Image from a video taken by an ISIS drone flying over Syria.
The U.S. military announced its first destruction of an unmanned aerial vehicle or aerial drone operated by ISIS or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
It said an armed U.S. Predator drone located and tracked the ISIS drone near the western city of Fallujah in Iraq on March 17. The small ISIS drone, described as a "remotely piloted aircraft" or RPV, was in flight when it was detected by the Americans.
The Americans had their Predator observe the ISIS drone for 20 minutes. After the ISIS drone landed, it was placed in a car occupied by the drone operator and an undetermined number of accomplices. The Predator then destroyed the car, the drone and the car's occupants with a Hellfire missile.
"This RPA was not on the same scale of what we are using," said a U.S. armed forces spokesman. "We did not give it to them. It was not armed."
Reports said the drone was one of those small, commercial drones readily available in retail outlets in the U.S. and elsewhere.
In 2014, ISIS boasted it had used a drone to reconnoiter the Syrian city of Raqqa before this city was attacked and taken by ISIS. Raqqa is now the capital of the ISIS "caliphate".
The destruction of the ISIS drone was among 11 airstrikes carried out by U.S.-led aircraft in Iraq and two conducted in Syria on March 17 and 18.
The strikes struck two ISIS-held bridges; a sniper position, an excavator and an ISIS tactical unit.
