Never before have unmanned aerial vehicles been used so intensely in conflict, with even commercial devices enlisted in battle<\/p>\n
Three days into his presidency, Barack Obama ordered his first drone strikes. Over the next eight years, he oversaw a massive expansion<\/a> of the US programme of targeted killings using armed drones. The initial appeal was that the US did not risk its personnel, and strikes could be carried out without attracting much attention and, supposedly, with more precision \u2013 though civilian deaths<\/a> were ignored or played down.<\/p>\n But in the ensuing years, drone wars have undergone a dramatic evolution. Never before have so many drones been used, so intensely. The US programme relied on expensive Predator drones costing about $12m (\u00a39.5m). But much cheaper drones made by Turkey, Iran and China have been credited for victories, including Ethiopia\u2019s reversal<\/a> of the rapid advance of the Tigray People\u2019s Liberation Front, and for damaging attacks by non-state actors. In 2021, Gen Kenneth McKenzie, then commander of US Central Command, observed<\/a>: \u201cFor the first time since the Korean war, we are operating without complete air superiority.\u201d<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Never before have unmanned aerial vehicles been used so intensely in conflict, with even commercial devices enlisted in battle Three days into his presidency, Barack Obama ordered his first drone strikes. Over the next eight years, he oversaw a massive expansion of the US programme of targeted killings using armed drones. The initial appeal was … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}