On Wednesday evening, a drone struck a United States-owned gas tanker moored at Egypt’s Damietta port, setting a second vessel ablaze. It became the first such strike on Egyptian soil since the wider Middle East war began in February. No group has claimed the attack, and Cairo has offered no account of its origin.
The Damietta fire connects to a much older contest playing out one border south, where Sudan’s civil war has turned into a testing ground for unmanned aircraft. Sudan’s army, the Sudanese Armed Forces or SAF, has spent three years fighting the Rapid Support Forces, RSF, a paramilitary group once folded into the state’s own security apparatus. Both sides now fly drones bought or borrowed from abroad, and those aircraft have done more to redraw the front line than any single ground campaign.
The drones filling Sudan’s skies originate chiefly in Turkey. Their reach has begun to spill past Sudan’s own borders, feeding an illicit arms trade that now threatens the fairness of South Sudan’s first national vote, due in December.
A Battlefield Won From The Air
Turkish-made Bayraktar Akinci drones have become central to the SAF campaign since 2023, helping the army retake territory across Khartoum state, el-Gezira and North Kordofan. Early in July, an Akinci reportedly downed a Chinese-built RSF drone near el-Obeid, an engagement that offered a rare instance of one side’s aircraft destroying the other’s mid-flight.
Ground artillery duels once defined the war’s early years; aerial engagements now decide who holds a town before infantry arrive.
Sudan’s generals treat control of the sky as decisive, and their dependence on tanks and foot soldiers has receded across the country’s vast interior.
Ankara’s Expanding Role in Sudan
Turkey’s role in Sudan now includes training and satellite support alongside the original hardware sales. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan received Sudan’s army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, in Ankara in June, and the two leaders pledged closer cooperation in trade, energy and defence.
A trove of documents made public last year alleged that Baykar, the drone manufacturer, funnelled some $120 million in weapons to the SAF. The total amount helped power the campaign that drove the RSF from Khartoum.
Sudan’s military leadership has grown wary of suppliers who complicate its standing in Washington. The army has reportedly curbed purchases of Iranian drones as it seeks American support for talks to end the fighting. The calculation rests on the idea that Washington’s goodwill will decide whether battlefield gains hold.
The Human Cost Climbs
The civilian toll of this drone war has grown steep. United Nations statistics released in May attribute more than 80% of Sudan’s conflict deaths to drone strikes. The toll reached 880 people in the first four months of 2026 alone. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has warned that “escalating drone warfare could push the conflict into an even deadlier phase.”
Both armies now treat civilian infrastructure, markets and hospitals as acceptable targets, a practice that has drawn condemnation from rights groups without altering the calculus of either side.
Weapons Drift South
The aerial economy that has reordered Sudan’s war now sends its overflow into South Sudan, where a young transition already struggles against a flow of hidden weapons.
Sudan’s civil war has enabled arms and fighters to cross south, according to the Institute for Security Studies. Investigators recently documented modern Turkish-made rifles seized from civilians there, a different find from the region’s older stock of ageing Kalashnikovs.
Between January and March, South Sudan’s United Nations mission recorded 206 incidents of conflict-related violence. The clashes killed 767 people and left dozens abducted or subjected to sexual violence, a record that points to how deeply local fighting has hardened ahead of the vote.
Toward A Contested December Vote
South Sudan is due to hold its first national election on 22 December, a poll delayed twice already since 2022. Civil society voices in Juba have warned that voting may prove possible only in a handful of urban centres. Most rural regions, home to roughly 80% of the population, remain hard to reach, held by armed groups that fund themselves through weapons trafficking.
Fighting in Jonglei state has intensified in recent weeks. Opposition forces seized the town of Pajut earlier this year and now threaten the state capital, Bor, raising fears of a march on Juba itself.
Sudan’s war has proved that drones can decide territory faster than infantry, and that same calculation is now bleeding into a neighbour preparing to vote for the first time.
Turkey’s aircraft may keep tilting Sudan’s battlefield toward the SAF, but the weapons and fighters those battles displace will keep drifting toward Juba’s rural edges.
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