It was lunchtime, around 12:30 p.m, when the first explosives fell on the troops’ mess hall, filling the barracks with smoke and panic. Then came another barrage of drones. Soldiers ran for their lives, as did residents who were near the compound. The bodies of at least three soldiers lay on the ground; 16 were seriously wounded and another 31 were hurt. The attack on the military base in the northern Colombian city of Santa Rosa del Sur is one of the deadliest of the year, in a war that continues unabated and which is increasingly being fought from the air. Attributed to the National Liberation Army (ELN), a guerilla organization, this offensive, once again, demonstrates that Colombia is incapable of stopping attacks that have already broken all records in 2026. Since this past August, the month when Abelardo de la Espriella was sworn in as president, at least 12 members of the Military Forces of Colombia have died from explosives dropped by drones. This is compared to eight in the seven months preceding the new administration taking office. The rate has more than tripled: from just over one per month to almost four. National Police data, updated to October 20, was provided to EL PAÍS through a public information request. To this figure is added Edwin Andrés Vargas, a marine who was killed on October 23, and the three soldiers killed on Saturday, November 7, in Santa Rosa del Sur. The first attack of this kind was recorded in July 2023 in Puerto Guzmán, in the Colombian department (state) of Putumayo, in the south of the country. Since then, they’ve become increasingly frequent. The Ideas for Peace Foundation (FIP) counts 119 attacks in 2024, 277 in 2025 and 351 this year up to November 2, or one every 21 hours. This past August was the worst month of the year, with 56 drone strikes. President De la Espriella condemned Saturday’s “terrorist attack” and promised to “identify, pursue and capture” those responsible. But, for the moment, he still lacks the tools to neutralize these attacks. The Ministry of National Defense stated that, over the course of 2025, it detected some 9,000 attempted drone attacks and neutralized approximately 96%. But that remaining 4% is enough to be lethal. “The current capacity [of the armed forces] is becoming increasingly powerless in the face of the sophistication and widespread use of drones,” maintains former Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez. “Armed groups will always have fewer restrictions than a state,” says Gerson Arias, a researcher at the FIP who specializes in armed conflict. The technology used by these groups is advancing faster than the state’s defenses. Armed factions are already using kamikaze drones, which don’t release a payload, but instead crash into their target and explode along with it. Other drones are guided by fiber optics: these don’t emit radio signals and, therefore, cannot be blocked by jammers. According to military intelligence, Mordisco’s dissident group — which split from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) — has carried out 175 attacks this year alone. And the ELN, which launched 36 drone strikes in 2015, has already done 145 in 2026. Colombia still lacks a system capable of stopping them. Police data paints a picture of two fronts. Eight of the 16 deaths this year are concentrated in the Catatumbo region, in Norte de Santander, a state that De la Espriella has just militarized. And in Cauca, in the southwest, drones are injuring people more than they’re killing them: it’s the state where 46 of the 89 uniformed personnel who were injured by drones in Colombia this year have been wounded. This includes 20 police officers, many of them struck during drone attacks against police stations. Meanwhile, 10 of the 16 dead were career soldiers, the backbone of the armed forces. But the uniformed personnel aren’t the only ones dying. In 2026, the police recorded another 12 people killed by drones who didn’t belong to the security forces (although they didn’t specify how many were civilians, or how many were armed troops killed in combat). On February 26, a mortar shell launched from a drone landed on a house in Segovia, in the department of Antioquia, killing a woman and two of her children. “This is a family that had nothing to do with the conflict,” said Antioquia’s Secretary of Security Luis Eduardo Martínez. According to the FIP, the advantage that drones give to these groups is comparable only to the one that the security forces gained 25 years ago, when they incorporated aerial capabilities. The criminals previously trained their drone operators in Venezuela, but today, they train them in their own schools in Colombia. It’s believed that they’ve hired instructors who’ve returned from Ukraine. Others, according to military sources, have trained by watching YouTube videos: they either buy the parts, or create them on 3D printers. “Beyond training them in how to operate a drone, they also teach them how to adapt the drones [and] how to build them,” Arias explains. In a message from early 2025 cited by the FIP, Mordisco boasted about manufacturing a single drone for about six million pesos (about $1,900) that costs 36 million pesos (about $11,000) on the market. The Colombian government has been buying drone defenses for years, in small quantities and with poor results. A drone costs a few thousand dollars apiece, but jamming them costs millions. In December 2024, the Ministry of National Defense purchased equipment from the U. S. company Dedrone for $25.4 million, even though then-President Gustavo Petro had prohibited the purchase of systems from that country. The delivery was delayed. In 2025, the Colombian Army purchased 40 DroneGun portable jammers, which only work at short range. The minimum requirements stipulate that a drone must be detectable from 1.2 miles away. However, according to findings by the Office of the Comptroller General compiled by the new government, the systems purchased over the last four years can only detect drones from between 1,000 and 1,300 feet away, when they’re almost upon the target. “There’s no equipment in the world that currently meets that requirement for the specific conditions in Colombia,” Sánchez, the former defense minister, affirms. On August 12, 2025, several drones dropped mortar rounds on an outpost along the Naya River, in the city of Buenaventura, killing a sergeant and two soldiers. Dedrone’s equipment still hadn’t arrived. In February 2026, the ELN attacked the San Jorge Military Base in the city of Saravena (department of Arauca) with drones. The base had an anti-drone system, but it was ultimately ineffective, as the drones were guided by fiber optics. The most notorious case was that of Catatumbo. In 2025, the Ministry of National Defense, then headed by Sánchez, mandated that anti-drone purchases go through CODALTEC. This state-owned company didn’t manufacture such equipment; instead, it bought it from foreign suppliers. Sánchez clarifies his decision: he maintains that his objective was for Colombia to develop its own anti-drone technology. Still, he acknowledges that at least 70% of the budget was allocated to CODALTEC, “provided [the equipment] met the required specifications and was competitive[ly priced].” The contract, worth approximately 80 billion pesos ($25 million), was for 19 systems, but they failed the testing stage because they didn’t neutralize all incoming drones. Hence, the Colombian Army refused to accept them. CODALTEC, meanwhile, maintains that the defenses meet the contract’s technical specifications. The dispute remains unresolved. In January 2026, the ministry launched the National Anti-Drone Shield, a project worth over six trillion pesos (approximately $1.9 billion). Tests were announced on three continents, with 119 companies expressing interest in bidding… but no contracts were awarded. One of former Minister Sánchez’s greatest frustrations was precisely the failure to achieve effective drone defense. He recounts that the ministry’s technical team refused to approve the purchase because no 100% effective system existed, even if it was the best available one on the market. Meanwhile, he claims, soldiers were dying. Abelardo de la Espriella came to power with this issue on his agenda. On August 5, while still president-elect, his team took the CODALTEC contract to the Attorney General’s Office, due to potential cost overruns of up to 85%. Since August 7, no contracts have been awarded. On October 4, Defense Minister Jorge Eduardo Mora promised the delivery of “systems intended for the control and protection of [Colombian] airspace,” but provided no dates or deadlines. “Today, the Military Forces are operating at 46% of their required capacity. We’re below half,” Arias, the researcher, notes. EL PAÍS requested information from the National Police regarding spending on anti-drone systems between 2022 and 2026: there has been no response. The government in Bogotá also didn’t respond to this newspaper’s inquiries. The FIP recommends defensive measures, combined with actions against the instructors, suppliers and supply networks of these armed groups. The think tank also advocates for the deployment of equipment to the smallest and most remote military units, which are the most vulnerable to attacks. A maxim attributed to British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery sums up a challenge that isn’t exclusive to Colombia: “If we lose the war in the air, we lose the war… and we lose it quickly.”Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition