Criminal Militarization in Latin America: Drones, 3D Printing, and the New Face of Urban Conflicts
By Cinthya Araújo Gomes 29/05/2026 8 min
In October 2025, during a mega-operation involving 2,500 security forces in the Alemão and Penha favelas of Rio de Janeiro, some were surprised to see the Comando Vermelho (CV) using drones to launch grenades and smoke bombs at the police. However, this was not an adaptation born from mere improvisation; in fact, the tactic used by the CV was the result of a learning curve built up over years, and, according to investigations by the Federal Police, much of this knowledge came from combat videos of the war in Ukraine.
Furthermore, this episode is not unique to this operation, nor to Rio de Janeiro. It's a pattern that has been observed from Michoacán to Morro da Providência, from Catatumbo to Rio Grande do Sul. Drones and 3D weapons have been a central point in the transformation of how Latin American organized crime arms itself, positions itself, and fights.
Ukraine as a classroom for drug trafficking
To understand what happened in Rio de Janeiro in October 2025, it's necessary to look to a seemingly distant place: the trenches of Eastern Europe. Since 2022, the Russo-Ukrainian war has established itself as the largest drone innovation laboratory in modern history. Inexpensive commercial drones gained ground among traditional troops, and images of this process circulated freely on social media, accessible to anyone with an internet connection.
According to information from the Ukrainian counterintelligence service (SBU), hitmen linked to Mexican and Colombian cartels have even enlisted in the Ukrainian International Legion with the aim of learning advanced warfare tactics using FPV drones. A Ukrainian security official summed up the phenomenon succinctly: "Ukraine has become a platform for the global spread of FPV tactics."
The impact of this knowledge transfer is already measurable. In Mexico, the number of attacks with explosive drones jumped from just 5 in 2020 to more than 40 per month in 2023. Between 2021 and 2025, ACLED documented 221 attacks with explosive drones attributed to Mexican cartels. In Brazil, the type of response from the CV (Comando Vermelho) in the Penha Complex in October 2025 represented the first overt use of armed drones against state agents in the country, and, according to analysts, it certainly will not be the last.
From smuggling to combat: evolution in phases
The use of drones by organized crime did not emerge fully formed. It has evolved in distinct phases, each more sophisticated than the last.
The first phase, observed in Mexico between 2009 and 2014, was logistical: simple commercial drones were used to deliver drugs, weapons, and cell phones inside prisons, flying over the walls, invisible to cameras and guards. In Brazil, "Operation Mavic," launched in Rio Grande do Sul, dismantled a network that imported drones from Paraguay and China specifically for this purpose. The logic was efficiency: eliminating human intermediaries in prison smuggling.
The second phase involved surveillance and intelligence gathering. Drones began monitoring police operations in real time, mapping the positions of officers, access routes, and points of vulnerability. In Brazil, the São Paulo Civil Police seized devices that filmed the routine of prison officers in 23 prison units, with the images being disseminated on social media—an intelligence-gathering operation that rivaled that of many state security forces. Gangs even used drones to monitor prosecutors and coordinators of specific prisons.
The third phase, the most worrying, was militarization. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) pioneered this process, even institutionalizing its capabilities with the creation of a specialized unit, the so-called...Drone Operators, with its own insignia and dedicated training. In April 2025, a video on social media showed the first confirmed use of a kamikaze drone by a Mexican cartel, attributed to the CJNG. In Colombia, the National Liberation Army (ELN) used drones to kill a 10-year-old boy in July 2024, the first recorded lethal drone attack in the country, and even distributed warnings to residents of Cauca and Valle del Cauca, alerting them that military bases and police stations would be attacked in this way.
Henry Ziemer, a specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), warns that transnational criminal organizations are innovating faster than the region's security forces, and that a fourth phase is coming: coordinated attacks against the Armed Forces with less operational risk for crime and the ability to operate in complex urban environments.
The factory that fits in an apartment
Parallel to the drone race, organized crime is also becoming more professional in the production of weapons using 3D printers. These so-called "ghost guns" are manufactured from digital files available on the internet, using readily available engineering plastics and metal components. Their name comes from a characteristic that makes them especially dangerous to traditional tracking systems: they have no serial number. A weapon without a serial number is a weapon without a history, impossible to trace back to the manufacturer, the buyer, and the victim.
In Brazil, between 2024 and 2025, the Civil Police carried out at least seven seizures in five different states, dismantling factories that operated inside ordinary residential apartments. In March 2025, four 3D printers were found in an apartment in São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul, along with 59 pistol magazines and supplies valued at R$ 30,000. Two months later, in March 2026, Operation Shadowgun, conducted by the Rio de Janeiro Civil Police in partnership with GAECO and the Ministry of Justice, executed 36 search and seizure warrants in 11 states, arresting four people and identifying at least 79 buyers between 2021 and 2022, some of whom had prior drug trafficking records and links to militias.
The leader of the dismantled organization in Shadowgun was an engineer specializing in control and automation. Using pseudonyms on online platforms, he produced a manual with over one hundred pages explaining step-by-step how to manufacture the weapons, from printing the parts to final assembly, allowing anyone with intermediate knowledge of 3D printing to produce a semi-automatic weapon in a few weeks, with equipment freely available on the market.
The fact is that instead of importing the entire rifle, an expensive and risky operation, criminal organizations began printing the plastic parts locally and importing only the more difficult-to-produce metal components. The supply chain was fragmented, distributed, and digitized.
An asymmetry that the State is taking a long time to understand
There is an unsettling paradox at the heart of this story. The technologies that organized crime is using, commercial drones, 3D printers, design files shared online, are the same ones available to anyone in any electronics store or e-commerce platform. The difference lies not in access to the technology, but in the speed of adaptation and the absence of bureaucracy.
While security forces need institutional approvals, bidding processes, standardized training, and legal protocols to incorporate new technologies, a criminal faction can buy a drone, watch YouTube and Telegram videos for a week, and be operational. The CJNG, for example, even invested in its own anti-drone countermeasures: members of the Mayito Flaco faction of the Sinaloa Cartel were photographed carrying SkyFend anti-UAV inhibitors with a market price of approximately US$100,000, equipment that many Latin American police forces still do not possess.
In Brazil, the legislative response came late, but it arrived. In November 2025, the Constitution and Justice Committee of the Chamber of Deputies approved a bill that criminalizes the possession, control, use, or concealment of drones for illicit purposes, with penalties ranging from 2 to 6 years, potentially reaching 12 years when the equipment is used to fire weapons or launch explosives. The bill gained momentum precisely after the repercussions of the attack in the Penha Complex. It's the classic pattern: the law lags behind the action. And the worst part of this scenario is the idea that mere legislation will do the job of...enforcementor to dissuade some of these users and organizations from using these drones.
The dilemma becomes even more profound, argues criminologist and urban conflict expert Peter Andreas in his work Smuggler Nation the state historically loses in the technological race against organized crime precisely because crime is not obligated to justify its investments or follow acquisition protocols. Each new barrier imposed by the state generates innovation in the criminal response, not through genius, but through Darwinian pressure. Those who do not adapt are eliminated by the rival who has adapted.
What Latin America is seeing today is this logic at an accelerated pace, amplified by technological globalization. Drones that were developed to deliver pizzas and photograph weddings are being used to launch grenades at police officers. Printers that were created to democratize the manufacturing of objects are being used to democratize the production of untraceable weapons. And combat videos from a war in Eastern Europe are being used as tutorials for criminal factions in the Complexo do Alemão favela in Rio de Janeiro.
What comes next?
In the short term, the fear is that drones coordinated by a single operator will begin to appear in larger-scale criminal operations, as already occurs in military conflicts. In the medium term, the use of surface and submersible maritime drones, an evolution of the narco-submarines already operating in the Pacific, could become the next dominant vector in the international transport of narcotics. What is clear is that the response cannot be exclusively police-based. It requires integration between intelligence, defense, technological regulation, and airspace control.
The fact is that technology won't save us, but on the other hand, who will save us from it? If the debate remains fixated on whether what organized crime does is innovation or adaptation, we will continue to go around in circles forever. Regular law enforcement needs, if not to acquire the expertise to operate this equipment, at least to establish efficient strategies to combat it. I reiterate that technology should not be treated as the solution to all problems, but apparently we are also leaving human creativity on the wrong side of history.
References
https://diario.mx/el-paso/2025/nov/23/imparables-ataques-de-carteles-con-drones-1094910.html
https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/colombia-cocaine-drones-drug-trafficking-7f9642d9
Andreas, Peter. Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America. Oxford University Press, 2013.