Islamabad, Pakistan – On the night of March 13, drones struck three areas throughout Pakistan. Two kids have been wounded in Quetta. Civilians have been additionally injured in Kohat and in Rawalpindi, the garrison metropolis that homes the headquarters of Pakistan’s armed forces and neighbours the capital, Islamabad.
Pakistan’s navy mentioned the drones have been intercepted earlier than reaching their targets. However President Asif Ali Zardari said Kabul had “crossed a purple line by trying to focus on our civilians”.
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It was not the primary such incident. In late February, Data Minister Attaullah Tarar mentioned anti-drone methods had introduced down small drones over Abbottabad, Swabi and Nowshera in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. One other assault was reported in Bannu in the identical province, the place 5 males have been injured after a quadcopter hit a mosque.
Whereas the Taliban group in Afghanistan claimed to have struck navy targets in Rawalpindi and Islamabad within the newest assaults final week, Pakistan’s navy dismissed these assertions as propaganda, describing the drones as “rudimentary” and “domestically produced”. Al Jazeera reached out to the Pakistani navy to hunt its views on the newest drone assaults however acquired no response.
But, analysts say, regardless of how the Taliban’s drones are characterised, these latest incidents level to an more and more troubling sample for Pakistan: drones over garrison cities, drones over locations of worship, drones over city centres. The federal government responded by imposing a nationwide ban on drone flights and briefly limiting airspace over the capital.
“As a lot as Pakistan is downplaying these drones, the purpose shouldn’t be what stage of drone they’re; the purpose is that drones are coming, and they’re coming to the capital. That’s the central hazard,” mentioned Abdul Basit, a senior affiliate fellow on the Worldwide Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Analysis (ICPVTR) in Singapore.
For a lot of in Pakistan’s safety circles, the query is now not whether or not the drones brought on important harm. It’s whether or not their capacity to penetrate deep into the nation, at a time when Pakistan has been engaged in an “open war” with Afghanistan for 3 weeks, reveals holes in its preparedness towards a risk that’s more and more rising as the way forward for warfare.
A battle years within the making
The escalation with Afghanistan has not occurred out of the blue, analysts level out. By 2025, Pakistan was experiencing certainly one of its deadliest intervals in almost a decade.
Assaults by armed teams have been concentrated in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces, and notably carried out by the Pakistan Taliban, also called Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Pakistan insists that the TTP is an ideological ally of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and that the latter has given the Pakistan Taliban shelter and help in assaults on Pakistani soil. The Taliban has rejected Pakistani allegations that it’s complicit within the TTP assaults towards Pakistan.
At the same time as Islamabad and Kabul traded costs — and engaged in occasional border clashes — the assaults in Pakistan final yr surpassed the whole for 2024 effectively earlier than the yr ended, in keeping with knowledge from the Armed Battle Location and Occasion Information challenge.
Islamabad repeatedly pressed Kabul, each bilaterally and thru companions such as China, to behave towards the TTP and different armed teams, however Afghan authorities denied harbouring anti-Pakistan armed teams on its soil.
The primary severe escalation between the 2 neighbours got here in October 2025, after they engaged in per week of intense border clashes, the worst for the reason that Taliban’s return to energy in 2021.
Mediation efforts by Qatar and Turkiye produced a fragile ceasefire, however core variations remained unresolved. Pakistan continued to demand that Kabul act towards the TTP, whereas the Taliban insisted that it was to not blame for the neighbouring nation’s inner safety challenges.
By February 2026, Islamabad appeared to conclude that diplomacy had run its course.
On February 21 and 22, Pakistan launched air strikes on what it described as “terrorist” camps in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar, Paktika and Khost provinces, concentrating on teams linked to TTP and ISIL (ISIS).
The Taliban responded with artillery hearth throughout the border, attacking border posts and launching drone assaults into Pakistani territory whereas Pakistan, counting on its superior air energy, continued its aerial marketing campaign.
The combating has continued since. Afghan authorities accuse Pakistan of killing dozens of civilians. On March 16, Kabul mentioned a strike hit the Omar Habit Remedy Hospital, a 2,000-bed facility, with hundreds of people killed within the assault.
Pakistan rejected the allegation, calling it “false and aimed toward deceptive public opinion”, and mentioned its strikes had “exactly focused navy installations and terrorist help infrastructure”.
The United Nations particular rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan mentioned he was “dismayed” by experiences of civilian casualties and urged all events to respect worldwide legislation, together with the safety of civilian websites.
Amid a wider regional battle that noticed the US and Israel bombarding Iranian cities and Iran’s retaliatory strikes throughout the Gulf area, the Pakistan-Afghanistan confrontation has drawn much less international consideration.
But analysts say the introduction of drones into the battle marks a big shift.
“This dimension is a paradigmatic shift in conflicts all around the globe,” mentioned Iftikhar Firdous, cofounder of The Khorasan Diary, a analysis and safety portal targeted on the area.
“Loitering munitions are low cost, tantalising and efficient, an ideal weapon for non-state actors or states with sub-par navy tools to counter and reply to greater powers,” he advised Al Jazeera.
A brand new risk within the skies
Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state with a standing military of greater than 600,000 personnel and one of many largest air forces within the area.
Nonetheless, the Taliban’s “rudimentary” drones managed to drive an airspace closure and goal areas deep inside Pakistani territory.
“This escalation is harmful in each its horizontal and vertical dimensions,” ICPVTR’s Basit advised Al Jazeera. “Horizontally, you’re seeing this attain city centres, Rawalpindi, the capital itself being hit, and hit persistently. Vertically, the risk is now coming from the air, with suicide bombing mechanisms delivered by drones.”
The drones aren’t precisely new to Pakistan’s panorama. The TTP and different armed teams, notably in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, have been deploying weaponised quadcopters towards checkposts, police stations and navy convoys since at the very least 2024.
Regardless of a ban on importing drones, analysts estimate such gadgets value between 55,000 and 278,000 Pakistani rupees ($200 to $1,000) and are commercially accessible in Pakistani markets, sourced principally from Chinese language producers.
Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the director normal of Pakistan’s Inter-Companies Public Relations, the navy’s media wing, in a information convention in January this yr, acknowledged that the nation suffered 5,397 “terrorist” incidents in 2025, of which greater than 400, almost one in 10, concerned quadcopter drones.
In December 2025, the Pakistan Taliban introduced the formation of its devoted air drive unit, which indicated the group’s first official acknowledgement that it possessed drone expertise.
Peshawar-based Firdous mentioned, maybe of their present type, these drones should not have the sophistication to trigger large-scale harm.
“Pakistan’s air defence system can simply sort out them. However because the Taliban and the TTP get their fingers on higher expertise,” he mentioned, “that state of affairs may change.”
Alternatively, Muhammad Shoaib, an instructional and safety analyst at Quaid-i-Azam College in Islamabad, mentioned drones are arguably the simplest weapons the Taliban can use towards Pakistan.
“Their reliance on drones and intensive propaganda based mostly on the footage means that the relations between the 2 sides are more likely to deteriorate and violence will improve,” he advised Al Jazeera.
Specialists say the usage of drones by the Taliban marks a shift from the group’s historical past of utilizing improvised explosive gadgets in its conflict towards NATO forces to standoff aerial assaults that permit operatives to stay past the vary of return hearth.
“The parallel with IEDs is instructive,” mentioned Basit, who has extensively written and researched on drone warfare.
“The Taliban relied on quickly evolving, adapting methods to combat towards American forces throughout the so-called conflict on terror. Now these drones are successfully a suicide bomber from the air. The tactical sophistication will hold growing, and it doesn’t matter what countermeasures you carry, the sheer quantity and selection may exhaust the defence over time,” he mentioned.
Limits of defence
Intercepting these drones is tougher than it sounds, say analysts.
Pakistan’s air defence methods have been designed primarily to counter high-altitude threats, reminiscent of fighter plane and ballistic missiles, notably from India. Low-flying, slow-moving quadcopters create a distinct downside.
“Pakistan’s present air defence community can counter numbered drone projectiles through soft-kill and hard-kill measures,” mentioned Hammad Waleed, a analysis affiliate on the Islamabad-based suppose tank Strategic Imaginative and prescient Institute.
He was referring to digital jamming and sign disruption on the one hand — “soft-kill” ways — and the bodily interception or destruction of a drone — “laborious kill” measures on the opposite.
“However within the case of swarms of drones or overwhelming drone utilization, the nation will wrestle. Conventional air defences have been made for fighter jets, principally in medium- to high-altitude fight. Drones fly at decrease altitudes, dodging radar protection,” he advised Al Jazeera.
Adil Sultan, a former Pakistan air drive (PAF) air commodore who has written extensively on rising applied sciences in battle, notably drones, mentioned there isn’t any “foolproof system” to intercept every kind of drones.
“Drones which are commercially accessible and hover at gradual speeds, and may be launched from anyplace, together with from our personal territory towards sure targets, are notably troublesome,” he mentioned.
“It could be troublesome to shoot down each incoming drone, and additionally it is not a cheap technique,” Sultan advised Al Jazeera.
Latest incidents underline these limitations. In Kohat, police jammed a drone’s sign, inflicting it to crash. Falling particles nonetheless injured two folks.
Basit, the Singapore-based scholar, mentioned Pakistan — and different militaries — wanted to arrange for a future the place drone assaults can be the norm.
“That is the brand new regular, and someplace alongside the road, a drone will get by means of and hit a goal. Ukraine and Iran are instructive examples. A drone by itself is low-yield, however the day they mix it with different ways, a vehicle-borne IED adopted by a drone strike concurrently, the implications grow to be much more severe. As this turns into extra refined, cracks will start to point out,” he warned.
Russia’s ongoing four-year conflict towards Ukraine, and now the US-Israel conflict on Iran, have proven apparently weaker international locations placing up sturdy resistance towards considerably bigger, extra highly effective armies by utilizing a whole lot of drones to counter their offensive.
Increasing risk
The Taliban’s drone assaults got here lower than a yr after Pakistan’s air defences have been examined alongside its jap frontier.
Throughout India’s Operation Sindoor in Might 2025, the larger neighbour deployed Israeli-made drones, particularly HAROP loitering munitions, which Waleed of the Strategic Imaginative and prescient Institute described as a method to map Pakistan’s air defence community earlier than follow-on missile assaults.
“We’re taking a look at a posh mosaic of battle in what we name a triple-stretch in navy research. Iran-Afghanistan on the western flank and India on the jap,” Firdous mentioned.
“That would actually exhaust the sources of Pakistan. In that situation, civilian targets are normally the final; Pakistan’s financial and navy structure will face the brunt,” he cautioned.
Waleed went additional in his evaluation of the mixed risk, presenting an ominous image of what Pakistan’s safety equipment may face.
“If a two-front risk materialises, Pakistan can be higher off neutralising the western risk first. In any other case, you threat India and the Taliban synergising their operations, sleeper cells concentrating on PAF bases, drone assaults and suicide bombings from the west, whereas India’s air drive exploits a navy already stretched skinny coping with multipronged assaults from the opposite path,” Waleed mentioned.
Basit mentioned a simultaneous two-front situation, whereas unlikely, is now not unthinkable.
“Pakistan’s air defence structure is pretty succesful, and the navy learns from expertise,” he mentioned. “However a two-front conflict doesn’t swimsuit anyone. The extra urgent query Pakistan must ask itself is: what precisely is it doing with Afghanistan? What’s the rationale, and the place does it draw the road?”
New conflict dynamics
Some analysts imagine that Pakistan’s counter-drone response has been reactive quite than strategic.
“The response has been reactionary and advert hoc,” Waleed mentioned. “A correct counter-drone technique is required that addresses response choices in civilian airspace, units penalties for the sale of off-the-shelf methods to militant teams, and formulates a technical doctrine.”
And if the trajectory of the risk continues unchecked, the implications may lengthen effectively past border skirmishes.
“If a drone have been to strike a senior civilian goal, or a high-profile city set up, the implications can be extreme; it may even grow to be an aviation nightmare,” mentioned Basit.
The urgency is underscored by what could also be coming, Waleed warned.
Quadcopters may evolve into kamikaze drones of the sort Iran makes use of, with the subsequent stage being fast-speed first-person view (FPV) drones together with synthetic intelligence-driven drone swarms, he cautioned.
“State militaries, characterised by conventional conflict doctrines, have been gradual to understand the teachings of drone warfare, particularly from the Ukraine conflict,” he mentioned.
