Using drones: principles, tactics and results (amended title)

[carl]

A NYT article Drone Pilots Are Shown to Have Stress Disorders, which refers to a new DoD report:

The article says that the primary thing stressing the drone drivers is schedules. That is exactly the same thing the most bugs any commercial pilot. The article hinted the person doing the study was a bit disappointed by that because this person seemed to be looking for a more dramatic reason, angst about taking life anonymously, touchy-feely stuff like that.

The reason pilots are almost always stressed about schedules is two fold. First, unless you're lucky it isn't a 9-5, or 3-11 or 11-7 job. It always varies and it makes it hard to fit into a 9-5. Monday to Friday world.

Second, (and I don't know how much this goes for drone drivers) flying is a lot more fatiguing and fatiguing in a different way than people think. Prepping the plane, figuring the weather, delaying for two hours for weather and then flying two hours dodging weather to land in a snowstorm at an airport with moderate braking wears you out and then the day may only be half done. The suits don't see that. They only see you've been on duty for 7 hours. Dealing with an attitude, year after year, that equates 7 hours of blue skies and calm winds with 7 hours of blizzards stresses a guy.

[SWJ Blog]

Drones, Covert Action, and Counterterrorism: Why UAV Strikes should be Exclusively Military

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[davidbfpo]

Added here, with a slightly different explanation on the current Yemen thread.

The link is to a previously unheard of Swiss / Yemeni NGO report for the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights & CT - on drones in the Yemen. It is unusual in gathering eyewitness testimony and providing local contexts, worth reading IMHO:http://en.alkarama.org/documents/ALK...3_Final_EN.pdf

[davidbfpo]

A long, partly read review of 'The CIA, a Secret Army and a War at the Ends of the Earth' by Mark Mazzetti, in the London Review of Books, by an American lawyer, Stephen Holmes:http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n14/stephen...n-it-for-obama

He ends with:

Once Obama concluded that this war will never end, he presumably drew the sensible inference that traditional law-of-war detention is wholly inapplicable to the unconventional conflict in which the US is now engaged. That is when he made his fateful choice: the moment when he turned to the only form of incapacitation appropriate to a war without end. In so doing, he has bequeathed to us not a war that will be easier to contain, but one that is borderless and self-sustaining and that shows not a single discernible sign of burning itself out.

Link to Amazon, which has 113 reviews:http://www.amazon.com/Way-Knife-Secr...=mark+mazzetti

[davidbfpo]

A spectacular info graphic on the drone attacks on Pakistan. Not too sure how the breakdown of 3149 casualties works (since 2004): children, civilian, other combatants and targets (just 48 HVT). Found today, but it was released in March 2013 and reviewed here:http://www.economist.com/blogs/graph...-drone-strikes

Link to graphic:http://drones.pitchinteractive.com/

[jmm99]

See this post for much more on the "validity" of persons killed divided into categories, such as "civilians".

My conclusion is that the "civilian" category is determined by the politics and policies desired by the definer.

Regards

Mike

[davidbfpo]

A lengthy article by Mark Bowden in The Atlantic magazine:http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...ngle_page=true

For followers of this thread probably not much new, nevertheless well-written.

[slapout9]

Link to Foreign Policy magazine article iwhere a US Air Force General says in future conventional wars drones will be worthless due to their susceptibility to Anti Aircraft Missiles.

http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/...e_general_says

[Fuchs]

Link to Foreign Policy magazine article iwhere a US Air Force General says in future conventional wars drones will be worthless due to their susceptibility to Anti Aircraft Missiles.

http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/...e_general_says

We didn't need a general to know this, right?
Predator A is basically a motorglider on autopilot.

The USAF required long ago that a successor shall be survivable in less permissive environments. I forgot the exact words, but I remember the tender said something about medium threats.


On the other hand, the U.S. military developed plenty drones which were not of the motorglider pattern; plenty low observability designs with turbofans, for example.
The drones which seemed to have primetime before 2003 were drones meant for a European battlefield (KZO Brevel, Cl 289, Caracelle etc.); such as the ones used over Kosovo '99. This kind of drones is very compact with a small wing span, has relatively robust and typically encrypted radio links, and was meant for minutes or few hours of endurance.

Other drones are too small to justify the expense of a missile, and some are so very small even a Shilka would be a poor weapon against it, calling rather for shotguns.

The motorglider category of drones is really specialised on wars of occupation, assassinations and peacetime spying over borders. We knew this, right?

[SWJ Blog]

Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever

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[SWJ Blog]

The Future of Counterterrorism: Fewer Drones, More Partnerships

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[SWJ Blog]

World of Drones to Get Wilder and Wider

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[davidbfpo]

There is a double bargain today on SWJ Blog, a review of Dr. Brian Glyn William book 'Predators: The CIA’s Drone War on al Qaeda':http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...ar-on-al-qaeda

The first comment by a RAF officer, Keith Dear, points to an article in the journal Defence Stuies he wrote 'Beheading the Hydra? Does Killing Terrorist or Insurgent Leaders work', which is currently fully available for free: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...3#.UrnPJfsXluh

Yet more to read one day.

[SWJ Blog]

Predators: The CIA’s Drone War on al Qaeda

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[SWJ Blog]

Drones and Apaches Are the Army’s New Aerial Scouts

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[SWJ Blog]

SecDef Should Crack Whip On Cyber, Drones, & Training Foreigners

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[SWJ Blog]

Do Drones Present New Military Opportunities

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[davidbfpo]

I have merged several SWJ Blog posts to this thread. Several threads exist on specific topics related to drones, including targeting, use in rain forest Africa and more.

[davidbfpo]

A curious article on how targeting works, in particular the role of the NSA and from authors with an agenda. The title is: The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program:https://firstlook.org/theintercept/a...s-secret-role/

Already one author, the BBC's Mark Urban, have questioned the claim to be a revelation as he had written on this theme in 2010 (via Twitter).

[ODB]

NY Times article Feb 10, 2014: "WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is debating whether to authorize a lethal strike against an American citizen living in Pakistan who some believe is actively plotting terrorist attacks, according to current and former government officials.

It is the first time American officials have actively discussed killing an American citizen overseas since President Obama imposed new restrictions on drone operations last May." Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/wo...stan.html?_r=0

A subject which in my opinion does not draw enough attention considering the targeting of one's own citizens.