What was supposed to be a swift and decisive punitive mission by the Ethiopian army has now descended into a humanitarian catastrophe, with Tigrayans putting up a much more tenacious defense than military planners in Addis Ababa had expected. But government forces now have a new tool in their arsenal as they embark on a renewed, all-out offense against Tigray – unmanned combat drones – a platform that has proved highly effective in smashing through entrenched defenses and whittling down combatant morale in conflicts ranging from Syria to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Will the same be true of Ethiopia?

Impact

The Ethiopian government has been preparing for this week’s offensive for months. Some of these preparations have been military in nature; for example, a recruiting drive targeting ‘all able-bodied Ethiopians’ to shore up manpower in Tigray. Others have been more unscrupulous, such as the maintenance of an aid blockade covering rebel-controlled areas with the presumptive hope of sapping rebel (and civilian) fighting strength via deprivation of food and critical supplies.

Reporting from Bellingcat and elsewhere has shed light on another key aspect of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s preparations: the procurement of lethal drone technology (Ethiopia’s drone capacity has previously been limited to surveillance). More specifically, a Bellingcat analysis of drone feed footage, pictured in recent publicity material from the Ethiopian government, seems to match the feed of an Iranian-made Mohajer-6 drone. Deployment of the Mohajer-6 in Ethiopia would represent the first time that Iranian-made drones have been fielded outside of Tehran’s proxy/affiliate network spanning Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza.

How exactly the drones got to Ethiopia remains a question. Open-source investigators Oryx noted a series of suspicious cargo flights over the past two months: of 51 flights, 45 originated from the UAE and six from Iran. Incidentally, the UAE has long been diplomatically active in the Horn of Africa and remains a close ally of Ethiopia, even though there have been scant cases of UAE-made weapons showing up on the battlefield thus far. However, during the early days of the civil war in 2020, there were reports of the UAE providing drone support against Tigrayan artillery positions. At the time, the UAE was operating a military base in Eritrea to help support its own military operations in Yemen.