I fly helicopters for a living and I have spent more hours than I care to count briefing approaches, checking landing zones and thinking through the what ifs that come with low altitude operations. Reading the conflict in Colombia through the same operational lens makes one conclusion unavoidable. The way insurgents and narco groups are adapting small unmanned aircraft turns routine antinarcotics missions into high risk sorties for Black Hawk crews and the teams they carry.
The tool set in play is not exotic. Commercial quadcopters and low cost FPV rigs, fitted with improvised explosive charges or small grenades, have been used to strike people and places in Colombia. In July 2024 a drone-dropped grenade killed a 10 year old boy on a soccer field in El Plateado, Cauca, and Colombian authorities attributed that attack to a dissident FARC faction. That event is an early but stark example of aerial-delivered improvised munitions being used against both military and civilian targets.
At the same time the narcotics economy that drives much of the violence keeps expanding. United Nations monitoring showed coca cultivation and estimated cocaine production rose to record levels in 2023, concentrating pressure and violent competition in the same regions where security forces conduct eradication and interdiction missions. Those operations routinely require helicopters to move personnel rapidly into terrain with no roads, to support manual eradication teams and to extract wounded or detained suspects. The concentration of illicit economies and the need to get people into remote spots creates predictable vulnerability windows for aircraft.
Colombia operates significant numbers of UH-60 Black Hawk type helicopters across its military, air force and national police units. Those birds are workhorses for the kind of missions that matter in the counternarcotics fight: troop lifts, rescues, aerial observation and the rapid movement of small teams into landing zones that are uneven, uncleared and often contested. That mix of mission and environment is exactly where small explosive-bearing unmanned aerial systems can be effective.
From a pilot and ops perspective the threat profile is straightforward. Helicopters are most vulnerable when they are at low speed and low altitude: approach, hover, and landing. A manned rotorcraft accepting troops in a tight LZ has limited maneuverability and predictable flight paths. A small drone operator only needs one shot window. Even a near miss or a hit to a rotor, tail rotor or engine intake can cascade into loss of control. History also shows that aircraft in Colombia have been targeted during the long conflict, so the concept of hostile fire against rotary wing assets is not hypothetical. There are recorded instances in Colombia’s conflict history of aircraft being brought down by hostile action.
This is not a call to stop flying antinarcotics missions. Those missions matter. My point is operational. You change the way you fly, you change tactics, you reduce exposure, and you layer defenses. Based on practical aviation experience and the evolving threat picture I would press the following measures, organized from immediate, low cost fixes to mid term investments.
1) Treat every landing zone as contested until proven otherwise. Insert reconnaissance assets ahead of the bird. That can be a local vehicle sweep, long range observation from another helicopter at safe stand off or use of a reconnaissance UAS flown by friendly forces. Confirm LZ security, clear approach corridors and avoid predictable approach geometry where attackers can pre-stage. (This is SOP in high threat environments, but it needs consistent discipline when the enemy has aerial reach.)
2) Avoid prolonged hovers and profile your approach. Where terrain and mission allow, move to rolling or overfly inserts, fast rope or short set down and immediate clearing by the ground team. Minimize time exposed in hover or at a standstill.
3) Redundancy in insertion and extraction. If the mission allows, use multiple small insertions, staggering bird positions and timing so that a single event does not stop the whole operation. If medical evacuation is a likely outcome, prepositioning a second aircraft for recovery reduces risk to casualties and gives crews options.
4) Harden comms and develop counter-UAS SOP. Train crews to recognize UAV signatures, build quick reaction checklists for suspected UAV impact, and drill autorotation and loss-of-tail scenarios from the appropriate flight regimes. Equip LZ support elements with organic small counter-UAS tools where legal and practical. Authorities worldwide are expanding counter-UAS toolkits and Colombia’s forces have begun to confront the phenomenon on the ground. Early detection and jamming of hostile small UAS can shift the advantage back to friendly forces.
5) Improve intelligence fusion and target the logistics chain. Many of these improvised aerial weapons are locally assembled and depend on small supply chains and operator networks. Law enforcement and military intelligence that target those nodes reduce the tempo at which enemy UAVs can be deployed.
6) Preserve sustainment and parts chains for the Black Hawk fleet. Aircraft serviceability is an operational multiplier. When availability falls you fly fewer, you accept risk, and you compress operations into predictable windows that adversaries can study. Colombia has invested heavily in local sustainment partnerships to keep UH-60 variants flying. That continuity matters.
7) Regulation and economics. The cheap nature of the technology matters. Restricting the unregulated sale and export of heavy lift consumer platforms in high risk corridors, paired with targeted sanctions against networks that modify and arm those platforms, can have an effect. That is not an aeronautical fix, but it reduces the tools in an adversary’s kit bag.
A few final operational notes from the pilot seat. First, complacency is the real killer. Crews that assume an LZ will be safe because it was safe last week are inviting tragedy. Second, video is a double edge. Cell phone and vehicle video can document an attack, but social media can also reveal tactics and patterns. Maintain OPSEC when mission security depends on surprise. Third, rehearsals and cross training between air and ground units are cheap insurance. Simulate drone disruption during exercises and test medevac sequencing under degraded conditions.
Colombia’s antinarcotics fight is an airspace problem as much as it is a law enforcement one. As unmanned solutions proliferate and as criminal and dissident groups copy tactics they see in other conflicts, helicopters will remain essential tools. But essential does not mean invulnerable. Operational adjustments, modest investments in counter-UAS and a sharper focus on sustainment and intelligence can keep crews and the people they carry safe while preserving the mobility that makes a Black Hawk mission effective. The alternatives are worse. When the environment changes, pilots and planners have to change faster.