This is well outside Wonkblog’s normal bailiwick, but if nothing
else, Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) filibuster against CIA director nominee
John Brennan — launched as a protest against the administration’s drone
policy, which Brennan has steered for the past four years — uncovered a
hunger for a broader conversation on the topic. So what does the drone
program actually entail, and why are Paul and others criticizing it?
What is a drone?
A Predator drone. This is actually the less powerful of the two drones used by the CIA and military. (Eric Gay / AP)
Technically called “unmanned aerial vehicles” (UAVs), drones are just
aircraft without human pilots, encompassing everything from
reconnaissance vehicles to unmanned crop dusters. In common parlance,
though, “drone” has come to refer to unmanned combat aerial vehicles
(UCAVs), which are UAVs equipped with combat capabilities, most commonly
the ability to launch missiles.
How long has the U.S. government been using them?
CIA director George Tenet (left) originated the use of armed drones following 9/11. (Eric Draper-Reuters)
The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, the most
famous UCAV in the U.S. arsenal, first saw combat in 1995 as part of
the NATO intervention in Bosnia, but at that time was solely a
reconnaissance tool and carried no payload. On Feb. 16, 2001, the
Predator #3034
became the first
to be successfully fitted with a Hellfire missile, and to fire it in a
trial flight. Predators were deployed to Afghanistan almost immediately
after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and on Oct. 7, 2001 they
conducted their first armed mission there.
In addition to the Predator, the General
Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, a larger UCAV capable of carrying a higher payload,
has seen service
starting in 2007. The current program is jointly administered by the CIA and the Joint Special Operation Command (JSOC).
So folks in Pakistan really don’t like our habit of reigning death from the skies. (Getty)
Primarily Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. According to a
Washington Post database,
compiled with the help of the New America Foundation and Long War
Journal, strikes in Pakistan have been occurring since 2004 and picked
up in pace starting in summer 2008. Apart from a November 2002 strike in
Yemen, the Somalia and Yemen campaigns began in 2011. There have been
reports of strikes in the Philippines, though information there is sketchy.
Additionally, drones have seen service in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq
as part of the Unites States’s more traditional military campaigns in
those countries.
How powerful is a drone attack?
A home in Yemen that was destroyed in a drone strike. (Reuters)
Predator drones can carry up to two Hellfire missiles. Those have
warheads of about 20 pounds, which are designed to pierce tank armor;
their damage outside of the vehicle targeted is limited. An alternative
warhead, which manufacturer Lockheed Martin
touts as featuring “high lethality and minimum collateral damage,” also is in service.
Reapers are
another story.
They feature a maximum payload of 3,000 pounds, or 1.5 tons. That means
they can carry a combination of Hellfires and larger 500 pound bombs
like the GBU-12 Paveway II and GBD-38 JDAM. Those have an “effective
casualty radius” of
about 200 feet.
That means that about 50 percent of people within 200 feet of the blast
site will die. Those odds improve — or worsen, depending on how you
look at it — the closer you get, obviously.
So imagine if you took a football field and shrunk it by a third. A
Reaper attacks one endzone with a GBU-12. If you’re on the field, you
have a 50 percent chance of dying.
Update: I apparently forgot the distinction between yards and feet since middle school. Corrected.
How many drone attacks have we launched to date?
My Washington Post colleagues’ visualization of the drone program from 2002 to the present.
According to the
Post database, there have been 347 in Pakistan, 53 in Yemen and 2 in Somalia.
From 2008 through October 2012, there were 1,015 strikes in
Afghanistan, 48 in Iraq, and at least 105 in Libya according to the
Bureau for Investigative Journalism.
That does not include strikes in Libya past September 2011, strikes
from 2001 to 2007 in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those since October 2012.
The New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti
reported that at least one strike has happened in the Philippines.
What sort of people have we targeted?
Mullah Nazir, a pro-Taliban Pakistani militant, was killed in a drone strike in January. (STR/PAKISTAN/REUTERS)
Primarily al-Qaeda and its affiliates. That includes
al-Shaabab in Somalia, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (which works in Yemen), and the
Haqqani Network
in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Philippines strike was intended to
kill Umar Patek, a leader of the Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah
Islamiyah who helped orchestrate the 2002 attacks in Bali that killed 95
people. Patek is now serving a
20-year sentence in Indonesia.
Have we killed U.S. citizens this way?
Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen killed by a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. (Tracy A. Woodward / The Washington Post)
We’ve killed three, at least. Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born al-Qaeda operative in Yemen, was
killed
in a drone strike in 2011, as was his American-born 17-year-old son and
Samir Khan, a North Carolina native who died in the same strike as the
elder al-Alaki. Ahmed Hijazi, also an American citizen based in Yemen,
was
killed in 2002.
Note: paragraph updated to correct spelling of al-Awlaki’s name and include Hijazi.
To clarify the Obama administration’s exact policy on killing Americans without a trial, Eric Holder wrote the following
letter
to Sen. Rand Paul: “Dear Senator Paul: It has come to my attention that
you have now asked an additional question: ‘Does the President have the
authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in
combat on American soil?’ The answer to that question is no.” The
dispatch followed an earlier,
more equivocal note
from Holder on the subject, which seemed to indicate Holder believes
the president has the authority to kill U.S. citizens on U.S. soil if he
judges them a threat.
How many people have died in drone attacks?
The
best information we have on how many people have been killed by drones
may be a slip of the tongue from Sen. Lindsay Graham (above). (Jason
Reed / Reuters)
Sen. Lindsey Graham
estimated
the death toll of the Pakistan/Somalia/Yemen program at 4,700. That’s
higher than most estimates; Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign
Relations
puts the number at closer to 3,500.
How many of those were civilians?
Mourners carry the body of a civilian allegedly killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan. (Thir Khan / AFP / Getty)
Cora Currier at ProPublica helpfully
compiled a number of estimates in January. New America puts the
civilian death total
in Pakistan and Yemen between 276 and 368, of which 118-135 were under
the Bush administration. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
puts the number between
446 and 978, increasing to 993 if you include Somalia. Of those, 179 to
209 were children, BIJ estimates. A Stanford/NYU study
suggests
that the strikes have inflicted considerable psychological trauma on
residents of Pakistan, and deterred relief workers from serving areas
targeted. Funerals and rescue workers have been
targeted in past strikes.
What’s the process for deciding when and where to launch them?
Counterterrorism head John Brennan meets with President Obama. (Pete Souza / The White House)
As my colleague Greg Miller has reported, the administration uses something called the
“disposition matrix”
to determine targets for drone strikes. Miller describes it as a
“single, continually evolving database in which biographies, locations,
known associates and affiliated organizations are all cataloged. So are
strategies for taking targets down, including extradition requests,
capture operations and drone patrols…The database is meant to map out
contingencies, creating an operational menu that spells out each
agency’s role in case a suspect surfaces in an unexpected spot.”
The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) will prepare lists of
potential targets, which will be reviewed every three months by a panel
of intelligence analysts and military officials. They are then passed
along to a panel at the National Security Council, currently helmed by
CIA director nominee Brennan, and then to Obama for final approval. The
criteria for addition to the list are determined personally by Obama,
who also must personally approve all strikes outside Pakistan. Pakistan
strikes are approved by the CIA director.
What’s the case for using drones?
There’s some political science
to suggest that “decapitation strikes,” like these drone attacks, are
actually quite effective at reducing the ability of terrorist groups to
operate effectively. The RAND Corporation’s Patrick Johnston and UCLA’s
Anoop Sarbahi have found
preliminary evidence that the drone program specifically is effective
at degrading the operations of targeted groups. Zack Beauchamp has a
good overview of this literature here.
But that’s a case for strikes, not for drone strikes specifically. There is, however,
substantial evidence
that the percentage of casualties borne by civilians is much lower with
drone strikes than with just about any other kind of military
intervention, even if one accepts high estimates of the percent of
killed who are civilians.
Is Congress kept in the loop?
Senate
Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein was important in pushing
for Congressional oversight over the drone program. (Ben Margot / AP)
To some degree. As part of Brennan’s confirmation process, Senate Intelligence Committee members were
granted access to Justice Department memos justifying the use of drones, and a
similar white paper was shared last year. The Committee and its House counterpart are also
allowed
to review individual strikes, including the intelligence behind them
and video obtained during their commission. But they have not tried to
limit the program in any way. ”I don’t know that we’ve ever seen
anything that we thought was inappropriate,” one Congressional aide
told the
Los Angeles Times.
How about the courts?
Former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal has opposed giving the judiciary oversight over drones. (Richard Yu / The Dartmouth)
Nope. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) has
proposed establishing a specialized court to approve drone strikes based on
FISA courts
that approve surveillance of suspected foreign intelligence in the
U.S., but that is, for now, just an idea. Neal Katyal, a former acting
solicitor general under Obama, has
called for an oversight board placed within the executive branch.
Is this legal?
Harold
Koh, formerly the State Department’s legal adviser, was among the most
involved parties in formulating the legal rationale for drones. (Zuma
Press)
The Justice Department certainly thinks so, though the reasons why
are classified, and lawsuits to expose them have proven unsuccessful.
The clearest window we’ve gotten into their reasoning as relates to the
killing of U.S. citizenscomes from a
white paper leaked
to NBC News last month. It derives the authority for the strikes from
the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed in the
wake of 9/11, which grants the government broad powers against al-Qaeda.
What’s more, the white paper argues that drone strikes somehow don’t
run afoul of Executive Order 12333, the ban on assassinations as a tool
of policy that has existed since the Ford administration, as they are
used for “self-defense.” See also Brennan’s speech
here defending the program more broadly.
Administration critics aren’t impressed, with the ACLU’s Jameel
Jaffeer noting the white paper, “argues that the government has the
right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen.”
Does it violate international law?
Christof
Heyns, the UN special rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary, or
arbitrary executions, has said that the drone program may constitute a
war crime. (AP)
The Justice Department memo cites the UN Charter, which allows states
to make war in the interest of self-defense, an interest also
invoked by Brennan. Critics, like UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions
Christof Heyns,
say that this defense is a stretch, and the killings plainly run afoul
of the laws of war and international human rights treaties.
Are other countries using drones this way?
An IAI Heron, one of the most prominent drones outside the U.S. (Israeli Aerospace Industries)
Only the United States and the United Kingdom (which assists in the
Pakistan drone effort) currently use drones in combat, but many other
countries have acquired drone technology, including
China, Russia,
India,
Iran and
Israel.
The U.K. uses Reapers and Predators while most other countries use the
Israeli Aerospace Industries Heron or similar Israeli models. Drones saw
combat use in Israel during the Gaza war of late 2008. Even Hezbollah
has acquired
reconnaissance drones. All told, the GAO estimates that
76 countries, at least, have drone technology.
What do our allies think about it?
U.K.
Defense Minister Philip Hammond (left) is among the few non-U.S.
officials involved in the drone program. (Yves Logghe/Associated Press)
European allies other than Britain generally refrain from using
drones to attack al-Qaeda, but frequently share intelligence that
assists the drone program in selecting targets.
What about the countries where we send drones? What do they think?
Protests in Sanaa, Yemen. (Khaled Abdullah/Reuters)
They’re very mad. The Pakistani government has
condemned the drone strikes as a violation of sovereignty, though
there’s evidence they’re tacitly allowing the strikes to happen. The Yemeni government
quietly agreed to the strikes, though murmurs of opposition have emerged of late. Citizens in
both countries deplore the campaigns.
Is it actually weakening al-Qaeda?
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda since Osama bin Laden was killed. (AFP/Getty Images)
New America estimates that 1,967 – 3,236 militants were killed in
Pakistan and Yemen, meaning the overwhelming majority of casualties were
intended targets. That said, the share of deaths who were “high-profile
targets” was 11 percent under Obama and 33 percent under Bush according
to
New America.
And there are deeper doubts as to whether the strategy is recruiting
more militants than it kills, by turning local populations against the
United States. The attempted Times Square bomber, for instance,
cited drones as a motivating force.
It could also be a bad idea even if it
is weakening al-Qaeda. Many have
noted
that the money spent on anti-terrorism efforts might save more lives if
devoted to tackling more mundane threats, like auto accidents.
Thanks to Zack Beauchamp for research help throughout.
