...with sophisticated surveillance gear but also missiles, act as the lightest of light cavalry. They probe, surveil, and engage in pinprick attacks, behind enemy
lines, far beyond one’s own
lines. When the CIA engages in targeted killing against some Al Qaeda operative in Somalia, from a strategic perspective, it is a combat raiding strategy by very light cavalry indeed. But it is so far beyond one’s own
lines, as it were, that from a legal standpoint, I would place it beyond the legal “armed conflict” altogether and treat this combat...