The Queen and Her Drones

Peter Bergen was quoted, and the International Security program's drone data were cited, in an Economist article: 

America’s armed forces began using drones away from battlefields in 2002, under George W. Bush. After taking office Mr Obama scaled up the programme, authorising over 470 drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia. Though journalists and non-governmental organisations reported on the strikes, for years Mr Obama declined to recognise that the military was using armed drones outside Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, which are considered areas of “active hostilities”. “It was the worst-kept secret in the world,” says Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation, a think-tank. It was not until 2012 that Mr Obama acknowledged, on a social network, that this was happening.

On July 1st Mr Obama took another step towards transparency by releasing the administration’s estimate of how many “non-combatants” have been killed in drone strikes outside war zones. According to a short document released by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), between 2,372 and 2,581 combatants and between 64 and 116 non-combatants were killed in such strikes between Mr Obama’s inauguration in 2009 and the end of 2015. These numbers are considerably lower than those compiled by other organisations.

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Their precision compared with manned air strikes is still hotly contested, but the Obama administration’s drone strikes have become more accurate over time. According to the New America Foundation’s calculations, in 2009 drone strikes in Pakistan killed 385 militants and 63 civilians. Since 2013, when Mr Obama published guidance requiring that drone pilots have “near certainty” that non-combatants will not be harmed before firing, drone strikes in Pakistan have killed 352 militants and only six civilians. Although the new guidelines probably played a role in bringing down the non-combatant death-count, technology helped too (see chart). Newer drone models, such as the MQ-9 Reaper, can kill suspected terrorists without harming their friends or family in the next room.