A Globe and Mail reporter in the FATA reported,
People who sleep under the buzzing of the drones say it’s hard to settle down for the night, listening to the sound of armed machines nearby. Muhammad Amad, executive director of Idea, an aid group that works in the tribal areas, was telling a visitor that the drones are counterproductive because they stir up local anger, when he was interrupted by one of his local staffers from Waziristan, interjecting in broken English: “Mental torture,” said the bearded man, with sun-weathered skin. He repeated himself, struggling to enunciate: “Mental torture.” “Yes, it’s mental torture,” Mr. Amad said. “When we lie down under the noise of the drones, nobody sleeps.”
Several people from the tribal areas said the same thing. Sleeping pills and anti-depressants have become a regular part of the diet, they said, even in poor villages where few people can afford meat.64
The Xinhua news agency similarly reported, “Dr. Faizur Rehman Burki, a local physician, said that the drone strikes have not only panicked people, but also catalyzed uncertainty because of which people were now using sedatives. ‘Usage of tranquilizers has been increased,’ Xinhua news agency quoted Dr. Burki, as saying. ‘I am not scared, but haunted by the uncertainty that anything can happen anytime to my home and the loved ones,’ said Naseemullah, a native of Wana.”65
A local source told the Los Angeles Times, “These drones fly day and night, and we don’t know where to hide because we don’t know who they will target. If I could, I would take revenge on America.”66 Another Pakistani said, “People are very worried, very tense all the time. When the missile is fired from the plane, there is a loud explosion. When it hits the ground, it makes a terrifying noise. The people below, they just start running. Pieces of missile, they fly everywhere, very far, into other people’s houses.”67
Similar sentiments have been expressed in Yemen, where CIA drones have made several strikes on al Qaeda operatives, including the previously mentioned attack that accidentally killed a popular Yemeni governor. According to one Yemeni source, “The drones fly over Marib every 24 hours and there is not a day that passes that we don’t see them. The atmosphere has become weary because of the presence of U.S. drones and the fear that they could strike at any time.”68
Thus it would seem that for every voice in favor of the drones found in the previous chapter, there is a voice against them. Some supporters in the targeted regions support the drone campaign whereas others live in fear of the unseen killers in the sky. Some root for the drones to kill the militants who terrorize them whereas others point out that the drones are self-defeating in that they act as accidental recruiters for these very same terrorists when they kill civilian bystanders. That this is the case should not be surprising considering the controversial nature of any assassination campaign carried out during a time of war—especially one being run by a distrusted foreign government’s covert intelligence agencies.
11
The Future of Killer Drones
The development of a new generation of military robots, including armed drones, may eventually mark one of the biggest revolutions in warfare in generations.
—Anna Mulrine, Christian Science Monitor
It’s a good time to be a flying robot.
—Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman, Wired
There can be no doubt that drones represent the future of counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency in remote, unpoliced lands, such as Pakistan’s FATA region, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. Where U.S. troops cannot be placed on the ground, drones will increasingly fly to strike at those whom America deems to be its enemies. In 2011, during a speech given at Harvard University, John Brennan, the president’s top counterterrorism adviser, announced, “The United States does not view our authority to use military force against al-Qaeda as being restricted solely to ‘hot’ battlefields like Afghanistan.”1 This means that the U.S. government believes it can use drones wherever al Qaeda may be, from the Maghreb in North Africa (where al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb operates) to Mindanao in the southern Philippines (home to several pro–al Qaeda Islamic groups, such as Abu Sayyaf). All signs are that the U.S. military and the CIA are planning a future in which drones play an increasingly important role in warfare and antiterrorist operations.
This of course means more strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the primary focus of current drone operations. As the United States draws down its troops in Afghanistan in 2014 and prepares to hand the fight against the Taliban over to allied Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police troops, its ground presence in this strategic country will be much diminished, and the Pentagon will turn over much of the reduced American combat against the Taliban insurgents to small, elite groups of rapid-reaction special operations troops, manned support aircraft, and of course, drones. These troops and drones, which will most likely be based in residual bases, or so-called Joint Facilities, in Jalalabad (eastern Afghanistan), Kandahar (southern Afghanistan), and Bagram (north of Kabul), will be used to assist the Afghan army in repelling Taliban swarm assaults on town centers and will bolster the Afghan army’s efforts to carry out offensives against Taliban-held sanctuaries. They will also engage in “hunt and kill” missions designed to take out local Taliban commanders and disrupt their networks.
Most importantly, the Pakistani Taliban and Afghan Taliban have reportedly made an agreement to unite their forces to fight not against the Pakistani government but to overthrow the pro-U.S. government in Afghanistan.2 The Taliban alliance will be emboldened by the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan after 2014 and will doubtless widen their operations inside Afghanistan. As the Taliban and its al Qaeda allies try to carve out sanctuaries in Afghanistan, drone strikes will increasingly be necessary to keep them from openly gathering and exerting authority à la the FATA model.
The withdrawal of the majority of U.S. troops in Afghanistan will also bolster support for al Qaeda in the FATA. The need for counterterrorism-counterinsurgency personality strikes in this de facto Taliban statelet will be greater than ever. Pakistani major general Shafiq Ahmed has presciently stated, “If America wants to stay in Afghanistan, or safeguard its interests in case of a proposed pull-out [from Afghanistan], it has to tame North Waziristan.”3 This will certainly mean a continuation of signature-strike attacks on Taliban foot soldiers as well.
The drones will also play a key role in keeping up the pressure on AQAP in Yemen and al Shabab in Somalia. The new Yemeni president, Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, has condoned the strikes against the terrorists and insurgents who took advantage of the turmoil following the 2011 downfall of the Saleh government to carve out sanctuaries in the remote Abyan Province. In 2012 there were forty-two strikes in Yemen, almost as many as in Pakistan that year (forty-six).4 And in Somalia, U.S. special operations troops and drones are increasingly being used both to raid Shabab militants and to monitor pirates who have seized Western captives.
Libya provides an example of future uses for drones. As mentioned previously, in 2011 there were more drone strikes in Libya during the overthrow of Gaddafi than there were in Pakistan. The Global Post described this Libyan campaign as the model for future drone campaigns: “The death [of Gaddafi] is the latest victory for a new American approach to war: few if any troops on the ground and the heavy use of air power, including drones.”5 Regarding the drawbacks of conventional warfare, as opposed to drone campaigns, Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, “The lessons of the big wars are obvious. The cost in blood and treasure is immense, and the outcome is unforeseeable. Public support at home is declining toward rock bottom. And the people you’ve come to liberate come to resent your presence.”6
The drone-centric alternative to “big wars” dovetails with the Pentagon’s and CIA’s long-term plans for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations in the Islamic world and beyond. Former CIA official Bruce Riedel has said of Obama’s plans, “This administration has made a very conscious decision that it wants to get out of
large conventional warfare solutions and wants to emphasize counterterrorism and a lighter footprint on the ground.”7 Obama has said that the U.S. military of the future will focus on “intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, counterterrorism, countering weapons of mass destruction, and the ability to operate in environments where adversaries try to deny us access.”8 All these tasks can be done by drones. As Vice President Joe Biden put it in the October 2012 vice presidential debate, “We don’t need more M1 tanks, what we need is more UAVs.”9
Although the recent economic crunch has led to huge cuts in the U.S. military’s budget (the Pentagon is making $487 billion in cuts over ten years, eliminating at least eight brigades, and reducing the size of the active army from 570,000 to 490,000 troops), the Pentagon is set to increase its drone combat air patrols from sixty-one to eighty-five. It has called for a 30 percent increase in the drone fleet in coming years.10 This represents a shift from big bloody wars, like the invasion of Iraq, which cost more than $1 trillion and forty-five hundred American lives, to the aerial campaign in Libya, which cost just more than $1 billion and no U.S. lives.
In addition to bases in Turkey, Sicily, Afghanistan, and (potentially once again) Pakistan, drones will be launched from forward staging bases that some advisers are calling “lily pad bases.” These bases include those currently found in Camp Lemonier, Djibouti, and Arba Minch, Ethiopia.11 Similar new bases may be built in Jordan and Turkey to help monitor Iraq and in the Seychelles Islands of the eastern coast of Africa to hunt Somali pirates.12 President Obama also authorized the building of a new secret drone base in the Rub al Khali Desert in eastern Saudi Arabia to carry out strikes on AQAP.13 In response to the takeover of northern Mali by extremists from Ansar Dine, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and allied Tuareg rebels in the winter of 2012–2013, the president called for the creation of a drone base in Niamey, the capital of neighboring Niger.14 Obama’s most recent defense budget calls for funding for the construction of an “afloat forward staging base,” that is, a launching pad for drones and special operations units that can be sailed around the world to potential hot spots.15 This base could park offshore and send CIA or JSOC drones into nearby countries to kill targets without having to ask the local government for permission.
The U.S. intelligence community keeps its plans more secret than the military, but these drone basing trends certainly reflect the CIA’s drone future as well. In fact, their drones have already flown from lily pad bases in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and perhaps elsewhere. The CIA division that controls the drones, the Counterterrorism Center, has grown from three hundred employees to two thousand since 9/11 and now represents about 10 percent of the agency’s workforce.16 Thus the CIA, which once focused more on espionage, will doubtless continue to carry out is counterterrorism drone operations in all the previously described contexts.
THE DRONE REVOLUTION
Whether one supports the drone strikes or is opposed to them, there is no doubt that drones are here to stay. A few facts about drones will make their permanence abundantly clear:
■ In 2000 the United States had just fifty drones. Today almost one in three U.S. warplanes is a drone. That translates to approximately 7,500 drones in the U.S. fleet. The majority of them (5,346) are Ravens, a small hand-launched surveillance drone used by the army.17 Nearly every brigade that fought in Iraq or Afghanistan had a Raven for “look down” or “overwatch” surveillance purposes.
■ In October 2012 the CIA asked the White House for ten more drones to add to its already existing fleet of as many as thirty-five. There has been discussion of deploying these additional drones in North Africa against al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, against militants in post-Gaddafi Libya, and in the vast expanses of northern Mali that were briefly conquered by al Qaeda–linked militants in the winter of 2012–2013.18
■ Since 2005 patrols by drones have increased 1,200 percent.19
■ The Air Force trained more drone pilots in 2011 than regular pilots.20 More than half of all undergraduate pilot training graduates are assigned to pilot drones rather than manned aircraft.21 Since 2008 the number of Air Force drone pilots has grown fourfold to eighteen hundred.22
■ In nine years the Pentagon has increased its drone fleet thirteen-fold and is spending $5 billion a year adding to it.23
■ A recent Defense Department plan calls for a 30 percent increase in the size of the U.S. drone fleet in coming years.24
■ In August 2011 the United States revealed it would be investing around $23 billion in advancing its drone program. This at a time of steep military cutbacks.25
■ Since 2001 the military has spent more than $26 billion on drones.26
■ Globally over the next decade more than $94 billion is expected to be spent on drone research and procurement.27
■ British military officials have said that almost one-third of Royal Air Force aircraft will be drones in twenty years.28
■ More than fifty countries have built or bought drones. Even the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah has used Iranian-built drones. Many observers are worried about a future drone arms race that will see countries other than the United States hunting down their enemies with remote-control planes.29
■ The UK has developed a $225 million jet-propelled drone capable of hitting targets on other continents. Known as the Taranis, it was named after the Celtic god of thunder.30 Unlike the ungainly Predator and Reaper, the stealth technology–equipped Taranis has an internal bomb bay that can carry a wide array of weapons.
■ In March 2013 General Atomic Aeronautical Systems agreed to sell $197 million worth of drones to the United Arab Emirates, in the first sale of drones to a non-NATO member. The unarmed version of the Predator is to be known as the Predator XP and will be used for surveillance missions.31
■ The Pentagon intends to spend approximately $37 billion on a variety of drones including the MQ-9 Reaper and the Global Hawk, a high-flying drone spy plane.32
■ The U.S. military currently has sixty-five advanced MQ-9 Reapers, and it plans to receive four hundred more of them.33
■ The U.S. military has procured more than 250 MQ-1 Predator drones.34
■ The 2011 defense budget sought funds for a 75 percent increase in drone operations.35
■ The military plans to buy more than eighty Global Hawk surveillance drones, which cost $141 million per aircraft.36
■ The U.S. Navy is developing a carrier-based jet drone known as the X-47B, which can fly ten times farther than manned planes and defend aircraft carriers from threats such as “carrier killer” missiles.37
■ The United States recently launched a surveillance drone, known as the Phantom Eye, that can remain aloft for four days gathering intelligence.38
■ The U.S. Air Force is developing nanodrones, such as the Wasp, that weigh less than a pound and can fly to a thousand feet. The Air Force has also planned Project Anubis (named for the Egyptian god of death) to build small killer drones that weigh less than a pound. The small drones will be used to terminate HVTs and could one day fly in swarms against an enemy.39
■ The U.S. Army recently developed a small backpack-size drone, known as the Switchblade. This kamikaze aircraft carries explosives that can be launched from a tube, loiters in the sky, and dives at targets upon command.40
■ China unveiled twenty-five new drone models at an air show in 2011, and Iran claims to have two drones, known as “messengers of death,” that are capable of long-range missions.41
■ By late 2011 U.S. drones had logged 2.7 million hours of flight with the majority of that time (87 percent) being flown in combat.42
■ The U.S. Army has developed a surveillance drone that can be flown by the crew of an Apache AH-64D Longbow attack helicopter to help it find its targets on the ground.43
■ Predator drones are already being used to monitor the U.S.-Mexican border. Recently a Mexican police drone crashed in the United States.44
■ America has already e
xperienced its first attempt by a terrorist to use a drone to carry out a terrorist act. In September 2011 Rezwan Ferdaus was arrested in the Boston area after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found him plotting to use seven-foot remote-control toy planes loaded with C-4 plastic explosives to blow up the Pentagon and other targets in Washington, DC.45
■ Palestinian sources say more than eight hundred people have been killed by Israeli drone strikes in the Gaza strip in recent years.46
■ The U.S. Air Force has begun purchasing a new jet drone known as the Predator C, or Avenger, that will allow it to deliver munitions to a target at a much faster speed than the propeller-driven Predators and Reapers in its current fleet. The Avenger carries even more ammunition than the Reaper.47
■ Since the United States began its drone war in Pakistan, more than two thousand people have been killed by U.S. drones.48 That is more than the total U.S. combat loses in Afghanistan in a decade of fighting.
■ In December 2010 the U.S. Air Force announced that it had test-flown the X-37B, a drone modeled on the space shuttle, into space. This development caused many drone critics to worry that the Air Force was involved in weaponizing drones for space warfare.49
■ In February 2012 the NATO alliance agreed to deploy a fleet of its own drones after seeing how useful the American drones were in the joint NATO-U.S. air war on Gaddafi forces in Libya.50 NATO has already begun building a 1.3 billion Euro drone base at Sigonella in Sicily.51
Weaponized and surveillance drones are clearly the future of American counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations, and perhaps even of conventional warfare. Whereas the first drone attack on al Qaeda, which took place in Yemen in 2002, was greeted with tremendous coverage by the international media, drone strikes today are considered so mundane that they are now relegated to small articles on newspapers’ back pages, if they are picked up at all. The vast majority of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, seems to have accepted this radical development with little real debate. In fact 83 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s stepped up drone policy, including liberal Democrats, 77 percent of whom support the president on the issue of drone strikes.52 For Americans, drone attacks in distant locations seem to be an accepted part of the post-9/11 world.
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