Author Topic: What's next for the drone war?  (Read 334 times)

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rangerrebew

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What's next for the drone war?
« on: February 17, 2017, 11:46:15 am »
What's next for the drone war?

If Trump follows Obama's precedent, careful consideration and gradual transparency. But that's a pretty big "if."
By Kelsey D. Atherton Yesterday at 12:25pm
MQ-9 Reaper

Christian Clausen, United States Air Force

MQ-9 Reaper

A Reaper at Creech Air Force Base, in Nevada.

On Jan. 20, the drone war entered its third Administration. Over the inaugural weekend, American drones fired missiles at suspected Al Qaeda fighters in Yemen, killing five people. The drone war, that is, the popular, unmanned-vehicle term for America’s strategy of targeted killing, is an outgrowth of President George W. Bush’s war on terror, a vestigial organ that became the centerpiece for the Obama administration’s eight years of low-intensity warfare. With much of American national security strategy poised to change under the new Trump administration, it’s worth taking a step back to examine what, exactly, the United States hoped to do with its drones.

The United States is, it’s worth noting, at war. It is in fact still at war, and has been ever since the passage of the Authorization to Use Military Force in the week following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. That act, still in effect into its fifth presidential term, gives the President broad powers to use force against persons and organizations that can be linked back to the Sept. 11 attack, and has been interpreted broadly enough to include ISIS. This is the context in which the drone war was born, an adaptation of a military scout into the most iconic aircraft of modern counterinsurgency warfare.

Rethinking the Drone War is a collection of reports recently published by Marine Corps University Press. The focus is about the national security potential for, and legitimacy of, drone strikes, and the dangers of civilian casualties, as the United States uses remotely piloted vehicles to pursue a war on terror.

http://www.popsci.com/whats-next-for-drone-war?dom=tw
« Last Edit: February 17, 2017, 11:46:59 am by rangerrebew »