Latest in Drones
Greg Miller has an interesting and seemingly quite well-sourced article in the Washington Post today documenting (and offering explanations for) a significant decline in CIA drone strikes. To be clear, the claim is not that drone strikes on the whole are in decline.
CENTCOM has just released a summary of publicly-acknowledged airstrikes conducted against AQAP targets in Yemen over the first five months of 2016. The list includes three strikes from February and March that were not previously acknowledged, interestingly, and there is no guarantee that there are not others of that kind still awaiting public disclosure.
The DOD airstrike that may have killed Taliban leader Mullah Mansour is interesting, from a legal perspective, at many levels. From an international law perspective, as Marty Lederman explains here, it looks to be another example of action under color of the much-discussed unwilling/unable principle (unless of course there was consent from Pakistan and the denials in the public record are mere
Will offense beat defense in the drone arms race?
Dave Blair proposes a reassessment of the way we think about "drones" and why this categorization matters for U.S. security policy.
Excellent! Make sure you watch to the end to see the countermeasures that defeat this menace.
Run -- don't walk, run -- to your nearest movie theater and see Eye in the Sky. Its approach to law and war will be of interest to anyone who reads this blog. Plus, its a good movie (as it's 92% positive on Rotten Tomatoes will attest).
Just this morning, I was thinking that things have been rather quiet with respect to media coverage of U.S. operations against AQ and AQ affiliates in places like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Well...
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence today released a second set of documents recovered during the raid of Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The Stimson Center's "Report Card" on U.S. drone policy is not a fair or accurate portrayal of the facts.