Wearing flip-flops and shorts, one of the resistance’s best soldiers shows off his weapons as he fights the military junta in Myanmar. Most of it was in pieces, he apologized.
Rebel Ko Shan Gyi uses a 3D printer to glue plastic sheets together. Nearby, electronic entrails collected from Chinese-made drones used for agricultural purposes line the ground, with wires exposed as if waiting for surgery.
Other parts needed to build a homemade drone, including blocks of Styrofoam that house the propellers, crowd the two leaf-walled cabins. Collectively, they can be considered the armory of the Karenni National Defense Forces. A laser cutter is preparing to engrave the flight control unit. The generator in the workshop has lost power. It’s unclear when power will be available again.
Despite chaotic conditions, rebel drone forces have succeeded in upending the balance of power in Myanmar. By most measures, the army that seized power from Myanmar’s civilian government three years ago is larger and better equipped than the hundreds of militias fighting to reclaim the country. The junta has Russian fighter jets and Chinese missiles at its disposal.
But the resistance, relying solely on instructions crowdsourced online and parts ordered from China, has added ballast to a seemingly hopelessly asymmetrical civil war. The technology they use is not unfamiliar to soldiers in Ukraine, Yemen or Sudan.
Around the world, new capabilities in consumer technology are changing conflicts. Starlink connection provides internet. 3D printers can mass produce parts. But no product is more important than cheap drones.
In Gaza last year, Hamas used low-cost drones to obscure Israeli surveillance-laden checkpoints. In Syria and Yemen, drones are flying alongside missiles, forcing the U.S. military to make a tough decision: whether to use expensive countermeasures to shoot down a $500 toy. Both sides in Ukraine’s war have innovated to turn humble drones into manned missiles.
The world’s ill-equipped powers often learn from each other. Drone pilots in Myanmar have described how 3D printing blueprints for fixed-wing drones can be downloaded through chat app groups such as Discord and Telegram. They also gained insight into how to hack default software on commercial drones that could reveal their location.
Many people also take advantage of the original purpose of these hobbyist gadgets: the video footage they shoot. In both Ukraine and Myanmar, videos of killings are set to heart-pounding music and circulated on social media to boost morale and help raise funds.
“It’s growing exponentially and it’s everywhere,” said Samuel Bennett, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security who studies drone warfare. “You can learn how to assemble it on YouTube, you can learn about pilots on Telegram Training Tactics and Techniques.”
In Myanmar, both sides began to worry that the whirring propeller blades would stir up the air above them. But without the junta’s air power, the resistance will have to rely more on drones in its bid to overthrow the military and win some form of civilian rule. Rebel-operated drones have helped capture military outposts in Myanmar simply by hovering overhead and scaring soldiers into fleeing. They terrorized the trenches. They may also launch a full-scale offensive into areas controlled by the junta, targeting police stations and small military bases.
Shanji said that as the rebel force’s most skilled pilot, he had scored dozens of successful strikes by piloting the drone by gently shaking the joystick on a video game controller. Larger homemade drones can carry nearly 70 pounds of bombs that can blow up a house. However, most are smaller and carry several 60mm mortar shells, which can kill soldiers.
“I didn’t play video games when I was a kid,” Mr. Shange said. “I feel so happy when I hit the bullseye on the battlefield.”
“Technological disruptor mentality”
The leader of the Minuteman drone unit — nicknamed 3D for his success in printing drone parts — may seem like an atypical rebel. 3D, a computer technology graduate, recalls the first time he assembled a 3D printer while in college.
“It’s not that hard,” he said.
When he joined the resistance, he first tried printing rifles in order to use his skills. When they weren’t effective, he turned his attention to drones, which he read were redefining warfare in other parts of the world.
“They have a tech disruptor-type mentality,” said Richard Horsey, senior adviser on Myanmar at the International Crisis Group. “There’s a lot of innovation happening.”
When 3D began assembling his fighting force, he had no training manual. Instead, he consulted with other young civilians who were setting up similar units across Myanmar. After the 2021 coup and brutally suppressed protests, young people who grew up in digitally connected Myanmar took to the jungle to fight.
Although none of the 10 pilots on his team had flown a drone before the coup, they delved into online chat rooms to learn how to convert drones designed to spray pesticides into uses more lethal to humans.
“The Internet is very useful,” 3D said. “If we wanted to, we could talk to people in Ukraine, Palestine, Syria, all over the world.”
Dozens of drone units, some all-female, are scattered across Myanmar. In 2022, Ma Htet Htet joined a militia in central Myanmar.
“I was assigned to a cooking position because they were hesitant to send me to the front lines because I was a girl,” she said.
Ms Htet Htet, now 19, joined a drone unit last year. The job puts her on the front lines as drone pilots must operate in the heat of conflict zones. The 26-year-old leader of her unit is still recovering from shrapnel injuries sustained in combat. The women made their own bombs, mixing TNT and aluminum powder, then surrounding the volatile core with metal balls and gunpowder.
From October 2021 to June 2023, the nonprofit Information Resilience Center Verified 1,400 online videos of drone flights, mostly attacks, by groups fighting Myanmar’s military. The organization said it would record 100 flights per month by early 2023.
Over time, drone use has shifted away from off-the-shelf quadcopters manufactured by companies like DJI to a broader mix including 3D-manufactured simple drones.
cat and mouse game
Recently, there has been a huge rush on 3D. He’s in the trenches on the Ukrainian front lines looking for the perfect solution to a problem he and his pilots face: Russian-made jammers that can destroy drones by blocking their signals.
Within months of 3D building its drone army, the junta began using Chinese and Russian jamming technology to disrupt the GPS signals that guide the drones to their targets.
3D is always looking for ways to fight back. When Myanmar’s military sends drones to pursue rebels, it must suspend interference, opening a window where it can also send its own air fleet.
Newer first-person view drones (FPV) offer another potential solution to the electronic defense problem. Amateur racing drones converted into human-piloted weapons, FPVs are less susceptible to interference because they are manually controlled rather than guided by GPS, and can sometimes be piloted around interference from drone defense systems.
New drones are reshaping the conflict in Ukraine, and parts used to make FPVs have been arriving in the hands of Myanmar rebels in recent months. But they are harder to fly than traditional drones, which require goggles that allow pilots to see from the drone’s perspective. In Ukraine, pilots typically spend hundreds of hours training on simulators before getting the chance to fight in combat.
On a recent afternoon, while the rebel generators were working, Ko Sai Laung, a drone pilot, sat in a bamboo shed, honing his skills on a laptop loaded with Ukrainian drone simulation software.
As he flew a virtual drone over simulated Ukrainian farmland toward Russian tanks, he held the joystick in his hand, occasionally wiping sweat from his face. He fell, and fell again.
“I’m tired,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “But I have to keep practicing.”
Aim for the capital
On April 4, Myanmar’s shadow government, made up of ousted lawmakers and others, announced that a fleet of drones launched by a pro-democracy armed group had struck three targets in Myanmar’s capital: a military headquarters, an air base and senior officials. Residential. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, leader of the junta.
Despite the deep state’s excitement, not a single kamikaze drone caused significant damage that day. A New York Times analysis of satellite images found no clear evidence of smoke, burning or other signs of a successful attack.
Still, the simple act of getting a drone so close to the Myanmar military’s nerve center is a powerful psychological weapon in itself. Naypyitaw, the capital of Myanmar, was built from scratch as a fortress city in the early 2000s.
Dr Sasa, a spokesman for the deep state, said the drone strike in Naypyidaw was not so much about killing people as it was about sending a signal to the junta that it “should not feel free access”.
However, for carefully crafted drones, such an operation is a one-way mission that may require the sacrifice of dozens of drones at a time in the hope that even one can penetrate defenses. Opposition fighters lack adequate funding and reliable parts supply lines. 3D says parts and ammunition for a popular multi-rotor drone design that can carry heavier payloads can be hand-assembled for more than $27,500.
Still, fighting and casualties continued.
On March 20, star rebel pilot Shanji flew a drone at a location on the front lines. Suddenly, a far more threatening aircraft – a Junta fighter jet – roared overhead. 3D later explained that a bomb struck and Mr. Shanghi died in the fighting. He was 22 years old that year.
Xiao Muyi Contributed reporting.
