Taking their cues from modern warfare, the far-right American terrorist movement sees off-the-shelf or home-built first-person viewer (FPV) drones as a critical weapon in their own future war against the US government, which has American authorities on edge.
And there’s ample reasons for those fears: in the open and closed online spaces where far-right extremists congregate, talk is commonplace of how these cheap drones are revolutionizing current wars and will be the critical tools of a so-called second civil war.
“The use of FPV drones in the war between Russia and Ukraine, the use of drones by terrorist groups such as ISIS, and the use of drones by violent criminal groups, such as drug cartels, give examples that domestic extremists may seek to emulate or learn from,” said Joshua Fisher-Birch, a professional analyst who has tracked far-right extremists of every ilk, for close to a decade.
“Groups or individuals could potentially use commercial or home-made drones for reconnaissance purposes or in an offensive capacity.”
Fisher-Birch gave the recent example of a neo-Nazi in Nashville who plotted to bomb a power station with a drone, but was foiled by police. According to him, there is already extremist chatter observing how criminal groups use the FPV as force multipliers against government forces.
“Pretty decent study on how [unmanned aerial systems] are being utilized by cartels, some good insights can be found here,” posted one popular neo-Nazi account on Telegram, attaching a military pamphlet discussing drone warfare to its followers. “If you want to know what a low-intensity conflict, insurgency, or whatever term we’re using this decade would look like, just look south.”
Multiple sources tell the Guardian that the FBI has major concerns about the accelerationist neo-Nazi sect on the far right – one calling for an insurgency against the US government – and other ultra-violent actors in the same ideological space, eying the use of FPV drones for domestic attacks.
These same actors have a demonstrated track record of targeting critical infrastructure and planning high casualty events, with the current proliferation and accessibility of the FPV being a boon to those types of plots. More worryingly, evidence has emerged of military trained neo-Nazis with relevant skillsets having pinpointed the FPV as a potential tool.
“I am a drone operator, one of the first in the infantry,” said an anonymous neo-Nazi and Substack writer who is an avowed ex-member of the Atomwaffen Division (AWD), a now defunct and proscribed terrorist organization linked to multiple murders in the US. “The drones the military uses are entirely useless when you look at the reality on the ground in Ukraine. The future is cheap, 3D-printed drones with a [high explosive] round zip tied to it.”
Writing this year on what has become a niche and well-followed account, the same person openly describes his military service, details the future of drone tactics, and prescribes to readers exactly how it is useful to the underground world of neo-Nazis.
“Next, you should have a drone,” he explains. “The FPV drone will be a valuable resource in the coming years, but it requires a certain degree of technical expertise (both in IT & explosives) that most don’t have to safely manufacture & use.”
Within the more organized terrorist underbelly of parallel groups to the AWD, such as the Base, long the subject of a nationwide counter-terrorism probe, veterans and active duty soldiers like the writer are coveted and intentionally recruited as operatives. Last year, Rinaldo Nazzaro, founder and leader of the Base who is himself a former Pentagon contractor, offered money to any veteran willing to school his stateside cadres in paramilitarism.
“Leave [bombmaking] to people who won’t end up killing themselves,” advises the Substack author and suspected serviceman. “All you need is a very simple drone with a decent camera, this can be used for reconnaissance from above.”
The writer and claimed ex-AWD member, who says he was based in California and only left the US Marine Corps over the summer, never overtly directs readers on how to use a drone in any specific styled attack, but his former group – even after its dissolution – and its members are well known for earmarking electrical transformers as targets.
Brandon Russell, the founder of the AWD, is a veteran who idolizes Timothy McVeigh and was recently found guilty of planning to destroy Maryland substations in an effort to take out the Baltimore power grid.
Fisher-Birch first spotted the Substack and vouched for its credibility. According to him, the writer’s alleged background is not only “significant” but “violent white supremacist groups would find his drone experience to be useful”.
“Extreme-right groups that promote violence look for individuals with military training and other professional skills that can be passed on to other members,” he said.
Drone warfare, at the epicenter of modern combat, is now considered critical tradecraft for any military or paramilitary group. Extremists have for years kept an eye on their development, as both a surveillance tool and a weapon. As far back as 2019, the Base and its members discussed how drones could meddle with aircraft, while in 2022 another neo-Nazi group linked to a bank robbery posted videos of their drone doing “reconnaissance” on a “suburban [area of operation]” with images of a subdivision.
How the FBI will effectively police the use of drones remains to be seen, especially as budgetary cuts to the bureau and deprioritization of counter-terrorism investigations on the far-right have become a hallmark of the second Trump administration.
But authorities are well aware of the threat: the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning in one of its threat assessment reports about terrorist groups using drones to “conduct intelligence collection, to drop explosives and other items on US critical infrastructure for disruption purposes”.
For his part, the Substack writer bragged about how his status as a former AWD member was known to the FBI and yet he was still allowed to join the corps.
“There are a number of [neo-Nazis] in the military,” he wrote. “I managed to make it through [military processing] & gain a security clearance despite being known to the FBI as an AWD member.”
“The FBI has no comment,” said an FBI spokesperson in an email to the Guardian.
