ISIS’s suicide bombings, beheadings, and systematic executions are documented daily. However disturbing these reports, a tally of ISIS’s battlefield capabilities may be even more sobering: multiple authoritative reports describe an ISIS arsenal replete with anti-aircraft missiles, chemical weapons, and programmable driverless car bombs.
Even in the heart of Europe, ISIS operatives have stockpiled sophisticated, high-powered weapons and explosives. The weapons cache uncovered by Belgian investigators during the months-long manhunt for Salah Abdeslam should be a wake-up call for anyone doubting ISIS’s willingness and ability to bring its arsenal and killing sprees to the West.
An ISIS operative captured in March in Erbil, Iraq, provided a trove of information on the group’s chemical weapons program. According to the captive, ISIS has synthesized mustard gas into powder and can deliver it via artillery shells and rockets. The U.S. military subsequently targeted two of ISIS’s chemical weapons production facilities near Mosul, Iraq, on March 5 and 7, yet no one doubts there are more.
It had long been suspected that ISIS was using chemical weapons. Numerous reports from Iraq and Syria have detailed patients with burns associated with mustard gas and neurotoxic acids. In March, ISIS fired over 40 rockets fitted with chlorine and mustard gas into Taza, Iraq, killing three and wounding approximately 1,500. Earlier in April, Morocco’s counterterrorism chief Abdelhak Khiame warned that ISIS would attempt a chemical weapons attack in the EU.
ISIS operatives have looted Baathist-era chemical weapons facilities in Iraq, suspected of producing record levels of sarin and mustard gas in the 1980s and 1990s. As the terror group has seized territory in Iraq and Syria and overwhelmed local security forces, it has grabbed American, Chinese, and Soviet-made hardware, including American-made M-16 rifles, and American Humvees and tanks.
Beyond the presence of chemicals and tanks, ISIS has been experimenting with non-traditional delivery systems for launching covert attacks in Western cities.
Earlier this year, Sky News obtained eight hours of video smuggled out of Raqqa, Syria, by an ISIS defector. The video—meant to reach ISIS sympathizers in Europe and elsewhere—details how to build a driverless car equipped with a bomb, assemble hard to detect explosives, and repurpose anti-aircraft missiles. The self-driving car would contain a mannequin fitted with a thermal suit, designed to trick car bomb security scanners regularly deployed in Western countries.
The video was filmed in ISIS’s “research center” in Raqqa, where engineers have been plotting to export the group’s violence to the West.
What may be an even more demanding consideration for Western defense agencies are thousands of anti-aircraft missiles reportedly recommissioned at the research center. The terror group was rumored in the past to have non-operational anti-aircraft missiles, but is now believed to have found a way to make them functional again by maintaining their thermal batteries. This alleged development could drastically change the battlefield calculations critical to future confrontations with the jihadist group.
The discovery of Raqqa’s research center follows a December 2015 briefing from the European parliament on ISIS’s alleged attainment of non-conventional weapons. It warned that EU states should prepare for the “genuine risk” of ISIS using chemical or biological weapons against targets in the EU.
Intelligence briefs and coalition strikes on chemical weapons facilities are important measures, but more must be done. First, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)—an intergovernmental organization that carries out inspections and investigations into chemical weapons usage—must be equipped with the resources to investigate chemical weapons attacks on the ground as they happen. This information should be shared with coalition intelligence in real time so that future attacks can be prevented, and arsenals more effectively located and destroyed. But under its current guidelines, the OPCW will not begin a formal investigation unless requested by the local government.
Second, U.S. forces should prioritize the capture of ISIS operatives with vitally important skill sets who can be mined for intelligence. Finally, the U.S. must take steps to improve the security of weaponry—chemical or otherwise—currently under the control of Iraq, the Kurds, and other allies to ensure they cannot easily fall into the hands of ISIS or other jihadists.
ISIS has every intention of continuing its brutal reign of terror. Following the Brussels attacks on March 22, ISIS warned: “what awaits you will be harder and more bitter.” The group’s intentions and capabilities represent a lethal concoction and daily threat to Iraqis, Syrians, and people living far beyond the Middle East.