This post-webinar report was primarily authored by Nyein Nyein Thant Aung, based in part on the conversation at the webinar detailed below. The Forum on the Arms Trade provides a platform for sharing of views but does not itself take a position. This report should be credited to Nyein Nyein Thant Aung and is available online here and as a pdf here.
Webinar Title: Hybrid Drone Warfare and the Future of Control Regimes
Date: May 20, 2026
Organiser: Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) Working Group, Emerging Expert Program of the Forum on the Arms Trade
Panelists: Dr Taras Fedirko (University of Glasgow), Wim Zwijnenburg (Humanitarian Disarmament Project Leader, PAX)
Moderator: Nyein Nyein Thant Aung
Video: https://youtu.be/6_rhzb5KPss?t=220
Webinar Title: Hybrid Drone Warfare and the Future of Control Regimes
Date: May 20, 2026
Organiser: Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) Working Group, Emerging Expert Program of the Forum on the Arms Trade
Panelists: Dr Taras Fedirko (University of Glasgow), Wim Zwijnenburg (Humanitarian Disarmament Project Leader, PAX)
Moderator: Nyein Nyein Thant Aung
Video: https://youtu.be/6_rhzb5KPss?t=220
I. KEY FINDINGS
Current arms control frameworks are not well designed to address hybrid drone warfare. Evidence from recent conflicts shows that the problem is no longer limited to finished military platforms. Lethal capability now depends heavily on civilian components, digital design files, and open-source software modifications. This means that traditional territorial export controls are increasingly insufficient to manage cross-border proliferation risks.
Two findings stand out. First, while drone technology and financing networks operate across borders, policy responses and research remain regionally fragmented. Second, despite claims that commercial drones have broadened access to military capability, states remain the decisive actors because they can finance, scale, and institutionalise these systems. The policy implication is clear: governance must move beyond static, non-binding instruments toward more adaptive and coordinated models.
II. HOW HYBRID DRONE USE HAS EVOLVED
The military use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) drones has evolved rapidly, moving from ad hoc battlefield experimentation to organised state and proxy doctrine.
● Phase 1: The Asymmetric ISR Genesis: The pattern began when non-state actors in Colombia used low-cost consumer drones for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) to track state troop movements.
● Phase 2: The Lethal Pivot: In the MENA region, groups such as ISIS systematically modified these COTS platforms into offensive systems, creating an early model for loitering tactics and improvised munition drops.
● Phase 3: Industrial Scaling & the Open-Source Echo Chamber: After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, this approach expanded into state-backed mass production. Commercial off-the-shelf systems are now used worldwide, with clear examples in Gaza and Myanmar. Their spread is driven by a transnational online ecosystem: field accounts show that operators often bypass formal technology-transfer channels and instead adapt designs based on Ukrainian combat footage shared on platforms such as YouTube.
● Phase 4: State-Level Saturation Doctrines: During the 2025–2026 Middle East escalations, states and proxy networks deployed large, coordinated swarms of low-cost “kamikaze” drones. This cost-asymmetry strategy is designed to overwhelm and financially exhaust advanced air defence systems, driving a shift toward mass-produced First Person View (FPV) and jam-resistant fibre-optic-guided drones.
Why Regional Silos Undermine Policy:
A major policy gap is the regional fragmentation of analysis. Research on hybrid drones is still organised largely by geography: Middle East observers focus on MENA, European analysts on Ukraine, and Asian discussions on supply-chain resilience and democratic drone partnerships. This limits cross-regional learning and obscures how tactics, designs, and procurement models move across borders. Without a more integrated analytical approach, policy responses will remain partial and reactive.
III. PROCUREMENT, SOFTWARE, AND THE CONTINUING ROLE OF THE STATE
Hybrid drone networks are resilient because they combine flexible procurement, civic mobilisation, and fast-moving software adaptation outside traditional defence structures.
● “Austerity Technology” and Cottage Industries: The large-scale use of FPV racing drones began as a local response to severe artillery shortages. This gap led to a decentralised cottage industry in which frontline units assemble custom drone configurations directly in combat zones.
● The Civic Crowdfunding Engine: This production model depends heavily on civic mobilisation, with transnational volunteer networks and cryptocurrency helping to fund purchases directly from international commercial suppliers outside traditional defence procurement channels.
● Software as the Dual-Use Frontier: The risk of proliferation is increasingly digital. Flight control systems built on civilian racing software can be modified easily, allowing a software patch created in one conflict zone to spread globally within hours. Combat telemetry is also being packaged to train AI targeting systems, lowering the barrier to lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS).
Why States Still Matter Most:
Hybrid drone warfare is often described as a decentralised or democratized form of conflict, but states remain the central actors. Volunteer networks and private innovators may generate new tactics, yet only states can finance large-scale production, integrate these systems into doctrine, and protect or direct the networks that support them. Any effective control regime must therefore address not only non-state actors but also the ways states absorb and scale informal innovation.
IV. SUPPLY-CHAIN RISKS AND GREY-ZONE DYNAMICS
Hybrid drone production blurs the legal and regulatory boundary between civilian and military trade, creating major enforcement challenges upstream.
● Component-Level Migration & Customs Bottlenecks: The dual-use problem has shifted to the component level. The high-frequency fibre-optic cable used in jam-resistant drones is the same material that Western data centres buy for AI training infrastructure. This makes border detection extremely difficult: routine customs delays and complex clearance processes make it nearly impossible to separate legitimate civilian trade from military diversion without severely disrupting commerce.
● Transnational Crime and Riverine Grey Zones: These decentralised supply chains thrive in global grey zones. In the absence of coordinated oversight, regions with porous borders and weak institutions become major routes for smuggling unregulated components, such as hobbyist engines and ESC modules, from manufacturing hubs into conflict zones.
● The Chinese Market Hegemony & Clean Alliances: Chinese manufacturers control about 80% of the global commercial UAV market. Western efforts to build “clean” drone supply chains face serious operational constraints. Upstream concentration in lithium-ion battery refining creates major bottlenecks, and decoupling can push operators further toward unregulated grey-market sourcing.
V. POLICY OPTIONS
Because hybrid drones are modular, low-cost, and rapidly adaptable, governance responses must be equally flexible. Existing international measures provide useful principles, but most remain voluntary and fragmented. Policymakers should therefore prioritise practical, layered approaches that combine domestic regulation, regional coordination, and targeted international norms.
1. Turn Voluntary Guidelines into Binding Rules
Current frameworks, such as the 2023 Abu Dhabi Guiding Principles adopted by the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee, offer a strong starting point for tracking systems and commercial licensing. But because they are non-binding, they lack effective enforcement. States should therefore translate these voluntary guidelines into binding domestic and regional law, requiring commercial actors to take legal responsibility for their supply chains.
2. Build Cross-Regional Policy Forums
To address regional blind spots in current research, international bodies should promote cross-regional policy dialogue. Formal working groups linking European defence analysts, Asian supply-chain experts, and Middle Eastern security observers would help map the full transnational lifecycle of drone proliferation and technology transfer.
3. Require Risk Assessments in Joint Production Projects
As states invest in joint drone production hubs, such as EU-Ukraine defence industrial projects, they must define clear normative limits. States have both the resources and the responsibility to tie financial support to binding human rights risk assessments and rigorous lifecycle auditing, reducing the risk of secondary re-export into unregulated global grey markets.
4. Strengthen Component-Level Auditing
Customs authorities and industry should jointly develop intelligent red-flag systems. For example, an order of 100,000 rotor blades bound for a known transhipment grey zone should automatically trigger local law-enforcement review, helping close the gap between ordinary commerce and international security risk.
5. Embed Humanitarian Risk in Arms Control Decisions
The arms control debate should be grounded in multi-stakeholder collaboration. Commercial-adjacent armed drones are increasingly used to disrupt aid corridors and strike civilian spaces such as marketplaces. Bringing these civilian impacts more clearly into discussions at the UN General Assembly and Security Council would strengthen the diplomatic and moral case for requiring exporter states to conduct rigorous humanitarian risk assessments before approving component sales.
Current arms control frameworks are not well designed to address hybrid drone warfare. Evidence from recent conflicts shows that the problem is no longer limited to finished military platforms. Lethal capability now depends heavily on civilian components, digital design files, and open-source software modifications. This means that traditional territorial export controls are increasingly insufficient to manage cross-border proliferation risks.
Two findings stand out. First, while drone technology and financing networks operate across borders, policy responses and research remain regionally fragmented. Second, despite claims that commercial drones have broadened access to military capability, states remain the decisive actors because they can finance, scale, and institutionalise these systems. The policy implication is clear: governance must move beyond static, non-binding instruments toward more adaptive and coordinated models.
II. HOW HYBRID DRONE USE HAS EVOLVED
The military use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) drones has evolved rapidly, moving from ad hoc battlefield experimentation to organised state and proxy doctrine.
● Phase 1: The Asymmetric ISR Genesis: The pattern began when non-state actors in Colombia used low-cost consumer drones for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) to track state troop movements.
● Phase 2: The Lethal Pivot: In the MENA region, groups such as ISIS systematically modified these COTS platforms into offensive systems, creating an early model for loitering tactics and improvised munition drops.
● Phase 3: Industrial Scaling & the Open-Source Echo Chamber: After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, this approach expanded into state-backed mass production. Commercial off-the-shelf systems are now used worldwide, with clear examples in Gaza and Myanmar. Their spread is driven by a transnational online ecosystem: field accounts show that operators often bypass formal technology-transfer channels and instead adapt designs based on Ukrainian combat footage shared on platforms such as YouTube.
● Phase 4: State-Level Saturation Doctrines: During the 2025–2026 Middle East escalations, states and proxy networks deployed large, coordinated swarms of low-cost “kamikaze” drones. This cost-asymmetry strategy is designed to overwhelm and financially exhaust advanced air defence systems, driving a shift toward mass-produced First Person View (FPV) and jam-resistant fibre-optic-guided drones.
Why Regional Silos Undermine Policy:
A major policy gap is the regional fragmentation of analysis. Research on hybrid drones is still organised largely by geography: Middle East observers focus on MENA, European analysts on Ukraine, and Asian discussions on supply-chain resilience and democratic drone partnerships. This limits cross-regional learning and obscures how tactics, designs, and procurement models move across borders. Without a more integrated analytical approach, policy responses will remain partial and reactive.
III. PROCUREMENT, SOFTWARE, AND THE CONTINUING ROLE OF THE STATE
Hybrid drone networks are resilient because they combine flexible procurement, civic mobilisation, and fast-moving software adaptation outside traditional defence structures.
● “Austerity Technology” and Cottage Industries: The large-scale use of FPV racing drones began as a local response to severe artillery shortages. This gap led to a decentralised cottage industry in which frontline units assemble custom drone configurations directly in combat zones.
● The Civic Crowdfunding Engine: This production model depends heavily on civic mobilisation, with transnational volunteer networks and cryptocurrency helping to fund purchases directly from international commercial suppliers outside traditional defence procurement channels.
● Software as the Dual-Use Frontier: The risk of proliferation is increasingly digital. Flight control systems built on civilian racing software can be modified easily, allowing a software patch created in one conflict zone to spread globally within hours. Combat telemetry is also being packaged to train AI targeting systems, lowering the barrier to lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS).
Why States Still Matter Most:
Hybrid drone warfare is often described as a decentralised or democratized form of conflict, but states remain the central actors. Volunteer networks and private innovators may generate new tactics, yet only states can finance large-scale production, integrate these systems into doctrine, and protect or direct the networks that support them. Any effective control regime must therefore address not only non-state actors but also the ways states absorb and scale informal innovation.
IV. SUPPLY-CHAIN RISKS AND GREY-ZONE DYNAMICS
Hybrid drone production blurs the legal and regulatory boundary between civilian and military trade, creating major enforcement challenges upstream.
● Component-Level Migration & Customs Bottlenecks: The dual-use problem has shifted to the component level. The high-frequency fibre-optic cable used in jam-resistant drones is the same material that Western data centres buy for AI training infrastructure. This makes border detection extremely difficult: routine customs delays and complex clearance processes make it nearly impossible to separate legitimate civilian trade from military diversion without severely disrupting commerce.
● Transnational Crime and Riverine Grey Zones: These decentralised supply chains thrive in global grey zones. In the absence of coordinated oversight, regions with porous borders and weak institutions become major routes for smuggling unregulated components, such as hobbyist engines and ESC modules, from manufacturing hubs into conflict zones.
● The Chinese Market Hegemony & Clean Alliances: Chinese manufacturers control about 80% of the global commercial UAV market. Western efforts to build “clean” drone supply chains face serious operational constraints. Upstream concentration in lithium-ion battery refining creates major bottlenecks, and decoupling can push operators further toward unregulated grey-market sourcing.
V. POLICY OPTIONS
Because hybrid drones are modular, low-cost, and rapidly adaptable, governance responses must be equally flexible. Existing international measures provide useful principles, but most remain voluntary and fragmented. Policymakers should therefore prioritise practical, layered approaches that combine domestic regulation, regional coordination, and targeted international norms.
1. Turn Voluntary Guidelines into Binding Rules
Current frameworks, such as the 2023 Abu Dhabi Guiding Principles adopted by the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee, offer a strong starting point for tracking systems and commercial licensing. But because they are non-binding, they lack effective enforcement. States should therefore translate these voluntary guidelines into binding domestic and regional law, requiring commercial actors to take legal responsibility for their supply chains.
2. Build Cross-Regional Policy Forums
To address regional blind spots in current research, international bodies should promote cross-regional policy dialogue. Formal working groups linking European defence analysts, Asian supply-chain experts, and Middle Eastern security observers would help map the full transnational lifecycle of drone proliferation and technology transfer.
3. Require Risk Assessments in Joint Production Projects
As states invest in joint drone production hubs, such as EU-Ukraine defence industrial projects, they must define clear normative limits. States have both the resources and the responsibility to tie financial support to binding human rights risk assessments and rigorous lifecycle auditing, reducing the risk of secondary re-export into unregulated global grey markets.
4. Strengthen Component-Level Auditing
Customs authorities and industry should jointly develop intelligent red-flag systems. For example, an order of 100,000 rotor blades bound for a known transhipment grey zone should automatically trigger local law-enforcement review, helping close the gap between ordinary commerce and international security risk.
5. Embed Humanitarian Risk in Arms Control Decisions
The arms control debate should be grounded in multi-stakeholder collaboration. Commercial-adjacent armed drones are increasingly used to disrupt aid corridors and strike civilian spaces such as marketplaces. Bringing these civilian impacts more clearly into discussions at the UN General Assembly and Security Council would strengthen the diplomatic and moral case for requiring exporter states to conduct rigorous humanitarian risk assessments before approving component sales.
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