The sky over the Democratic Republic of Congo is now dotted with two white drones—the first unmanned aircraft owned by the United Nations.
They took off from the city of Goma on Tuesday, where they will help the UN better monitor rebel activity along the nation's borders with Uganda and Rwanda, according to The Guardian.
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The peacekeeping organization was integral to recently defeating M23, a rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo that took over Goma at one point last year. But for a nation that has been battered by violent groups for around 20 years, defeating one is not enough, and the 20,000 UN troops throughout the country have not been able to end the bloodshed. Other rebel factions lurk amidst dense forest in remote Congolese terrain, and the UN believes drones will help track their movement.
"The UN hasn’t had good surveillance and intel gathering capability in general, so this is an improvement," Peter Singer, director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution, told Mashable in an email. He added that drones are not only better than people at monitoring wide swaths of land, but can also monitor one area for much longer periods of time.
These pilotless aircraft are a type of drone known as Falcos, built by a subsidiary of the Italian company Finmeccanica. They're equipped with only cameras, have a range of about 150 miles, and have a UN Security council mandate to fly over only Congolese territory. The UN plans to launch another by the end of the month, and two more next March.
If the monitoring is successful, peacekeeping drone operations may soon expand to other African countries such as South Sudan and Mali.
According to The Guardian, South Sudanese officials have requested the unmanned aircraft, likely to assist in tracking rebel groups within their own borders.
Much of Mali, a North African nation, was taken over by terrorist groups earlier this year, and many fear that could happen again. UN drones would be better able to monitor the activities of these groups than would soldiers of the Malian government.
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Image: Wikimedia Commons