A few years ago I wrote, in The Myth of Precision Bombing, these points:
1. So-called “precision” bombing, though the use of JDAMs and drone-carried devices, has greatly increased the accuracy of each bomb.
2. With many times fewer bombs required, the cost, especially in lives, to the bombing power of shrinks, particularly for drone-launched ordinance, where no lives —
of the bombing power — are placed at risk at all.
3. Drone attacks and similar stand-off methods also mitigate the political risk that air crew may fall into the hands of populations hostile to the U.S, and be exhibited as hostages.
4. Drone warfare will become widely used, but t is only effective in undefended air space, which requires either a compliant or non-existent local regime.
5. More precise delivery of munitions does not mean fewer “civilian” casualties. In fact hundreds of people can be killed at once with these devices, as shown by the Amiriyah air raid shelter bombing in the first Gulf War.
6. Who is killed and how many are killed becomes largely the function of targeting decisions.
Significant issues remain as to the morality of drone bombing ...
but if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make ...
But how quaint I sound -- quite aside from such antique ideas, there are excellent reasons to believe that drone warfare is a failure, as I hope to show below the fold.
Exhibit A is Yemen. Much is known about drone war in Yemen, and it is compiled
here, at Drone Wars Yemen.
The short version is that from 2002 to now, there have been 15 air strikes and 105 drone strikes, which have killed somewhere around 1000 people, of whom somewhere around 10% were "civilians" and the rest "militants", with the usual definitional issues arising.
A number of “leaders” have been killed, most of whom don’t even quite rise to the level of Al Qaeda’s Number 2 Man (Maybe, as Cracked suggests, we should just bomb the factory where all these Number 2 Men are made?)
Image 3: Yemen control as of 1/18/15: Yellow = Houdi militia;
Pink = Govt; Gray = Al-Qaeda. Attribute: Wiki commons.
Now of course the government of Yemen, whom we propped up with our air and drone strikes, has fallen and the capital, Sanaa is now under the control of a Shia militia, the Houthi, who also hold a large part of northern Yemen, where the capital is.
You can see from the maps that we've basically been the air force for the Yemeni government. Who knows if the people we've killed were actually our enemies or just the enemies of that regime? They're probably our enemies now, so I guess it's a moot point.
In any case, should the Houthi militia (motto: "Death to America", BTW) succeed in establishing a state, most likely in Northern Yemen, one of the chief conditions of drone warfare, that is a non-existent or sufficiently supine local government, may well disappear. And it's unlikely that the leader of the Houthi militia, said to be Abdul Malik Al-Houthi will be very friendly to us, seeing as he was nearly killed back in 2009 in an air strike launched by our franchise operation, the Saudi Royal Air Force.
Now, all this effort in Yemen has led to a situation where a good chunk of the country of 24 million people is in the hands of enemies of the United States, either the Houthi militia or Al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula (AQAP) Drone warfare in Yemen, which was concentrated on AQAP, has not salvaged our local collaborationist (as they are viewed) government, nor has it reduced the number of our enemies.
Nor will the slick definition of most people whom we strike as "militants" mollify the people of Yemen, who are tired of seeing such things as the bombing of a wedding party.
I joked earlier about the factory where all those Al Qaeda No. 2 Men are manufactured. Well, the truth is, as far as Yemen is concerned, we are that factory.