets: the video footage they take. In Ukraine and Myanmar alike, kill videos are set to heart-pumping music and spread on social media to boost morale and help raise money.
“It’s exponential growth, and it’s taking place everywhere,” said Samuel Bendett, a fellow at the Center for New American Security who studies drone warfare. “You can get on YouTube and learn how to assemble; on Telegram you can get a sense of tactics and tips on pilot training.”
‘A TECH DISRUPTER-TYPE MINDSET’
The head of the militia’s drone unit – he goes by the nom de guerre 3D because of his success at printing drone parts – might seem an atypical rebel. A computer technology graduate, 3D recalled the first time he assembled a 3D printer during his college years.
“Not so hard,” he said. Looking to make use of his skills when he joined the resistance movement, he first tried to print rifles. When they did not work well, he turned his attention to drones, which he had read were redefining warfare in other parts of the world.
“They had a tech disruptertype mindset,” said Richard Horsey, a senior Myanmar adviser at the International Crisis Group. “A lot of innovation happened.”
As 3D set out to build his fighting force, he had no training manual. Instead, he consulted with other young civilians setting up similar units across Myanmar. After the coup and brutally suppressed protests in 2021, young people who had grown up in a digitally connected Myanmar took to the jungle to fight.
Though none of his team’s 10 pilots had flown drones before the coup, they delved into online chat rooms, learning how to convert drones designed to spray pesticides for a more lethal use – against humans.
“The internet is very useful,” 3D said. “If we want, we can talk to people everywhere, in Ukraine, Palestine, Syria.”
A GAME OF CAT-AND-MOUSE
Recently, 3D went on a shopping spree. He was seeking a solution perfected in the trenches of Ukraine’s front lines for a problem he and his pilots were facing: Russian-made jammers that could take out drones by blocking their signals.
Within a few months of 3D forming his drone army, the junta started using jamming technology from China and Russia to scramble the GPS signals that guide drones to their targets.
3D has been searching for ways to fight back. When the Myanmar army sends up its drones to pursue rebel fighters, it must pause the jamming, opening a window through which he can dispatch his own aerial fleet, too.
Newer first-person-view drones, or FPVs, offer another potential solution to the problem of getting through electronic defenses. Hobbyist racing drones repurposed into human-piloted weapons, the FPVs can be less vulnerable to jamming because they are manually controlled rather than guided by GPS, and they can sometimes be piloted around the interference emitted by drone defenses.
The newer drones have reshaped the conflict in Ukraine, and parts to make FPVs have been dribbling in to the Myanmar rebels in recent months. But they are much harder to fly than conventional drones, operated with goggles that allow the pilot to see from the perspective of the drone. In Ukraine, pilots often train for hundreds of hours on simulators before getting the chance to fly in combat.
On a recent afternoon when the rebel force’s generator was working, one drone pilot, Sai Laung, sat in a bamboo shack sharpening his skills on a laptop loaded with Ukrainian drone simulation software.
He cradled a joystick in his hands, occasionally wiping away the sweat trickling down his face as he piloted a virtual drone above simulated Ukrainian farmland toward Russian tanks. He crashed and crashed again.
“I’m tired,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “But I have to keep practicing.”
On April 4, a shadow Myanmar government formed by ousted lawmakers and others announced that a fleet of drones, launched by a pro-democracy armed group, had attacked three targets in Myanmar’s capital: the military headquarters, an air base and the house of Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the junta leader.
Despite the shadow government’s excitement, none of the kamikaze drones caused significant damage that day. An analysis by The New York Times of satellite imagery found no apparent evidence of smoke, burning or other signs of a successful strike.
Still, the battles, and the casualties, grind on.
On March 20, Shan Gyi, the rebel force’s star pilot, was flying a drone from a spot on the front line. Suddenly, a much more menacing flying machine – a junta fighter jet – shrieked overhead. Its bombs struck, 3D explained later, and Shan Gyi was killed in action. He was 22.