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Search: drones

11 Apr

...the CIA killed during a 12-month period ending in September 2011 were not senior al Qaida leaders but instead were ‘assessed’ as Afghan, Pakistani and unknown extremists. Drones killed only six top al Qaida leaders in those months, according to news media accounts. Forty-three of 95 drone strikes reviewed for that period hit groups other than al Qaida, including the Haqqani Network, several Pakistani Taliban factions and the unidentified individuals described only as ‘foreign fighters’ or ‘other militants.’ The McClatchy piece contends that such statistics are necessarily at odds with...
11.04.13 | |

15 Jun

For those who follow these topics, two items of note. First, an AP story today reports that the United States is building a secret CIA air base in the Persian Gulf region to support U.S. targeting operations in Yemen. The story is sourced to anonymous government officials, and reports that “U.S. forces have stepped up their targeting as well, because of the besieged Yemeni government’s new willingness to allow U.S. forces to use all tools available — from armed drones to war planes — against al-Qaida as a way to...
15.06.11 | |

06 Nov

...also use different approaches to producing the “intelligence feeds” upon which drone operations rely. Perhaps more importantly, after years of conducting drone strikes, the CIA has developed an expertise and a taste for them. The DOD’s appetite to take over that mission may not run very deep…. “The agency can do it much more efficiently and at lower cost than the military can,” said one former intelligence official. Another former official with extensive experience in intelligence and military operations said it takes the military longer to deploy drones — in...
06.11.13 | |

13 Apr

The Washington Post editorializes today in praise of Legal Adviser Koh’s statement on drones in his speech to ASIL on March 25. It specifically focused on the self-defense distinction in the statement: Mr. Koh’s reaffirmation of the right to self-defense — even outside the confines of an existing armed conflict — is particularly important. The Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) after Sept. 11, 2001, empowered the president to pursue those responsible for the attacks, including al-Qaeda and the Taliban. That authority may wane with time. But the...
13.04.10 | |

05 May

The video is here. No big surprises. Dellinger’s argument is based on the post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force and that under international law “you can kill enemy combatants.” Dellinger explains that drones attacks on other al Qaeda members are legal too. However, regarding drone attacks, I wish he hadn’t said that that there was “a policy judgment” to be made about “how careful you ought to be” about protecting the lives of civilians and non-combatants and contrasting that “policy judgment” with “decisions having to do with the...
05.05.11 | |

25 Sep

I think the Washington Post gets the right position on the utility and effectiveness of drones in targeted killing — including their limits. The editorial principally addresses two different things, both raised in John Brennan’s summary statement of the administration’s counterterrorism policy at Harvard Law School a week ago. The first is the question of whether there is a “legal geography of war,” as I have put it; the administration’s short answer, as is mine and the Post’s, is “no.” The second is the question of whether drones, just as...
25.09.11 | |

22 Apr

...on drones over Libya on the "efficiency" of drones in jus in bello goes into the argument that you make in much greater depth. I do not disagree that drones may allow for more attacks than manned aircraft, and that theoretically at some point such an expansion of operations could lead to a less humanitarian result overall. My point is just that all parties involved in any debate over drone use should begin from the understanding that drones are factually a more discriminate weapon. That is not to say they...
22.04.11 | |

01 Oct

regards to counterinsurgency versus counterterrorism needs to read. It’s crucial. The one thing I’d add to their discussion is that drones are the final kinetic step from the air of what is mostly an intelligence operation that requires extensive assets on the ground, as Lake and Barry point out. Shane and Shanker do observe, however, that the image of drones as a global weapon, merely because the operator might be around the world, is profoundly misleading. They emphasize an often misunderstood aspect of drones – closely related to the local...
01.10.11 | |

08 Oct

Today at noon, the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University Law School is holding a debate on targeted killing using drone aircraft. It features Notre Dame’s Mary Ellen O’Connell and yours truly, and moderated by Minnesota Public Radio’s Matt Sepic. Mary Ellen and I each hold strong views on this topic, of course, and I am greatly looking forward to the discussion. The event will be webcast, live, I believe, and then available archived at the website if anyone is interested. My thanks to the...
08.10.10 | |

09 Jun

I haven’t had enough time to blog about Philip Alston’s excellent report on drone warfare, but interested readers should check out today’s conversation between Scott Horton and Alston at Harpers.com. Here’s a taste of one of Alston’s answers: Of course, calling something a war crime doesn’t make it so–the question is whether it is recognized as such under international law–and your question raises a broader concern and reflects the deeply disturbing approach of the United States to the laws of war since 9/11. The U.S. has put forward...
09.06.10 | |

19 Mar

units, the other side can only attack half the US forces at any one time (see summary in Report Preview). The implication was clear: swarming micro-drones will become a game-changer, and will be financially viable in the face of (then) defense sequestration. Subsequently, and from a slightly different angle, David Hambling argued in Swarm Troopers that the abundance of cheap, powerful and rapidly-advancing dual-use components from the mobile phone industry will make micro-drones and swarming capabilities easily available to non-State actors. The stark reality, Hambling argued, is that States will...
19.03.18 | |

19 Nov

will arrive very soon." We haven't seen that deployed (recently anyway) because we haven't used the MQ9 in any areas with advanced anti-aircraft systems (at least not any willing to deploy those systems against us). Drones are incredibly slow and the technology to counter them already exists. Actually, scores of drones were shot down during the conflict in the Balkans, as they did have anti-aircraft capabilities that could reach out and touch them. Taking out those anti-aircraft capabilities so drones could maintain observation was the job of the fighter aircraft....
19.11.10 | |