BBC Source : an investigation found that the Islamic State (ISIS) extremist group tried to develop high-speed drones powered by pulse jet engines, which originated from the engines used in V-1 cruise missiles launched by Nazi Germany into Britain during World War II.
The prototype of the engine was reportedly revealed by Conflict Monitor in a new report on how militants of ISIS organizations acquired and manufactured weapons.” According to the Organization for Research on Conflict Equipment (CAR), ISIS has “advanced capabilities to produce improvised weapons”.
According to the report, since 2014, the ISIS organization has brutally ruled millions of people and once controlled about 88,000 square kilometers (34,000 square miles) of territory from western Syria to eastern Iraq. After five years of fierce fighting, the local army, with the support of the United States and Russia, recaptured all the territory controlled by the ISIS organization. In March 2019, countries announced defeating ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
Mike Lew ISIS, the head of the investigation at CAR, said: “No other non-state armed group can match the scale and ambition of ISIS’s weapons production.”
Namir Shabibi, head of the organization’s operations in Iraq, said: “Over the past year, the remaining branches in Iraq and Syria have become more and more active. It remains important to combat the recovery of the organization by identifying the various red flags detailed in the report to prevent their procurement of goods.”
The report released by CAR on Tuesday is an 18-month investigation into the procurement network behind weapons production organized by ISIS. The report said that from 2014 to 2017 (the heyday of the ISIS organization), production of ISIS organization “has become more technologically advanced and quasi-industrial”.
According to the report, ISIS organized a small number of major purchases of key materials used in Iraq and Syria to manufacture weapons and explosives, mainly from family enterprises in Europe and Turkey. The report said that bulk procurement in 2014 and 2015 continued to supply weapons production organized by ISIS until territories where ISIS organizations lost control in 2019.
Lewis said: “A few key individuals and companies play a central role in the procurement of various commodities, from monitoring equipment to the production of explosives. With stronger due diligence, most of these transactions may have been interrupted.”
The report said that the drones used by ISIS organizations are mainly small electric aircraft, which are used for commercial purposes around the world. But the survey found that since 2015, ISIS technicians are “also seeking to develop larger and faster pulse jet drones”.
The report said that in September 2017, a “full-structure pulse jet engine” more than two meters long was found in a hospital in western Mosul, Iraq.
The report said that “pulse jet engine is a jet engine originally used in V-1 cruise missiles during World War II”.
Investigators said that the automated air defense system is another “ambigious new weapon system” that ISIS organizations have built and tested, but it has not yet been used.
