Turkey strikes back in Syria with swarms of killer drones

Turkish drone strikes killed 19 Syrian government soldiers on Sunday, a war monitor reported

Campaign is first time Turkey has commanded the air space over such a large area using drone swarms, an official said

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An image grab taken from a video released on March 1, 2020, by the Turkish Defence Ministry shows an air strike by the Turkish military on Syrian regime positions. Photo: AFP

Published: 11:21am, 2 Mar 2020Updated: 9:38pm, 2 Mar 2020

Turkey deployed swarms of killer drones to strike Russian-backed Syrian government forces, in what a senior official said was a military innovation that demonstrated Ankara’s technological prowess on the battlefield.

The retaliation for the killing last week of 33 Turkish soldiers by Syrian forces involved an unprecedented number of drones in coordinated action, said the senior official in Turkey with direct knowledge of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Syria policy. It was the first time a country had commanded the air space over such a large area using drone swarms, according to the official.

The series of strikes since Thursday by dozens of the remotely-controlled aircraft targeted Syrian bases and chemical warfare depots, the Turkish military said.

On Sunday, 19 Syrian troops died in strikes on a military convoy in the Jabal al-Zawiya area and a base near Maaret al-Numan city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Turkey has also located and destroyed some Syrian missile-defence systems, raising questions about the effectiveness of the Russian-made equipment intended to deter such air attacks.

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