Myanmar military using paramotors and gyrocopters for aerial attacks on civilians, opposition forces

Myanmar ‘s military is making increasing use of commercial paramotors and gyrocopters, low-tech flying machines that expand their capabilities to attack civilians and anti-military forces from the sky as the country’s civil war rages, according to a report released Monday.

The military’s use of paramotors, basically a paraglider combined with a backpack motor with a propeller, was first reported in 2024, while the first incident involving a gyrocopter, an ultralight one- or two-person aircraft with helicopter-like rotating blades, was last March, the human rights organization Fortify Rights said in its report.

The organization tracked an increasing number of such attacks over the course of last year where pilots would drop mortar shells by hand, and in the case of the paramotors, sometimes cutting their engines and gliding silently in their final approach to the target.

“The Myanmar military has found new ways to kill civilians from the sky using paramotors and gyrocopters equipped with manually-dropped, unguided explosives,” said Fortify Rights’ Chit Seng in a statement.