More on the Drone Revolution

The Christian Science Monitor has an extensive article on the latest developments in drone technology that is worth reading.

"We're not about 20 years, or 10 years, or even five years away – a lot of this could be out in the field in under two years," says Mitchell Zatkin, former director of programmable matter at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the Pentagon's premier research office.

The drone revolution and its continuing impact is fascinating to any student of military history and technology. As the article points out,

The development of a new generation of military robots, including armed drones, may eventually mark one of the biggest revolutions in warfare in generations. Throughout history, from the crossbow to the cannon to the aircraft carrier, one weapon has supplanted another as nations have strived to create increasingly lethal means of allowing armies to project power from afar.

The impact of the drone revolution on warfare is so dramatic that it creates numerous possibilities and raises many questions. If as expected, we eventually progress from the use of armed drones to true robots, acting according to programming as opposed to being under direct human command, we may have seen nothing yet.

In the not-too-distant future, military officials envision soldiers and robots teaming up in the field, with the troops able to communicate with machines the way they would with a human squad team member. Eventually, says Thompson, the robot-soldier relationship could become even more collaborative, with one human soldier leading many armed robots.

The whole article is extremely interesting reading.

Obama's War on Al Qaeda

With the killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki (along with a bonus terrorist), I once again have to give President Obama credit for taking decisive, effective action against Al Qaeda. As much as I dislike the president, and think he's an naive incompetent when it comes to foreign policy in general, I have to admit that he has pursued our war with Al Qaeda with every bit as much ferocity as his predecessor. If anything, he has expanded our global reach, and has demonstrated that there are few safe havens for terrorist enemies of the U.S. -- especially leaders like al-Awlaki.

Back in 2009 I wrote a series of posts giving my opinion on things I thought we should be doing to prosecute our war against radical Islamic terrorists. In the concluding post I said,

The U.S. needs to start instilling some terror of our own in our enemies. The current fear faced by Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region -- that they could be killed at any minute by a drone strike -- should be extended to terrorist enemies across the globe. Rather than fear arrest, every member of an Islamic terror organization, their supporters, and the radical Islamic clerics who cheer them on, should be made to live their lives waiting for a bullet in the head from a U.S.-directed assassin.

I also wrote,

there is little hope that anything I've suggested will be done by the current administration

Clearly I was wrong. The President has actually done some of what I advocated in the passage above. His establishment of drone bases gives us the means to strike at terrorists in various areas. More importantly, he has not allowed U.S. striking power to be crippled by the blind legalism of terrorist rights supporters. All the bases and drones in the world are useless without the will to send them into action. Unlike some -- including a minority on the right -- the president appears to be able to tell the difference between terrorist enemies who should be eliminated, and criminals subject to the legal system. In the case of al-Awlaki, he rightly decided that in this special case, American citizenship should not shield someone who is openly recruiting terrorists to strike America.

I'm a Republican partisan and I don't want to see Obama get re-elected. But it my opinion it is intellectually dishonest for Republicans to pretend that the president is somehow soft on terrorism, at least as it applies to operations against Al Qaeda and its affiliates worldwide. The evidence says that he isn't, and he should get credit for the things he does right, even from political opponents.

Anwar al-Awlaki Killed

We've been hunting Anwar al-Awlaki for quite some time and it appears that we finally got him. Details are unclear, but several news sources are reporting that he was killed in a drone strike. Naturally terrorist rights supporters are unhappy. I wrote about al-Awlaki and the ridiculous arguments of those claiming that he deserved "due process," a year ago in my post "Kill Anwar al-Awlaki."

Not So Secret Drone Bases

The Washington Post has a front-page story about a "ring" of supposedly secret drone bases, apparently oblivious to the fact that if they are a featured story in the paper, they are hardly all that secret anymore. These bases, a critical part of our worldwide counterterrorism efforts, have been exposed by our enemy Wikileaks, as part of its release of stolen diplomatic cables.

As I've pointed out before, Wikileaks has already done far more damage to the U.S. than most terrorists can dream of, and this is just the latest example. Al Qaeda doesn't need intelligence operatives in the U.S. conducting espionage to uncover details about U.S. counterterrorism efforts. It has Wikileaks to do it for them. The exposure of these secrets might make for interesting reading, but that damage to U.S. interests is real and significant. The Post covers the situation with Seychelles.

The government of Seychelles agreed to host U.S. drones and to keep their counterterrorism mission secret, using a cover story that they were there for anti-piracy operations. The U.S. told Seychelles that the drones would be unarmed.

During a meeting with Seychelles President James Michel on Sept. 18, 2009, American diplomats said the U.S. government “would seek discrete [sic], specific discussions . . . to gain approval” to arm the Reapers “should the desire to do so ever arise,” according to a cable summarizing the meeting. Michel concurred, but asked U.S. officials to approach him exclusively for permission “and not anyone else” in his government ... Michel’s chief deputy told a U.S. diplomat on a separate occasion that the Seychelles president “was not philosophically against” arming the drones, according to another cable. But the deputy urged the Americans “to be extremely careful in raising the issue with anyone in the Government outside of the President. Such a request would be ‘politically extremely sensitive’ and would have to be handled with ‘the utmost discreet care.’ ”

Here you see that the U.S. made a secret agreement with the president to cut out the rest of his government. In order to conduct these type of operations we need to make agreements with various countries that involve these sorts of back-door dealings, because of domestic political consideration in the states hosting our drones. How much harder will it be to obtain bases now that everyone knows that the U.S. is unable to keep even sensitive diplomatic correspondence secret, and unwilling to take necessary actions to destroy a hostile organization that is stealing and publishing those secrets? If you were the president of some other nation approached by the U.S., would you make a similar agreement, knowing that the U.S. can't keep secrets?

The Drone Revolution

When we look back at the past decade from a military history perspective, one of the things that stands out is the rise of unmanned drones as a key weapon of warfare. Today's New York Times has an article called, "War Evolves With Drones, Some Tiny as Bugs," that looks at current research and advances in drone technology. Here are some of the key points.

From blimps to bugs, an explosion in aerial drones is transforming the way America fights and thinks about its wars. ... far less widely known are the sheer size, variety and audaciousness of a rapidly expanding drone universe, along with the dilemmas that come with it.

The Pentagon now has some 7,000 aerial drones, compared with fewer than 50 a decade ago. Within the next decade the Air Force anticipates a decrease in manned aircraft but expects its number of “multirole” aerial drones like the Reaper — the ones that spy as well as strike — to nearly quadruple, to 536. Already the Air Force is training more remote pilots, 350 this year alone, than fighter and bomber pilots combined.

The roles and uses of drones will continue to expand, on land, sea, air and in space. The Times article looks at miniaturization and efforts to copy the flight of insects, but there are numerous other applications and possibilities for drone technology.

One thing is rarely mentioned in the many articles I've read about drones: defense against them. At the moment we are the leading user of drones and at the forefront of drone technology. Our opponents are non-state forces that are relatively low-tech in comparison. But at some point we might face an adversary with a sophisticated drone arsenal of its own, especially as drone technology not only becomes more advanced, but more widespread. With our extensive research efforts in developing drones, I hope we are also devoting some resources to defensive measures against enemy systems.

Laughing at the New America Foundation

The liberal New America Foundation just released a new poll taken in Pakistan's tribal areas. The foundation uses this poll to draw the sweeping conclusion that the U.S. drone assassination campaign is "self-defeating." Why? Because locals don't like it. Seriously.

What our poll suggests is that if the premise of the American counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is winning the support of the population, the United States is in danger of losing that support in the Taliban's rear bases inside Pakistan.

Except that the drone campaign and our counterinsurgency strategy inside Afghanistan are two different things. I'm not sure if the New America Foundation is too clueless to recognize the difference, or just being intellectually dishonest. The drone campaign is not intended to win hearts and minds, pacify & secure territory, protect civilians, or do any of the other things that make up our counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. It is intended to kill people that we have no other reasonable means to get at.

Is it even the slightest bit surprising that people living in the area don't like the drone campaign? What people would appreciate having a superpower sending killer robot aircraft over its villages to rain death on unsuspecting targets? Since the wrong targets are sometimes (often) attacked, and anyone who happens to be nearby can be wounded or killed, who in their right mind living in the Pakistani tribal areas would be supportive of this strategy?

So we can pretty much laugh at the main results of the poll as completely obvious and virtually meaningless. And then there is this gem of analysis.

The antagonism to U.S. policies in the region does not spring from general anti-American feelings. Almost three-quarters of the people in the tribal area said that their opinion of the United States would improve -- most by a great deal -- if the United States increased humanitarian aid and visas to work or study in the States.

Really? If we gave them a ton of money, let them into the U.S., and gave them jobs they'd like the U.S. better? So let me see if I've got this straight. According to the New America Foundation, Pakistanis who don't like U.S. policies would like us better if we changed our policies, gave them more money and did all sorts of other things they'd like. That's some genius analysis right there. Obviously it must mean they aren't motivated by anti-American feelings. I guess there's no point in mentioning that we already give a ridiculous amount of aid to Pakistan, and led the international relief effort after the latest flooding.

The poll also finds that the same Pakistanis would supposedly support action by the Pakistani military against the targets the U.S. is attacking. Too bad the Pakistani military is both unwilling & incapable of dealing with the situation. They are too prone to see the Afghan Taliban as a strategic asset, and can't control the tribal areas in any case.

The drone campaign has nothing to do with making Pakistani tribesmen happy or sad, it's about killing enemies of the U.S.

Terrorizing the Terrorists

That's a policy I've advocated for some time. And while I've had my doubts about the drone assassination program, according to the New York Times, it is working to spread terror amongst our enemies -- and that's a good thing.

Militants now sneak into villages two at a time to sleep, he said. Some homeowners were refusing to rent space to Arabs, who are associated with Al Qaeda, for fear of their families’ being killed by the drones, he said.

You know you have an effective terror campaign when neutrals, some of whom might even be sympathetic to Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, turn against them out of fear for their own safety. 

The strikes have become so ferocious, “It seems they really want to kill everyone, not just the leaders,” said the militant, who is a mid-ranking fighter associated with the insurgent network headed by Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani. By “everyone” he meant rank-and-file fighters, though civilians are being killed, too. ... Tactics used just a year ago to avoid the drones could not be relied on, he said. It is, for instance, no longer feasible to sleep under the trees as a way of avoiding the drones. “We can’t lead a jungle existence for 24 hours every day,” he said.

If this report, and the statements of this militant are representative, then the drone campaign has indeed succeeded in terrorizing our enemies. They live in constant fear of the drones, and the civilian population is turning against them.

I've been skeptical of the drone assassination campaign because of the ratio of enemy to civilian deaths, the danger of backlash and destabilization within Pakistan, and the limitations of a strategy based largely on air power. But if stories like this one are correct, it seems to be working. 

Al Qaeda Civil Liberties Union

If you go to the main ACLU website and look under the the section called "Our Work," here's the header:

The ACLU is our nation's guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.

That's what a civil liberties organization should be doing, and in many cases, local branches of the ACLU do exactly that. But the national organization is looking more and more like not just a useful idiot for our enemies, but an actual enemy itself. It has consistently been attempting to promote expansive rights for hostile alien terrorists -- not just suspects, but known, self-proclaimed terrorists. That's bad enough. But with the terrorist rights promotion, you can write it off as foolish but well-intentioned. In the minds of ACLU types, and other civil libertarians, degrading the U.S. Constitution by granting the rights of U.S. citizens to stateless terrorist enemies somehow protects the rights of Americans. But today we have this:

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit demanding the U.S. government prove its legal basis for targeted drone attacks overseas

Given the situation on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the drone assassination campaign, regardless of its drawbacks, represents the core of our offensive strategy against the Taliban & Al Qaeda in the area. These attacks have absolutely nothing to do with the rights of Americans, and should have nothing to do with the ACLU. By filing this lawsuit, the ACLU is deliberately attempting to undermine a major part of the U.S. war effort.  It is basically acting as a legal front for the Taliban and Al Qaeda against the United States.

That's Why We Have a CIA

Georgetown law professor Gary Solis wrote an article in yesterday's Washington Post called, "CIA drone attacks produce America's own unlawful combatants." The thrust of the column is that since the CIA is not part of the uniformed military, their role in hostilities makes them unlawful civilian combatants.

No less than their insurgent targets, they are fighters without uniforms or insignia, directly participating in hostilities, employing armed force contrary to the laws and customs of war. Even if they are sitting in Langley, the CIA pilots are civilians violating the requirement of distinction, a core concept of armed conflict, as they directly participate in hostilities.

This is true, but it's also completely irrelevant as an argument against the drone campaign. It merely states the obvious, and demonstrates why viewing wars through a legalistic lens is pointless and counterproductive.

As I have noted many times on this blog, the main reason countries have covert intelligence agencies, is to conduct operations which are by definition illegal. Most covert operations blatantly violate the laws of whatever country they occur in, international law, and often domestic law -- that's one major reason why CIA operations within the United States are tightly restricted. Saying that CIA actions in killing enemy targets are the acts of illegal combatants is utterly meaningless. Doing illegal things is its mission. Of course CIA operators will be viewed rightly as illegal combatants by enemies.

If captured, the unlawful acts committed during their direct participation makes them subject to prosecution in civilian courts or military tribunals. They are not entitled to prisoner-of-war status.

I seriously doubt any CIA covert operator has illusions on this score. Spies, saboteurs, assassins, and other types of illegal combatants do not, and should not have legal protection -- and have not traditionally, except for "legal" spies with diplomatic cover. 

By viewing the drone campaign as a military operation involving the CIA as illegal civilian combatants, Solis has it exactly backward. The drone campaign is an assassination program aimed at eliminating specific individuals. The military is assisting the CIA in carrying out assassinations. If he wanted to make a legal argument of some relevance, he might reasonably argue that the military shouldn't be openly supporting assassinations. But overall, his article illustrates yet again just how useless legalism is when applied to warfare. Ivory tower debate over laws and rules when applied to warfare has little impact, except to possibly impose more restrictions on those who actually follow rules -- in this case our side. And legalism applied to the actions of an organization designed to operate outside the law is both stupid and dangerous. It's stupid because it ignores the nature and purpose of the CIA, and it's dangerous because it imposes restrictions that cripple the ability of the CIA to carry out its missions.

Drone Strikes & Secrecy

I happened to notice an article at MSNBC called, "Secrecy of U.S. strikes in Pakistan criticized." There are some legitimate concerns about the drone assassination program. Are the results worth the collateral damage, the public relations problems, and the destabilizing effects on Pakistan? That's a difficult question to answer. But one thing that shouldn't be in question is the need for secrecy. 

You'll hear many people claim that we need more transparency from the government, that secrecy is dangerous, and that openness is the best policy. What we actually need is far more secrecy, particularly when it pertains to the secret operations of secret intelligence agencies. Many of our problems in the intelligence arena stem from the fact that we have failed to keep secrets. But getting back to the article,

More information about the CIA-run program could help offset opposition in Pakistan and also assuage concerns that the strikes violate international law.

How ridiculous is that assertion? First, opposition in Pakistan has nothing to do with not having enough information. The fact that foreign drones are operating in their country and killing Pakistanis, whatever portion are innocent victims, is going to produce opposition. Providing information that shows that a high proportion of militants are being killed, will simply be dismissed as U.S. propaganda. Second, intelligence agencies such as the CIA are designed in part specifically to violate international law. Obviously assassinating people is going to be interpreted as being against international law. If it is in the U.S. interest to eliminate these targets, international law is irrelevant except for public relations purposes. And that's another reason to maintain as much secrecy as possible.

"I think the main concern for those of us looking at it from the outside is we don't know what the criteria are for the individual decision of whether to pull the trigger or not," said Paul Pillar, a former senior counterterrorism official at the CIA.

Here's someone that should know better. As a former member of the CIA, he should be aware that he doesn't have a need to know. Sorry, Paul. Operational security is far more important than your desire to feel good about the drone assassination program. And then of course there are the usual suspects.

Several different groups, including the U.N. and the American Civil Liberties Union, have pressed the U.S. to reveal who it is killing in the strikes but have so far been rebuffed.

And they should continue to be rebuffed. The ACLU is an open supporter of terrorist rights, and the UN clearly can't be trusted with any sensitive information.

The U.S. government refuses even to acknowledge the drone program in Pakistan

The Obama administration is doing exactly the right thing in refusing to release more details. The less revealed the better.