RSF drone attacks in Port Sudan have heightened regional tensions and brought scrutiny to the country’s flourishing gold economy. On May 4, Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fired a salvo of suicide drones against Port Sudan, the army’s de facto wartime capital on the Red Sea.
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) blamed foreign powers for backing the RSF’s raids and even threatened to cut diplomatic relations with one of its largest business partners. The RSF caught most by surprise in the strikes. It had previously deployed drones but never targeted as far away as Port Sudan, once a refuge, until last week.
“The attacks … triggered a massive movement out of the city. Plenty of people deserted Port Sudan,” said Aza Aera, a local humanitarian worker. “If the fighting continues … I think I’ll go like the rest of the people.” After a civil war broke out in April 2023 between SAF and RSF, the military enjoyed air supremacy because it owns a fleet of warplanes as well as drones.
But the RSF is catching up with a fleet of suicide drones, which it deployed on Port Sudan for six consecutive days, targeting an army base, a civilian airport, numerous hotels, and a fuel depot, which exploded in a gigantic blast.
Sudan was already in the age of drone warfare during the past … a couple of months at least,” reported Suliman Baldo, creator of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker think tank. It primarily depends on the comparatively less expensive Turkish-developed Bayraktar TB2 drones and received $120m worth of them since last 2023, reportedly.
Bayraktars have a long range and high payload capacity, and the army claims they assisted it in retaking large areas of territory from the RSF in central and eastern Sudan between March 2025 and September 2024, including the capital Khartoum.
Even after losing a lot of ground, the RSF subsequently increased its attacks on the SAF using Chinese-manufactured drones, a recent report by Amnesty International states. The human rights organization, Sudan’s de facto military regime and other observers all blame the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for buying these drones – and other arms – and delivering them to the RSF.
