In France, "this threat is now taken into account in the national territory," warned the authorities in a note to police, asked to manage any device unmanned ground as a "suspicious package".
In October, for the first time, the EI managed to kill using a drone. Two Kurdish fighters were killed and two French commandos were injured in the explosion of an air IED in Arbil, near Mosul.
While Europe has known for nearly two years an unprecedented wave of jihadist attacks, "the use of drones by terrorists and insurgents is a growing cause for concern at international level," said James Bevan, Director NGO Conflict Armament Research (CAR) in an analysis note.
"It is a threat that we take into account, especially with all those who will come back from the Iraqi-Syrian theater and who have experienced there," they argued in French government source.
These lightweight unmanned vehicles, sometimes homemade, are now part of the arsenal of the Sunni jihadist group in Iraq. More only to monitor but also to target troops from dislodging the country's second city, where they had proclaimed their "caliphate" in 2014.
Granada
In mid-November, a drone jihadist dropped a grenade on top of a building housing the police, causing no casualties.
The troops encircling the city reported several similar incidents.
"We saw a drone approaching and we throw a bomb on it," evidenced by the commander of the paramilitary forces of al-Chaabi Hachd, Abu Mohammed Al-Atabi deployed west of Mosul.
On the southern front, the 4 Phantom drones dropped explosives on soldiers, says a senior.
The destructive capacity of drones commercially available or made by EI is still limited: a short-range, low autonomy, they can not carry enough explosives to represent a real threat, experts say .
However, it is clear that the extremists are working to improve their armed drones.
In February, after the resumption of Ramadi by Iraqi forces, a team of the NGO CAR discovered in a workshop of the AR elements fuselage and wings polystyrene 1.5 meter wingspan, and components of a ground-air missile and a gyroscope can be used to create a navigation system.
So far, "no terrorist group has shown to possess very effective drones, very deadly and very safe. It does not mean that it must exclude any surprises or that these challenges are insurmountable," said in a report on Combating Terrorism Center (CTC), an influential US think tank military.
Thanks to technological advances, "future UAV will be able to carry heavier loads, to fly longer and farther using more secure communication lines," said Don Rassler, the author of the report.
Eagles drones hunters
Among the worst-case scenarios include the use of flying machines to launch chemical attacks. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) accuses the EI group have already used poison gas on the battlefield.
Or "although this is difficult to do, it is possible to attach aerosols or other systems? Spreading to a drone to spread chemical and biological agents," said Don Rassler.
To counter the threat of malicious drones, some countries have begun to deploy protective systems that can identify, track or eliminate these small devices.
The US resort to anti-drone weapons "kinetic" (physically striking the drone with a projectile) and other techniques such as interference or hacking.
Alerted risk in 2014, from the overview of nuclear power plants by flying machines, France has recently accelerated its program detection and neutralization.
Paris also has a system of a new kind of golden eagles drones hunters.
Prepared with meat pieces attached to flying machines, these birds "are capable of detecting several thousand meters drones and neutralize," the General of the Air Force Jean-Christophe Zimmermann .
Last summer, during the Euro 2016 in France, an attack by flying object was part of the scenarios envisaged by the authorities.
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