The foiled attempt by a White Supremacist in the United States (US) to attack an energy facility with a bomb-laden drone should serve as a wakeup call for the governments across the world that advances in drone warfare in conflict areas abroad like Ukraine, could have potential internal security implications.
A man from the State of Tennessee in the US was recently arrested and charged with attempting to destroy an electricity substation in Nashville, Tennessee, using a bomb-laden drone. This attempted attack on the electricity substation was said to be aimed at bringing down the regional power network and disrupting American society.
Skyler Philippi, 24, of Columbia, Tennessee, was arrested after an investigation by the US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found that he planned to attach a bomb to a drone and fly it into the energy facility in Nashville as part of his white supremacist agenda.
Philippi is said to subscribe to the white supremacist ideology of ‘accelerationism’ which is centered on the belief that the white race is superior and entails the use of violence and terrorism as necessary means to ignite a race war and accelerate the collapse of the government, with the purpose of establishing a white ethnostate.
The accused had allegedly told a Confidential Human Source (CHS) in June that he intended to carry out a mass shooting at a YMCA facility in Columbia, south of Nashville, however, later decided that such an attack would not suffice to realise his accelerationist agenda.
“If you want to do the most damage as an accelerationist, attack high economic, high tax, political zones in every major metropolis,” Philippi told another CHS via text message, per the court documents released by the US Justice Department on November 4.
“Driven by a racially motivated violent extremist ideology, the Defendant planned to attack the power grid with a drone and explosives, leaving thousands of Americans and critical infrastructure like hospitals without power,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray.
In late September, Philippi drove to an electricity substation, together with undercover FBI agents, to conduct reconnaissance, the bureau said. While driving, he placed an order for one pound of the “poor man’s C-4” from one of the undercover FBI agents involved in the investigation, and at a later date he also purchased black powder for it to be used in pipe bombs.
Philippi was arrested on November 2 by undercover FBI agents who had agreed to be lookouts for him as he would execute his attack. At the time of his arrest, the drone was powered up, the explosive device was armed and located next to the drone. He was prepared to attach the explosives to the drone when he was arrested, the FBI said.
“As charged, Skyler Philippi believed he was moments away from launching an attack on a Nashville energy facility to further his violent white supremacist ideology – but the FBI had already compromised his plot,” said the US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.
Drones Have Democratized Long Range Precision Strike Capability
In recent years, the US has seen an uptick in plots by the far-right extremists to attack power grids. Per a 2022 study from George Washington University, white supremacist plots to attack the energy sector “dramatically increased in frequency” from 2016 to 2022.
The Energy sector comes under the critical infrastructure sector of the US, and violent extremists often plot attacks against critical infrastructure, which basically comprises facilities and assets that are critical to day-to-day functioning of a country.
There are 16 critical infrastructure sectors in the US, “whose assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, are considered so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.”
Per the aforesaid study from George Washington University which examines cases of individuals charged in the US federal court system from 2016 to 2022 with planning to conduct violent extremist attacks, among the cases of attacks planned on critical infrastructure, those involving White Supremacists mainly focussed on the energy sector, whereas the Salafi-jihadist attack planners focussed on commercial facilities, government facilities, and emergency services sectors.
That said, considering the attacks by Russia and Ukraine on each other’s energy infrastructure as part of their ongoing conflict since February 2022, together with the ongoing Russian sabotage campaign in Europe, even the near peer adversaries of a country, which in the case of the US would be Russia and China, should be included among the entities interested in targeting a country’s critical infrastructure.
Therefore, the prospect of drone-laden bombs taking out an energy substation or other critical infrastructure, is certainly going to be an alluring one for a country’s state and non-state adversaries alike.
This is because the capability to destroy a country’s critical infrastructure was once a monopoly of the West, in particular the US, due to its superior airpower which provided much better mobility and longer ranges together with immense firepower. The huge financial and technological barrier involved in acquiring sophisticated aircraft systems kept several countries and non-state actors from catching up to the West in terms of airpower, including even China and Russia.
With the coming of drones, however, the long-range precision-guided strike capability has been ‘democratized’, as has been discussed by Unravelling Geopolitics previously. The use of armed unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in large scale conflicts increased in recent years, such as during the Nagorno-Karabakh war of 2020, and the civil wars in Libya and Yemen, etc.
The ongoing war in Ukraine, though, has a unique distinction of bringing to prominence the use of cheap off-the-shelf commercial drones and one-way kamikaze drones that are now emerging as an expendable and cost-effective alternative to expensive warplanes, cruise and ballistic missiles, and artillery munitions.
Moreover, drones have gone from being a niche product to becoming a mainstream consumer electronics product, thanks to China’s DJI, or Da-Jiang Innovations, the biggest consumer drone maker on the planet that commands roughly 70% of the global drone market, selling its products in more than 100 countries.
This means that now even lone wolf violent extremists like Skyler Philippi can leverage the use of drones to increase the lethality of their attacks. Thanks to the efforts of the US’ FBI agents who were able to tap into every aspect of Philippi’s plot to attack the energy substation in Nashville, the bombing was averted.
However, if such attacks were to be plotted by individuals having even little assistance from a terror group or an adversary government in terms of resources and tactics, their likelihood of success would increase significantly.
In the discipline of strategic intelligence, most failures are ‘failures of imagination’, take for example the September 11 attacks (or 9/11 attacks) carried out by Al-Qaeda in the US which killed 2,977 people, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in history.
It was perhaps inconceivable at the time that a terror group could attempt to storm a plane into buildings, however, it is certainly not inconceivable now that a bomb-laden drone can be stormed into a building or a public place.
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As the Author had pointed out in a previous article, social media is abuzz with videos of cheap FPV (First Person View) drones and different loitering munitions destroying infrastructure in Ukraine and Russia, with people accross the world cheering for the side they sympathize with, however, these people should take moment to consider what if these same technologies and tactics are employed in our cities in the markets, trains, industries, airports, etc.
In fact, there have already been instances of unidentified drones having overflown a nuclear power plant in Germany and briefly forcing the closure of the Stockholm airport in Sweden, amidst the ongoing Russian sabotage campaign in Europe.
If Philippi intended to accelerate the collapse of the US government by igniting a race war through acts of violence and terrorism, quite similarly, Russia also intends to undermine European trust in governments through acts of sabotage.
Tanmay Kadam is a geopolitical observer based in India. He has experience working as a Defense and International Affairs journalist for EurAsian Times. He can be contacted at tanmaykadam700@gmail.com.