On the night of January 28th and 29th, the Niamey International Airport and the nearby military air base in the Niger capital were brazenly attacked.

As videos on social media showed, orange fireballs flew across the sky as Niger’s military tried to respond, while residents ducked for cover and whispered prayers. The Islamic State in the Sahel (ISIS) or ISSP — a Niger-based group formerly known as the Islamic State affiliate in the Greater Sahara or ISGS — has since claim responsibility It said it killed several soldiers, although Niger’s army disputed this.

Analysts said the audacious attack showed the ISSP’s growing confidence at a time when embattled armed groups in West Africa’s Sahel region are using advanced technology to expand their operations. Video from the group showed a number of fighter jets using rockets and mortars to breach a military drone hangar and successfully damage several aircraft and a civilian aircraft.

“This is unprecedented,” Heni Nsaibia, a senior analyst at conflict monitoring think tank ACLED, told Al Jazeera, noting that the ISSP typically limits crimes to rural areas and uses basic weapons such as AK-47s.

“Their attack methods are constantly improving, and their experience in guerrilla warfare is getting richer. Being able to penetrate and penetrate into the capital itself shows that they have tactical strength and courage,” he said.

Although not officially confirmed, conflict trackers suggest the ISSP may have deployed drones in the attack, mirroring a trend across the region that analysts say marks a dangerous escalation in the Sahel crisis. The Islamic State-affiliated group has carried out attacks using explosives-laden drones in rural Nigeria, but never in Niger.

“Our video shows Nigerien air defense forces firing at night,” Nsaibia added. “It is possible that they detected drones (from the Islamic State) used for surveillance, but that is just a hypothesis.”

Militant attacks have increased in military-ruled Niger since July 2023, when Niger’s army seized power and expelled hundreds of French and US troops who had previously provided air and combat support.

Neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, also ruled by the military, have faced similar violence as several armed groups lay claim to large swaths of territory along their porous borders. The groups aim to control territory without Western influence and based on an extreme interpretation of Islamic law.

All three countries have switched from French to Russian government-controlled forces Afrika KorpsA paramilitary organization whose effectiveness varies. After the attack in Niamey, the governments of Niger and Russia said in a statement that Afrika Korps fighters helped “repulse” the attack, which left 20 attackers dead and four soldiers wounded.

Drone use surges in Sahel

Military drone attacks by the Nigerien army and other parties to the conflict are common, but armed groups themselves are increasingly repurposing Chinese-made commercial drones that are easy to buy and easily smuggled to carry out attacks by attaching improvised explosive devices (IEDs), grenades or small mortars to them.

Rida Lyammouri, a senior fellow at Morocco’s Policy Center for the New South (PCNS), said it was a “low-cost, high-impact” capability that could provide these groups with real-time intelligence, minimizing the risk of them targeting fighters as suicide bombers and making it harder for the military to detect and counter them.

The most prolific drone user is the al-Qaeda-linked Jamaat al-Nusrat Muslim (JNIM), with main headquarters in Mali and Burkina Faso. The organization has branches in Niger, Togo and on the Benin-Nigeria border.

JNIM first used drones in 2023, but without significant impact. However, the group has since quickly integrated the technology into battlefield operations, often combining drone strikes with ground attacks in a two-pronged approach. Between 2023 and 2025, ACLED documented at least 89 JNIM incidents using drones, 69 of which were targeted attacks. There have been at least five other incidents of JNIM drones crashing or being intercepted.

“The concern is how quickly they acquire this knowledge,” Liamori said.

He added that the real risk goes beyond the group’s ability to use drones as weapons.

“The drones used are very small and don’t carry a lot of explosives, so a lot of the time the damage is not that serious. But what matters is how they use the drones to gather information and intelligence,” he said.

JNIM relies on the DJI M30T model, a high-end drone with a built-in camera ideal for nighttime surveillance. The cheaper DJI Mavic, priced between $500 and $700, is also part of the fleet.

Experts say drones may be helping the group monitor fuel trucks trying to break the blockade of Mali’s capital, Bamako. Since September, JNIM is blocked The highway is used by tankers importing oil from neighboring Senegal and Ivory Coast, causing a period of fuel shortages across Mali.

Similarly, the separatist Front for the Liberation of Azawad (FLA), which fights for an independent state in northern Mali, released a video last February showing its fighters controlling first-person view (FPV) drones—advanced models that help pilots achieve a “cockpit” viewing experience through special goggles. According to ACLED, the FLA launched 28 drone strikes between 2024 and 2025. In July 2024, it used an FPV to shoot down a Malian military helicopter in the northern region of Tessalit, according to conflict reporting website Military Africa.

Meanwhile, Islamic State affiliates have used drones to a much lesser extent.

According to ACLED, the Nigeria-based ISIL West Africa Province affiliate (ISWAP) deployed armed drones 10 times between 2024 and 2026. In January, the group used multiple armed drones to attack a Nigerian army hideout in northern Borno state.

Lyammouri said this new shift is being accelerated by offline artificial intelligence (AI) tools that can help drones avoid traditional detection and jamming methods. They also use the tools to generate training materials, AI-generated images and press releases, he added. One such tool is the open source MISTRAL, a competitor to ChatGPT that can be used for everything from offline search to content generation.

The turn to drones by armed groups is global. ACLED reported in 2025 that 469 armed groups around the world (including rebel groups, militias, gangs and transnational cartels) had deployed drones at least once in the past five years, while in 2020 only 10 groups used the technology.

Cooperation in stressful times

Analysts say the next phase in the use of drones by armed groups could be artificial intelligence-powered “drone swarms,” which could use multiple drones at a time to launch large-scale long-range attacks on government positions.

There is enough motivation for the group to grow quickly. Nsaibia said every group is willing to lay claim to its territory and attacks like the one in Niamey are not only intended to weaken Niger’s government but also to send a signal to hostile groups such as JNIM not to invade the region.

Liamori warned that countries in the region need to work together to counter these groups’ new strategies, especially as they expand geographically and share technology.

Their “tactics are spreading and require a coordinated response,” he said, which will require bringing together drone warfare experts, artificial intelligence researchers and regional military planners to simulate documented drone warfare scenarios, such as JNIM’s drone-assisted ground attack and intelligence collection modes.

However, this is tricky amid regional tensions and a fragmented security response.

Relations with neighboring Nigeria have become tense following the 2023 coup in Niger. Soon after, the two countries canceled formal defense cooperation after Abuja threatened to lead a military intervention in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region to restore civilian rule.

Tensions between ECOWAS and the military governments of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso escalated last year, leading the three countries to withdraw and form their own alliance, ECOWAS. alliance of countries in the sahel.

However, Nigerien and Nigerian security officials met in Abuja this week to discuss strengthening border security to stop smuggling routes used by armed groups to transport weapons.

Experts agree that a collective regional solution is the only one likely to succeed.

Nsaibia said that unless there was a strong counterattack, important urban centers such as Niamey, which are generally considered safe, “will face greater risks in the medium to long term”.