Unmanned: Drones, Data, and the Illusion of Perfect Warfare

by William M. Arkin

  20. The DarkStar program was canceled in January 1999, before it had completed its full demonstration.

  21. Basic background on Global Hawk comes from Air Combat Command (ACC) Concept of Operations for Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), August 2000, Version 2.0.

  22. Air Combat Command (ACC) Concept of Operations for Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), August 2000, Version 2.0, p. ix; DOD, UAS ROADMAP 2005, p. 6.

  23. Global Hawk’s airborne systems are designed to identify, isolate, and compensate for a wide range of possible system failures and also autonomously take actions.

  24. The initial order called for the air force to acquire fifty-one, with the first six to be delivered through the end of 2002.

  25. Rand, Innovative Management in the DARPA HAE UAV Program, p. 56.

  26. Rand, Global Hawk and DarkStar in the HAE UAV ACTD, p. 27.

  27. GAO-06-447 Unmanned Aircraft Systems, p. 12; Bill Yenne, Attack of the Drones, p. 76.

  28. Rand, Global Hawk and DarkStar in the HAE UAV ACTD, pp. 38–39.

  29. On August 27, Baghdad claimed that it shot down a Predator over southern Iraq; another was reported downed in Afghanistan before the shooting started; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1511540.stm.

  30. Written Statement for the Record of the Director of Central Intelligence, Before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, March 24, 2004.

  31. 9/11 Commission Report, p. 211.

  32. At the Center of the Storm, p. 158; Written Statement for the Record of the Director of Central Intelligence, Before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, March 24, 2004.

  “Following the attacks on 11 September 2001, the United States rapidly fielded the armed Predator into an environment that not only lacked a clear delineation of the command and control framework, but one where there existed no direct policy on who, when, where, and how to use this new asset. Military commanders can and do fill in the blanks in a situation like this, however, with the current trend of rapid technology development, a more forward looking approach in which policy makers address the questions faster than technological achievements occur will minimize the holes needing to be filled in.” See Major Matthew C. Crowell, “Unmanned Warfare: Second and Third Order Effects Stemming from the Afghan Operational Environment between 2001 and 2010,” Master’s Thesis, US Army Command and General Staff College, 6 October 2011, pp. 39–40.

  33. American Soldier, p. 258.

  34. Inside Centcom, p. 23.

  35. Richard Myers and Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon (New York: Pocket Books, 2009), p. 164.

  36. www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A64802-2002Jan30¬Found=true; According to Bradley Graham: “The contrast between the extent of Pentagon and CIA readiness became clear at… Camp David… A Defense Department paper prepared for the Camp David briefing book had again raised the prospect of hitting Iraq…. It would afford the Pentagon a chance to spearhead a complementary effort to what was shaping up as an unconventional war in Afghanistan led by the CIA.” See Bradley Graham, By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld (New York: PublicAffairs, 2009), p. 290.

  37. Woodward, p. 101; 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 333, 335.

  38. Peter L. Bergen, Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad (New York: Crown, 2012), p. 25.

  39. Whittle, Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution (2014), pp. 240–245.

  40. 9/11 Commission Report, p. 331.

  41. Air Power Against Terror: America’s Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom, p. 67.

  42. Eyes on the Horizon, p. 169.

  43. www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/marion.html

  44. General Tommy Franks with Malcolm McConnell, American Soldier (New York: Regan Books/HarperCollins, 2004), p. 273.

  45. Gary Schroen, First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan (New York: Presidio Press, 2005), pp. 113, 136.

  46. The ministry wasn’t actually an invention of the Taliban, which is to say that the capital crime committed by Mullah Mohammed Omar, the first high-value target ever to be attacked by the United States of America, was hosting al Qaeda; violating human rights and preventing vice Taliban-style were certainly repugnant but not worth a war before 9/11. In the five years after the commander of the faithful consolidated his rule and gained some degree of international recognition as head of a failed state, his day-to-day existence took on that furtive and protective reclusion we associate with despots.

  47. The story is told from the vantage point of the operators in Whittle, Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution (2014), pp. 280ff. See also Richard Whittle, Predator’s Big Safari, Mitchell Papers 7, August 2011, p. 8; Lieutenant Colonel Mark A. Cooter, USAF, Airborne Armed Full Motion Video: The Nexus of Ops/Intel Integration in the Joint/Coalition Environment, Joint Forces Staff College, Joint Advanced Warfighting School, May 25, 2007, p. 1; Christopher J. Bowie, Robert P. Haffa, Jr., and Robert E. Mullins; Future War: What Trends in America’s Post-Cold War Military Conflicts Tell Us About Early 21st Century Warfare, Northrop Grumman Analysis Center, 2003, p. 58.

  48. The first combat shot is confirmed in Air Force PowerPoint Briefing, ISR Innovations and UAV Task Force Directorate, NDIA Conference, November 4, 2008.

  49. Seymour M. Hersh, “King’s Ransom,” The New Yorker, October 22, 2001, p. 38.

  According to General Delong, Franks’s deputy commander, in his autobiography Inside Centcom (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2004), pp. 37–38, CIA director Tenet and Franks discuss the attack:

  “‘I’m not convinced that’s him,’ Franks said, ‘and the collateral damage issues are significant.’

  “‘We think it is him,’ Tenet said.

  “CENTCOM’s Rules of Engagement were strict: You had to be sure. Franks wasn’t sure, and neither were the CENTCOM staff or the CENTCOM lawyers. Omar was a big fish, but we did not want to kill innocent civilians.

  “Franks answered, ‘We’re going to wait.’”

  General Franks gives a different version of events. He says the convoy included three vehicles and a motorcycle, and was detected at around 4:30 a.m. local time. Brigadier General Jeff Kimmons, the CENTCOM J-2, says “the convoy profile fits Taliban leadership.” The CIA also states that the target had “all of the characteristics of a leadership convoy.” The CENTCOM JAG navy captain Shelly Young pronounces the convoy a “valid target.” Given the probability of kill with a moving convoy of only 30 percent, Franks requests that the CAOC check to see whether aircraft are in the area and available. The convoy enters Kandahar and the passengers enter a compound, removing large cases of what General Franks believes are shoulder-fired SAMs. Before the Predator shot can be lined up, the convoy leaves, drives some forty minutes, and stops “in a courtyard of a mosque, a large, domed building surrounded by mud huts and several two-and three-story structures, upscale homes by Afghan standards.” Franks orders the Predator to attack a car, perhaps to persuade the people to leave the mosque “and give us a shot at the principals.” Cars and trucks speed away to the northeast, stopping about half a mile away at a multistory house. General Franks decides to call Secretary Rumsfeld to get clearance to hit “a high collateral damage target.” Rumsfeld gets permission from the president within five minutes. But the CIA says it thinks the building is a mosque, and some of the people have left the building. Franks orders F/A-18 Hornets, which have arrived on station, to attack the building, which is destroyed. See American Soldier, pp. 288–295.

  General Charles (“Chuck”) Horner, the air war chief in Desert Storm, provides yet another version of events, cockeyed factually, but nevertheless revealing about the underlying issues:

  “In Afghanistan we saw examples of both schools: the ‘centralizers,’ who seek to accumulate data at the senior level in order to guide the actions of
those operating in battle, and the ‘decentralizers,’ who push data down or at least make it readably available to those locked in battle. An example is vivid pictures of General Franks operating in Tampa, Florida. He is viewing the movement of individuals at night walking in a compound in Afghanistan attempting to identify Mullah Omar and next determine if he should be shot by a missile from a Predator aircraft operating immediately overhead. Alternatively, the video/audio tape of an AC-130 demonstrates the capacity of a virtual network that provides those with their hands on the trigger almost unimaginable support. In this case an intelligence officer in California is pointing out which of the structures in the AC-130 thermal sensor’s field of view is a Mosque and which houses al-Qaida gunmen. At the same time linguists in Georgia provide commentary about the identity of the individuals walking from the Mosque and their intentions. In theater support for both General Franks and the AC-130 aircrew includes an array of overhead assets: EC-130, EC-135, E-3, EP-3, and E-8 manned aircraft and Global Hawk and Predator unmanned aircraft. All are tied together by a vast array of communications links providing all the capability to reach forward or reach back”; General (retired) Charles A. Horner, Men and Machines in Modern Warfare, n.d. (2002), provided to the author.

  50. Eyes on the Horizon, p. 192.

  51. American Soldier, p. 303.

  52. According to General Franks, “by the 20th of October, virtually all of the air defenses and early warning systems in Afghanistan had been destroyed by airpower. And so, perhaps at that point, conditions were set for us to move in to conduct some special operations work that was done on the ground—the introduction of our Special Forces. I think it was about the 20th of October [actually the 19th] that we put the first high-end direct action raid into the very home of Mullah Omar in downtown Khandahar [sic]. What a remarkable feat!” See General Tommy R. Franks, Commander in Chief, U.S. Central Command, AFA National Symposium—Orlando, February 14, 2002.

  53. Major Joseph Campo, USAF; Information Dominance or Information Overload?, Naval War College, 3 May 2010, p. 8.

  54. Franks says Jumper, the air force chief of staff, had been watching the Predator video feed from the Pentagon. Franks says he then requests that the Predator feed be removed from the Pentagon; see American Soldier, pp. 288–295.

  CHAPTER EIGHT My Back Is Killing Me

  1. Atef played some role in training or equipping anti-American fighters in Somalia in 1992–1993, was the military commander of the Embassy bombings in 1998, and was the primary operational head above Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for the planning of 9/11. He was a member of the majlis al shura (or consultation council) of al Qaeda and became head of its military committee in 1996. He was responsible for supervising the terrorist training of al Qaeda members and identifying targets for terrorist attacks that would be carried out.

  2. The best description of this important event is given by Richard Whittle in Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution, pp. 276–290. The account is written mostly from the recollections of air force participants stationed at the CIA.

  See also Chris Cole, “The Drone Wars Briefing,” Drone Wars UK, January 2012, p. 2; quoting Mary Ellen O’Connell, Seductive Drones: Learning from a Decade of Lethal Operations, Journal of Law, Information & Science, Notre Dame Law School, August 2011, pp. 4–5; MedAct (UK), which states: “a CIA-operated Predator drone was used in combat for the first time to assassinate Mohammed Atef, an alleged al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan,” Drones: the physical and psychological implications of a global theatre of war, MedAct (UK), 2012, p. 2.

  “A drone was used in November 2001, to launch a missile to kill al-Qaida’s Mohammed Atef in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad”; Mary Ellen O’Connell, Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law, Research Professor of International Dispute Resolution—Kroc Institute, Notre Dame Law School, “Unlawful Killing with Combat Drones; A Case Study of Pakistan, 2004–2009,” Legal Studies Research Paper No. 09-43, Final Draft: July 2010.

  “The targeted killing operations have successfully killed a number of senior Al-Qaeda members, including its chief of military operations, Mohammad Atef”; Gabriella Blum and Philip Heymann, “Law and Policy of Targeted Killing,” Harvard National Security Journal, Vol. 1, June 27, 2010, p. 151.

  “However, on November 3, 2001, a missile-carrying Predator drone killed Mohammed Atef, al Qa`ida’s chief of military operations, in a raid near Kabul”; Testimony of William C. Banks before the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, United States House of Representatives, April 28, 2010; quoting James Risen, “A Nation Challenged: The Terror Network,” New York Times, December 13, 2001, p. A1.

  See also Christopher Bolkcom and Kenneth Katzman, “Military Aviation: Issues and Options for Combating Terrorism and Counterinsurgency,” CRS Report for Congress, 2005, p. 14; Dennis Larm, “The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’s Identity Crisis,” Army War College, May 3, 2004, p. 3.

  Kenneth Chang, “A Crafty, Deadly Predator,” New York Times, November 23, 2001, p. B3; Judith Miller and Eric Schmitt, “Ugly duckling turns out to be formidable in the air,” New York Times, November 23, 2001, p. B1; “Sources Report Death of Mohammed Atef,” CNN.com, transcript of interview by CNN anchor Bill Hemmer with CNN national correspondent Mike Boettcher, November 16, 2001.

  “During the November 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, CIA predator drones attacked a high-level al Qaeda meeting in Kabul, missing Osama bin Laden but killing his military chief, Mohammed Atef”; John Yoo, War by Other Means (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006), p. 49. Note: This is no evidence whatsoever that Osama bin Laden was anywhere near Atef on November 12–13.

  See also Bill Yenne, Attack of the Drones: A History of Unmanned Aerial Combat, p. 9; Dennis M. Gormley, “New Developments in Unmanned Air Vehicles and Land-Attack Cruise Missiles,” in SIPRI Yearbook 2003—Armaments, Disarmament and International Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 417.

  3. The Secret History of al Qaeda, p. 24.

  Atef is an alias for Tayseer Abu Sitah, AKA Abu Hafs al-Masri (“The Egyptian”) and Subhi Abu Sitah. He was born in 1944 in Egypt; he was a police officer by training and one of the original members of Egyptian Islamic jihad before becoming an al Qaeda man.

  4. Associated Press (Kabul), Kathy Gannon, “Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera’s office in Afghan capital destroyed by missile,” 12 November 2001.

  5. Rear Admiral Quigley, Deputy Spokesman, Department of Defense, Briefing at the Foreign Press Center, Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2001—3:16 p.m. EST, www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2001/t11142001_t1113fpc.html.

  6. Vernon Loeb, “U.S. Bombs Hit Kabul TV Station,” Washington Post, November 14, 2001, p. A13.

  7. AP (Kathy Gannon), “Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera’s office in Afghan capital destroyed by missile.” November 13, 2001; Vernon Loeb, “U.S. Bombs Hit Kabul TV Station,” Washington Post, November 14, 2001, p. A13. Hoey said that the bombing of Serb television in Belgrade during the Kosovo conflict was a different issue; there, he said, the targets in question “appeared to have government facilities associated with them.”

  Another Pentagon spokesman, Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Dave Lapan, said: “We hit an al-Qaeda facility… we don’t know what al-Jazeera was doing there.” See Julia Scheeres, “Trolling the Web for Afghan Dead,” Wired, January 4, 2002; www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,49475,00.html.

  It was a “command and control facility,” another Pentagon spokesman said. Matt Wells in Barcelona, “Al-Jazeera accuses US of bombing its Kabul office,” The Guardian (UK), November 17, 2001.

  8. Letter, General Tommy R. Franks, to Ann Cooper, Committee to Protect Journalists, n.d. (21 June 2002).

  9. Committee to Protect Journalists, “United States: CPJ asks Pentagon to explain Al-Jazeera bombing,” New York, January 31, 2002.

  10. The attack is reported variously to have occurred between 1:30 and 3:00 a.m. local time on November 13, 2001. The Committee to P
rotect Journalists says that the incident occurred at 1:30 a.m. Kabul time; Committee to Protect Journalists news alert, “Afghanistan: U.S. Airstrike Destroys al-Jazeera Office in Kabul,” November 13, 2001. The managing director of Al-Jazeera, Mohammed Jassim al-Ali, has been quoted as saying that the strike occurred around 3 a.m. Kabul time; AP (Kathy Gannon), “Missile destroys al-Jazeera office,” November 13, 2001. CENTCOM says the attack occurred at 3:40 p.m. EST Monday.

  11. See, in particular, the account in Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution, pp. 276–290.

  12. Nik Gowing, “Full text of Nik Gowing’s al-Jazeera feature,” The Guardian (UK), April 8, 2002.

  13. Nik Gowing, “Full text of Nik Gowing’s al-Jazeera feature,” The Guardian (UK), April 8, 2002.

  14. The Secret History of al Qaeda, p. 25.

  15. Department of the Air Force, Operation Anaconda: An Airpower Perspective, 2005, p. 15.

  16. Ali H. Soufan, The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), p. 345. Soufan says Atef was killed with seven other al-Qaeda members.

  17. Bergen, Manhunt, p. 37.

  18. 9/11 Commission Report, Notes to Chapter 7, p. 527.

  19. See Charles N. Cardinal, Timber P. Pagona, and Edward Marks, The Global War on Terrorism, A Regional Approach to Coordination, Joint Force Quarterly (JFQ), Autumn 2002, p. 49: “Perhaps the earliest successes in the regional campaign were arrests in Singapore and Malaysia of Jemaah Islamiya cells that were well rehearsed in the press. The arrests occurred in December 2001 after evidence of operational planning against U.S. and allied targets in Singapore was found in the residence of Mohamed Atef in Afghanistan.”