After 20 Years of Civilian Drone Strike Deaths, Pentagon Creates An Office to Stop More
The military keeps repeating mistakes and is not ready for future fights because the lessons learned have not been instilled throughout the DOD, an independent review found.
By Tara Copp
Senior Pentagon Reporter, Defense One
January 27, 2022
Thousands of innocent civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria have died from U.S. drone strikes in the past 20 years, and those casualties continue because past mistakes have not been acknowledged, reported, or shared among drone operators, an independent review by RAND found. That lack of institutional knowledge means that future conflicts involving drone strikes could be far deadlier.
On Thursday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin outlined guidance to establish a “civilian protection center of excellence” that would be the central point of collection for drone strike lessons learned and establish a uniform, central way for strikes to be reported and investigated, and victims compensated.
Two high-profile strikes—including the Aug. 29 strike in Kabul that killed a family of 10, and a 2019 strike in Baghuz, Syria, that killed as many as 70 civilians but was not acknowledged before it was detailed in a recent The New York Times’ investigation—elevated the department’s attention to the issue, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Thursday.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2022/01/after-20-years-civilian-drone-strike-deaths-pentagon-creates-office-stop-more/361295/
