Drones

Explosive drones target Venezuelan president in assassination attempt

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro

For all their potential, the utility of non-military drones as a weapon of war and terror is an unfortunate byproduct of their proliferation. This reality has played out in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas over the weekend, where a speech delivered by President Nicholas Maduro was rocked by explosions targeting the unpopular leader, who managed to get away unscathed.

Maduro was addressing a crowd at a military event in Caracas when his words were interrupted by explosions overhead. Maduro and others on stage reacted by turning their gaze skyward but remained put for a number of seconds, before people began to flee.

Recounting the incident afterwards, Maduro said that one of the drones was knocked off-course electronically by the military, while the other crashed into an apartment building two blocks away, according to ABC News. Seven members of the National Guard were injured, including three gravely, while Maduro was unharmed.

Police have arrested six people in relation to the attack, with security forces reportedly stopping a black Chevrolet with three men, remote controls, tablets and computers found inside. Anti-Maduro protest group The National Movement of Soldiers in T-Shirts, have claimed responsibility for the attack.

A range of anti-drone devices have emerged over the past few years, as companies look to offer safety solutions that can take down airborne threats. The options include shoulder-mounted net cannons, trained eagles and guns that fire radio waves into the distance to scramble an incoming drone's control channels, a tactic that sounds similar to that used by Venezuela's security forces.

In 2013, German Chancellow Angela Merkel was confronted with a Parrot AR Drone during a campaign rally in Dresden. The drone carried no explosives and hovered harmlessly in front of her before crashing into the stage, but does go to show the threat these ever-cheaper aircraft can pose when in the wrong hands.

Source: ABC News

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3 comments
Arth
As Venezuelan and tech-science fan for decades, I can tell you that is just a dangerous hoax prepared by this pseudo-government that is ruining the country going with corruption, ineptitude, brainwashing and Cuban intelligence since many years now
You can notice the drone pretty static when exploded and at a pretty safe distant. Also they made an explossion in some nearby apartment for adding drama to the show..
Mike Vidal
So now you are also parroting fake news. Did it ever occur to any of you that in Venezuela, it is common for people to cook with propane gas, and the cylinders are not safety checked? Local sources report that this was a cylinder that exploded in an apartment.
Don Duncan
Venezuela's problem is not who the ruler is, it's the fact that they have a ruler. When people change their ruler, by vote or otherwise, they still have a ruler, top-down control. They haven't changed their political paradigm. Ask Cubans. They overthrew Batista and nothing changed for the better. That's because they didn't know what their fundamental problem was: authoritarianism. As long as one group is in power, i.e., granted power by the people, the people will be powerless to live their lives and suffer for it. Therefore, it is the people's choice that condemns them to misery. They are holding themselves back. And you can be sure their rulers will use their monopoly of power to keep them ignorant of this fact, to keep them thinking they need rulers, can't live without them, and without rulers, their life would be chaos, hell. When in fact, with rulers, life steadily moves in that direction.