Analyzing the United States Drone Strike Program

Analyzing the United States Drone Strike Program

      Since the terrorist organization al Qaeda began carrying out attacks against American personnel, the United States has strategized countless times on how to defeat these radical actors that have repeatedly threatened our ways of life.  President George Bush initiated the “War on Terror” shortly after the September 11 attacks, which includes broad goals such as to “Deny Sponsorship, Support, and Sanctuary to Terrorists ... Diminish the Underlying Conditions that Terrorists Seek to Exploit ... [and to] Defend U.S. Citizens and Interests at Home and Abroad” (National Strategy For Combating Terrorism, 2003).  As a result, the United States has been able to justify their use of torture, electronic surveillance, and organized drone attacks to name a few. While all of these methodologies have been critiqued and spoken out against, drone strikes have been at the forefront of debate because they have been used in such high volume since the declaration of the “War on Terror” and have a high probability for collateral damage.  Al Qaeda and other similar groups continue to pose a threat, and in order to end the conflict, the United States must revise their drone strike approach to rectify issues such as unintentional civilian death and unreliable intelligence.

      One main critique of the drone program is the unintended civilian deaths that become inevitable collateral damage when a drone is deployed.  Carrying out a drone strike on an area with human movement always poses a risk, and generally this includes the possibility of noncombatant casualties.  Brandon Bryant, a former drone sensor operator, has gone on record stating that “Drone operators taking shots at targets on the ground have little idea where the intelligence is coming from” (Scahill and Greenwald 2014).  This so-called intelligence is used in lethal operations, yet there are clear doubts about the legitimacy of this information by those tasked with the order to kill. A National Security Council spokesperson has also stated, “when there are indications that civilian deaths may have occurred, intelligence analysts draw on a large body of information ... to help us make informed determinations about whether civilians were in fact killed or injured” (Scahill and Greenwald 2014). If there is even the slightest possibility of civilian injury and death, the situation should be examined and reconfirmed as a target after this is taken into account.  However, it seems that the NSC only reexamines their actions after information about civilian death is brought forth. This system is clearly faulted, as the objective of drone strikes is to target those individuals who pose the most significant threat to the United States at the time. If civilians are killed and their cases are never adequately analyzed or rectified, further misinformation and confusion will arise when the target of the strike is found again months later, alive and well.

      Another point of contention with organized drone strikes is that they are often carried out based on unreliable intelligence such as geolocating by SIM card usage.  This is a common strategy employed by the United States; once the SIM card picks up a signal, the United States military can narrow the location of the SIM card and strike the area by sending a drone to the scene.  However, this technique has deep flaws and can be unreliable because there is no human intelligence involved, only electronic surveillance. Drone strikes are authorized when the SIM card of a specific phone is activated and an operating pattern is established, but it is more than likely that the target behind the SIM card was “unaware that their mobile phone is being targeted, [so they] lend their phone, with the SIM card in it, to friends, children, spouses and family members” (Scahill and Greenwald 2014).  The United States is prompted to send in a drone to kill the target while their location is known, but the vast majority of the time this location is only confirmed by the single cell signal. An anonymous JSOC down operator has spoken out against the tactic, stating, “It’s really like we’re targeting a cell phone. We’re not going after people – we’re going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy” (Scahill and Greenwald 2014). This way of targeting terrorists is ineffective, as there is no way to confirm whether the intended target was killed, or if the person behind the SIM card was a connection to the target with no hostile intentions towards the United States.

      Clearly the tactics enacted by the United States are not effective, as these drone strikes have led to dozens of cases of civilian deaths based on unreliable intelligence from geolocating techniques.  These needless casualties often fuel tensions across the Middle East and tend to be a driving force behind why individuals join terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda. The “War on Terror” has been an American priority for over sixteen years, yet the tactics used to combat this conflict are wasteful, inefficient, and detrimental to the overall cause.  Revising the organized drone strike program is the most effective means to combat terror, as there are multiple aspects within the drone program that could be repurposed or cancelled in order to divert funding towards developing programs that protect citizens of other states in the same way citizens of the United States are defended.

Sources Used

Scahill, Jeremy, and Glenn Greenwald. "The NSA's Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program." The Intercept. February 10, 2014. Accessed April 12, 2018. https://theintercept.com/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/.