Drone Proliferation Dataset

Summary of Findings

Over the last 30 years, there has been a steady diffusion of drone technology, with an increasing number of states and nonstate actors acquiring uncrewed systems. The days of Israeli and American domination of the drone market are long gone. China, Turkey, and Iran have developed low-cost military drones and are willing to sell them to interested buyers. The United States’ self-imposed adherence to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) has given rise to competition from China and Turkey, limiting Washington’s ability to shape drone proliferation and employ drone diplomacy, narrowing one avenue of U.S. influence.

Consequently, the last decade has witnessed a tremendous surge in military drone sales. In 2022, six new countries acquired military drones, all of which were armed Bayraktar TB2 drones from Turkey. Chinese drone sales peaked in 2014, and by 2021, Turkey had overtaken China as the globe’s largest supplier. The good press from the battlefields of Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Ukraine, along with Turkey’s short timelines for delivery, has propelled Turkey to the top of the military drone market. While larger, more expensive, reusable military-grade drones dominated the early drone market, the sale of loitering munitions (kamikaze drones) has accelerated and will likely continue to grow.

The author identified 633 drone transfers between 1995 and 2023, of which roughly 40 percent went to the European theater. The term “transfers” refers to completed and ongoing foreign military sales, direct commercial sales, leases, gifts, and secondary proliferation. The Global War on Terror has also driven proliferation over the last 20 years in the Middle East, which received an identified 134 transfers during this period. On the African continent, drone proliferation has increased dramatically since 2020. From 1995 to 2019, the region had an average of roughly two transfers annually. From January 2020 to September 2023, the average increased to nearly 13 transfers a year. Of the 84 recorded transfers to Africa identified in the dataset, 51 have occurred since 2020, a significant number of which were armed Bayraktar TB2s.

The entrance of China and Turkey into the military drone marketplace has dramatically increased the number of global armed drone transfers. Even after reinterpreting the MTCR Category I in July 2020, the United States has rarely exported its armed military drones. Since 2018, China, Turkey, and the United States have made a combined total of 69 sales of armed military drones to 40 different nations. Turkey made 65 percent of the sales, and China accounted for another 26 percent, while the United States only provided 8 percent.

While unarmed drones remain ubiquitous, an increase in the transfer of armed drones and loitering munitions has driven global proliferation in recent years. Despite the technology being introduced in the late 1980s, loitering munitions only gained significant international interest after Azerbaijan’s successful use of these weapons in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.

Additionally, the United States and Poland have supplied large numbers of lethal WB Electronics Warmate and AeroVironment Switchblade loitering munitions to Ukrainian forces to aid in their war against Russian aggression. Iran is another top supplier of kamikaze drones and has exported large numbers of its Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company (HESA) Ababil and Shahed systems to authoritarian regimes, such as Russia and Tajikistan, and to terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

As drones proliferate across the globe and more countries acquire armed reusable drones and loitering munitions, it is reasonable to expect this technology will play a significant role in the battlefields of the future.

Given current trends in the availability of drones, it is fair to expect that most actors—state and nonstate—will employ a variety of military and commercial drones in the future.

Available for download on this page is the CNAS Drone Proliferation Dataset and a codebook, which provides an in-depth explanation of the methods used to identify, organize, and code the data so that others may analyze and expand on it. It is the author’s hope that the dataset serves as a resource for students, researchers, and policymakers to help guide their understanding of the current global drone landscape and offers a comprehensive starting point for future academic and policy research.

About the Author

Molly Campbell is a research assistant for the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Campbell graduated from Stanford University with dual degrees in political science and history, having focused on American politics, military history, and international security. Prior to joining CNAS, Campbell researched emerging national security technology at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She has also worked on Capitol Hill, staffed multiple political campaigns, served in the nonprofit sector, and conducted independent research with Stanford’s Bill Lane Center for the American West.

About the Defense Program

Over the past 15 years, CNAS has defined the future of U.S. defense strategy. Building on this legacy, the CNAS Defense Program team continues to develop high-level concepts and concrete recommendations to ensure U.S. military preeminence into the future and to reverse the erosion of U.S. military advantages vis-à-vis China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. Specific areas of study include concentrating on great-power competition, developing a force structure and innovative operational concepts adapted for this more challenging era, and making hard choices to effect necessary change.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Stacie Pettyjohn for her overall leadership of the Defense Program and her guidance in the crafting and publication of the dataset; Hannah Dennis for her meticulous edits, feedback, and encouragement; Katherine Kuzminski for her advice and feedback; and Maura McCarthy, Melody Cook, Caroline Steel, and Emma Swislow for their assistance with editing and design. This dataset was made possible with the generous support of the Smith Richardson Foundation.

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