Summary

  • The U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk reported that armed drones account for more than 80% of conflict-related deaths in Sudan, with his office documenting at least 880 civilians killed by drones between January and April.
  • Researchers at ACLED and the Yale School of Public Health attribute the acceleration to foreign-supplied technology integrated into both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, with ACLED documenting a 600% increase in drone-related deaths and an 81% increase in drone attacks year-over-year.
  • ACLED’s reporting identifies parallel foreign supply chains — the SAF supplied through Turkey, Russia, Iran and Egypt, and the RSF supplied via networks linked to the United Arab Emirates through Ethiopia, Chad and Libya, with satellite-detected Chinese-made CH-95 and FH-95 drones in the RSF’s inventory.
  • Türk’s call for measures to prevent drone-technology transfers frames the casualty cascade as downstream of decisions in at least six foreign capitals, with documented-conduct contradictions between supplier-state denials and the public record on transit routes, satellite-detected hardware, and casualty events at sites including el-Fasher and Al Daein Teaching Hospital.

The U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said this week that armed drones have become “by far and away the leading cause of civilian deaths” in Sudan’s war, with his office documenting at least 880 civilians killed by drones between January and April and the technology accounting for more than 80% of conflict-related fatalities. Researchers at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project and the Yale School of Public Health link the acceleration to foreign-supplied technology integrated into both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, with ACLED documenting a 600% increase in drone-related deaths and an 81% increase in drone attacks year-over-year. Documented supply chains reach at least six foreign capitals, the reporting indicates, even as both supplier states and the warring parties have publicly denied responsibility for specific attacks and supply relationships.

Parallel supply chains on both sides

Sudan’s warring parties operate separate foreign supply networks that researchers have documented through satellite imagery, transit-route analysis, and open-source investigation. ACLED found earlier this month that the Sudanese Armed Forces’ drone technology is supplied by Turkey, Russia, Iran, and Egypt, while the Rapid Support Forces’ drone technology is supplied via networks linked to the United Arab Emirates through regional transit points including Ethiopia, Chad, and Libya. Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, said satellite imagery shows the RSF’s use of Chinese-made CH-95 and FH-95 drones, which Raymond described as roughly the size of small aircraft. The manufacturers of that foreign-made hardware, the reporting indicates, exert informal influence through the availability of their technology but are unrepresented in diplomatic and conflict-resolution frameworks.

The temporal asymmetry between the two sides’ drone programs is part of the analytical record. Gabriella Tejeda, a research associate at The Soufan Center, said that while both the army and RSF compete to obtain new drone models, the RSF began using drones widely only last year, and the paramilitary is “increasingly competing to acquire newer, more sophisticated models,” with the UAE likely supplying them. Researchers state that the RSF rapidly expanded drone capabilities to seize and hold contested locations. The United Arab Emirates has denied supplying drones to the RSF. The Sudanese government has accused Ethiopia of being behind recent drone attacks on sites including Khartoum International Airport and accused the UAE of supplying drones; both Ethiopia and the UAE denied the allegations.

Tejeda characterized the Ethiopian-UAE relationship as making the Sudanese government’s allegations difficult to dismiss, saying, “Ethiopia is a central partner to the UAE, so the allegations are not unfounded and reflects an attempt by the UAE to try to influence the outcome of the war.” Researchers including Jalale Getachew Birru of ACLED and Raymond said that while cross-border drone activity may have contributed to rising civilian deaths, it is difficult to confirm how much of that increase should be attributed to foreign involvement rather than to other battlefield factors. The external supplying states, the reporting indicates, hold power through material contributions but operate with contested legitimacy under international norms on arms transfers and civilian-infrastructure protection.

The civilian targeting pattern

Türk’s office reported that most civilian deaths from drone attacks occurred in the Kordofan region in central Sudan. Türk cited multiple incidents, including drone strikes on May 8 in South Kordofan and near el-Obeid in North Kordofan that reportedly killed 26 civilians, and said the Sudan Doctors Network reported more than 70 people killed in drone attacks on densely populated areas in Kordofan earlier this year. Emergency Lawyers reported on Tuesday that nine drone attacks on civilian vehicles had killed at least 36 people over the previous 10 days across seven provinces; the group attributed responsibility to both the army and RSF.

As a first-order consequence, the technology extends strike range into cities, displacement camps, markets, and transit corridors, displacing conventional battlefield risk onto populated areas. The reporting describes drones as being used against civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, dams, schools, markets, and displacement camps, with the pattern of targeting protected sites indicating the method is being generalized beyond specific operations. The Sudanese Armed Forces’ drone technology was blamed for a strike on Al Daein Teaching Hospital in East Darfur, where at least 64 people were killed; the army officially denied responsibility, and two military officials previously said the intended target had been a nearby police station. Raymond said the army has increased drone strikes on protected infrastructure such as schools and markets in the past four to six months, while the army maintains that it does not target civilian infrastructure.

The reporting links the targeting pattern to the technology’s role in offensive operations. Birru, an East Africa senior analyst at ACLED, said, “On the battlefield, drones have emerged as a force multiplier, enabling ground offensives and weakening enemy defenses.” Birru said both the army and RSF use drones to secure contested territory, disrupt mobilization, and spread insecurity in areas controlled by rivals. Emergency Lawyers said some of the drones used visual monitoring technology capable of distinguishing targets, raising concerns in the group’s view that the attacks may not have been indiscriminate.

In el-Fasher city in North Darfur, where at least 6,000 people were killed over three days last year, Raymond described the RSF pattern as distinct: RSF drones shut down communications of civilians “crying for help” and targeted people where a signal was detected. Raymond characterized the el-Fasher operation as “this layered, hunter-killer concept of operations to kill people, basically in a kill box or trapped inside a wall,” and he described the approach as intended to prevent people from signaling for help. U.N. experts have described the violence there as having “hallmarks of genocide,” a characterization that frames the RSF’s documented operational methods as meeting a recognized legal threshold of risk. The pattern of protected-infrastructure strikes and suppression of rescue capacity, the reporting indicates, extends the second-order consequences of the technology beyond the battlefield and into the systems civilians depend on for survival.

Türk’s call for steps to prevent the transfer of drone technology into the conflict functions as a public attribution of responsibility to the supplier side of the casualty cascade, with civilian harm in Sudan the downstream consequence of decisions in at least six foreign capitals. The reporting identifies upstream intervention points including sanctions, export controls, and third-party transit-state pressure. The first observable signal that the cascade is being constrained, the reporting indicates, would be a documented reduction in drone component flows through the identified transit points, not a change in battlefield rhetoric from either party to the conflict.

The conflict’s broader toll, as reported alongside the drone figures, includes at least 59,000 people killed since the war began in April 2023, approximately 13 million displaced, and parts of Sudan pushed into famine conditions. The roughly 13 million civilians displaced by the conflict, the reporting indicates, hold the stake of survival and humanitarian access but have no representation in the supply architecture that determines the conflict’s trajectory — a stakeholder asymmetry in which civilians carry the legitimacy and urgency of the conflict without holding power to alter its course. Tejeda said the persistence of the war reflects an incentive structure that does not reward resolution, saying that “both the warring parties’ battle tempo only increasing, and their backers actively still investing in the war” indicates that neither side is seeking a resolution.

The civilian populations of the transit states named in the supply-chain reporting — Ethiopia, Chad, and Libya — bear the secondary consequences of the smuggling networks and regional instability without a formal voice in the diplomatic and conflict-resolution frameworks that would address them. ACLED reported at least 2,670 people, including combatants and civilians, were killed in 2025, with the year-over-year increases the reporting documents representing the acceleration of an existing pattern rather than a new one.

Documented-conduct contradictions

The public record contains parallel denials from foreign suppliers and from the warring parties themselves. The UAE and Ethiopia have denied involvement in drone supply and attacks against Sudanese sites. The Sudanese Armed Forces officially denied responsibility for the Al Daein Teaching Hospital strike, with two military officials attributing the attack to a police-station target. ACLED’s reporting on the RSF supply line, detailing transit routes, satellite-detected drone use, and the el-Fasher operational pattern, sits against the UAE’s flat denial as a documented-conduct contradiction. The mirrored denial pattern across the substrate, the reporting indicates, includes foreign backers on both sides denying supply, the warring parties denying targeting of civilians, and the underlying conduct — transit routes, satellite-detected drone types, hospital-strike casualty counts, and Kordofan attack totals — sitting in the public record.

The structural frame the reporting describes, in which external backers continue to invest in the war while documented humanitarian consequences accumulate, misaligns the documented incentive structure with the documented consequences for civilians. The supply architecture on both sides, the reporting indicates, rewards continuation rather than resolution: SAF-aligned suppliers back the army’s retaking of territory in the Khartoum region, and RSF-aligned networks support the paramilitary’s consolidation of holdings such as el-Fasher. The warring parties hold power and urgency with contested legitimacy, the external suppliers hold power with contested legitimacy under international arms-transfer norms, and the documented civilian toll sits in the public record against the denials. The el-Fasher pattern, the Kordofan strikes, and the Al Daein incident constitute the documented-conduct record against which the public denials are measured.

Analytical techniques used in this piece

This analysis applies the methods below. Each links to a short, plain-English explainer you can read and reuse.

Consequences & Sequels
Plays a decision forward to its first- and second-order consequences.
Relationship Mapping
Extracts the network of ties among people, institutions, and entities.
Stakeholder Mapping
Charts the parties to a situation — their interests, power, and alignments.