Drones give S'pore police an edge when dealing with terror situations

Before the eight armed police officers entered the shopping mall, with the bodies of dead shoppers lying across the premises, a drone glided in.

- Andrew Wong

No bigger than a shoebox, it hovered and hummed loudly about 3m off the ground, hunting a lone gunman.

Flying ahead of the officers, who had split into two groups of four, the drone located the gunman hiding in a corner.

The drone operators, who belong to the Singapore Police Force's Special Operations Command (SOC), then relayed the information to Police Tactical Unit (PTU) officers from the Armed Strike Teams (AST). The officers moved in, and after a brief gunfight, killed the gunman.