Droning on…
A good history of a decade of drone wars (not secret!) with little historical context
The subtitle suggests revelations about black operations, new technologies and covert wars away from the media. But drone wars are not secret: they have been splashed all over the headlines for the last 14 years or so.
The US military have been carrying out drone strikes since 2001 in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Yemen and Somalia. The aircraft involved are Predators and Reapers, operated remotely from Creech Air Force base in Nevada by the USAF and CIA. Casualty figures are widely reported on various websites, and while the exact mix of civilians and militants/insurgents/ terrorists is disputed, there is broad agreement on the scale of operation and the thousands killed and injured.
This means that all Chris Woods can do in this book is fill in details. As an investigative journalist and BBC Panorama producer, he does an excellent job of recording the minutiæ of drone warfare. He has spoken to a huge number of people, most of them with the US military, and gives a good account of the effort it takes to keep a drone in the air, the back offices filled with imagery intelligence analysts, as well as the military lawyers on hand to advice the operator who actually presses the button to launch Hellfire missiles.
Ironically enough, Woods’s biggest revelation is the low number of drone strikes in Somalia. Of 200 alleged by Iranian media, the vast majority were actually bombings by manned Somali Air Force aircraft. Only a handful were US drone strikes.
What Woods lacks, though, is the sense of context for the history and technology. It is not news that the US carries out airstrikes which it does not acknowledge. Operation Menu in 1969–70 killed tens of thousands in Cambodia. Compared to this, the whole drone war is small potatoes. Equally, the CIA’s programme of covert, deniable operations over the Soviet Union, China and elsewhere has been well documented. You would have to be naïve indeed to be shocked or even surprised.
Before drones, cruise missiles were the hands-off weapon of choice and the shift is one of technology, not policy. Woods does not seem to be aware of drone operations in WWII, Korea and Vietnam and why the military were so hostile to them. More importantly, he does see how the changes in technology have enabled the drone revolution and continue to drive it forward.
Crucially, looking forward, Woods’s concern is that others may emulate the US approach of drone strikes of questionable legality. He does not look at the advance of drone technology, which suggests the emergence of a generation of killing machines more lethal than the current models, and which will enable a far more effective policy of “death from above”.
Sudden Justice is interesting as a history of the first decade of targeted killings. But such a live issue deserves a more forwardlooking analysis to help us