SMASH Dragon or Lanius? Looking For Our Quadcopters
It seems important that we get to see the killer drones we help pay for
Not long ago The Stopgap asked whether the introduction of the Quadcopter to armed conflict has interrupted the meaning of the word "missile," a noun that refers to a weapon thrown from one place to another. A drone is something different from a missile, which is why the newspapers are now quite careful to refer to "missile and drone attacks," because a drone propels explosives towards its targets from very close range.
The Stopgap
Today, we saw this footage of a Quadcopter attacking journalists in Jabaliya, Palestine:
BREAKING | Journalists covering the Israeli aggression in Jabaliya, Northern Gaza, document an Israeli quadcopter targeting them while wearing clearly marked press vests pic.twitter.com/gI4f6vAqqe
— TIMES OF GAZA (@Timesofgaza) May 15, 2024
I don't think you can actually see the Quadcopter in the video. But the videographer very clearly says the word, "Quadcopter."
It's pretty difficult to find an image of the Quadcopter weapon used by the military we help fund that appears to be transforming the meaning of a war crime and absolutely, admitted by everybody, exist.
The posts of Quadcopters that have come out of Palestine that I have seen on my own feeds have all so far been shot at night or been shot from inside, in darkness, recording Quadcopter audio outside. If you search for "Quadcopter" media on X you'll find a lot by the Pakistani army of fairly innocuous-looking Indian intelligence drones shot down and shown off.
Some seem to exist. There's the IG reel of a drone being knocked out of the air with a stone, but it's unclear what type.
The Telegraph had an image of one in their December 2023 reporting, but its origin isn't directly cited.
Through google similar image search I found this image used as a commercial illustration for a weapon called the "Smart Shooter SMASH Dragon Drone Eliminator."
Here's the description:
Press Release, 10 January 2022: SMART SHOOTER, a world-class designer, developer, and manufacturer of innovative fire control systems that significantly increase the accuracy and lethality of small arms, reveals the SMASH Dragon: an armed drone system incorporating Smart Shooter’s combat-proven SMASH Technology that ensures precise target elimination.
The Telegraph article:
The IDF and the UK military are known to purchase small arms drones from Smart Shooter, but the company says its products are not being used in Gaza
So we don't even know if that's the actual thing in use. The weapon did get a big publicity bump in Israeli media, specifically The Jerusalem Post, in early 2022:
ANNA AHRONHEIM
But it's all just the same publicity image.
The weapon looks a lot, however, like the AFP-licensed image used in this Middle East Eye article which I cannot pay to reproduce here:
War on Gaza: Israeli quadcopters, the hi-tech weapon menacing Palestinian civilians
You'll even see that the drone in this actually cited image has the little red parts on it corresponding to the SMASH Dragon. But there are only references in the article to the LANIUS system.
In lieu of actual information we can only try to piece it together. I think the weapon in the MEE piece is a SMASH Dragon. But what do I know? Almost literally nothing.
Do you have access to actual images of these machines we are using to kill children? This seems important. Let us know at contactthestopgap [at] gmail [dot] com
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