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Dr. Panagiota Manoli, Head of the Slavic, East-European and Eurasian Studies Programme of ELIAMEP participated at the 7th European Forum of Think Tanks, organised in La Valetta on 27 and 28 February 2017, by the Jacques Delors Institute with the support of the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the European Union. This Forum linked to the Think Global – Act European (TGAE) initiative, is entitled “The EU’s Neighbourhood: How to Stabilise the Ring of Fire?” and it gathers a group of 40 prominent speakers and researchers engaged in the EU Neighbourhood Policy on the fields of security, governance, economy and migration.

Les forces de défense et de sécurité de la République démocratique du Congo (RDC) ont fait un usage excessif et disproportionné de la force, parfois létale, pour empêcher et contenir des manifestations en décembre 2016, selon un rapport de l'ONU publié mercredi.

« Ils nous ont fait chier pendant cinq ans. Ce n'est pas possible de se ranger derrière Benoît Hamon. » A l'instar de ce sénateur PS, ils sont nombreux, dans les rangs socialistes, à ne toujours pas se...

Attention, opération séduction ! Marine Le Pen s'est livrée hier à un véritable marathon dans les allées du Salon de l'agriculture : dix heures au pas de charge pour promouvoir ses propositions agricoles....

Hundreds of Coptic Christians have fled Egypt’s northern Sinai region after a spate of so-called Islamic State attacks with seven people killed within two weeks.

How charities working in Kenya are experimenting with cash transfers instead of more traditional forms of aid.

Armed drones came of age, by chance, at the onset of the United State’s ‘war on terror’. Washington has used them ever since to provide close air support to troops on the ground and to carry out targeted killings. In Afghanistan, they have been relatively uncontroversial, but in other countries, their legality, effectiveness and potential harm to civilians have all been questioned. In her second dispatch on the subject, Kate Clark looks at how different countries have experienced armed drones and asks whether a US ‘drone-mainly’ mission of the sort seen in Pakistan’s tribal areas might one day be seen in Afghanistan.

AAN’s first dispatch on drones looked at how they came to be developed and used in Afghanistan: Drone warfare 1: Afghanistan, birthplace of the armed drone.

A ‘drone-mainly’ US mission in Afghanistan? 

For the moment, the US seems comprehensibly embroiled in Afghanistan and, indeed, possibly about to enlarge its ground force (see here). However, if Washington did demand of its military a narrow, counter-terrorism mission in Afghanistan with fewer boots on the ground, drones would be the obvious, relatively cost-effective option. They need far less support in or near the battlefield than ground troops or other types of aircraft. They need somewhere to fly from – and the further away from the battlefield, the trickier this becomes in terms of carrying fuel and the time spent getting to and from a location. However, they only need a limited force located with the drones to ensure repairs and maintenance, and the collection or destruction of wreckage when a drone crashes (although this is far less substantial than the force needed for the search and rescue of a downed pilot). Piloting drones, however, can be done from anywhere in the world.

If Washington did decide to pull back to a mission focussed on the targeted killings of suspected members of al Qaeda and ISKP/Daesh (and possibly the Taleban, if they were seen as a threat to US interests), the way it would do this is evident from the experiences of other countries. Washington has deployed drones for targeted killings as its only or main tactic in Pakistan (since 2004), Yemen (in 2002 and then since 2009) and Somalia (since 2011). This dispatch looks first at why targeted killings using drones has become such an integral part of the US war on terror, before delving into the experiences of US drones in these three countries.

The expansion of the American armed drones programme

 Technological advance – the development of the armed drone in the last 1990s and early 2000s – enabled America to establish a targeted killing programme. Previously, killing someone in a foreign country needed either the deployment of forces or local proxies, or the ‘blunt instrument’ of a missile strike. Drones, however, can cross borders easily and virtually risk-free to those piloting and deploying them, at least when flown into countries with either an acquiescent government or a weak military. They have reduced the political and military costs of initiating hostilities. The US targeted killing programme has also been driven by the political transformation brought about by 9/11: Washington needed to deal with a non-state, terrorist enemy dispersed in different countries and decided a military course of action was necessary and targeted killing the most effective tactic.

The sort of uneasiness felt by the CIA and White House about assassinating al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden before 9/11, as described in AAN’s first dispatch on drones, became overnight a thing of the past. Indeed, the swell of support for America and its government by US citizens, other nations and institutions such as the United Nations and NATO in the wake of 9/11 meant there was little opposition voiced to what would previously have been a highly contentious tactic.(1)

The legal controversy

The debate over whether America’s targeted killing programme is lawful centres on whether the US is actually involved in an ‘armed conflict’. Except during wartime, states cannot use lethal force, unless as a last resort and when absolutely necessary to save human life, for example, a police officer shooting someone who is about to kill another person. (This is according to International Human Rights Law.) Critics of the US targeted killings programme say the level of violence from al Qaeda and ‘associated forces’ is too sporadic and on too small a scale for it to be categorised as an armed conflict, so America’s use of lethal force is therefore unlawful. (2) The US has responded by saying it does not need to establish sufficient intensity of violence in each location where al Qaeda is based: even in places “outside areas of active hostilities” (its phrase), its use of lethal force is lawful. Yet that would mean, a senior legal advisor to the International Committee of the Red Cross (see here) has conjectured, that Washington has expanded its ‘battlefield’ to include the whole world, something which cannot be permissible.

The US also holds that it is acting in self-defence (allowed for by the UN Charter). When members of non-state groups pose a terrorist threat to US citizens or interests, Washington says, and the host government is “unwilling or unable” to deal with them, it can legally carry out targeted killings to defend itself. (Israel has made this argument for decades and the United Kingdom more recently). Critics such as former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary Or Arbitrary Executions, Philip Alston, says such arguments have led to the “displacement of clear legal standards with a vaguely defined licence to kill, and the creation of a major accountability vacuum.”

Whichever side of the argument one comes down on (for a selection of papers outlining the legal debate, see footnote 3), it is clear that the technical capacity to carry out targeted killings across borders and the nature of the al Qaeda threat since 9/11 led the US to re-think its interpretation of the law. All three factors mean the US is now fighting in ways not previously possible.

Ordering drone strikes

The targeted killing programme using drones expanded in the last year of Bush’s presidency and then massively under Obama, (see here) with ten times more drone strikes carried out in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, than under Bush. Indeed, more strikes were authorised in Obama’s first year in office than in his predecessor’s entire presidency. The surge was driven by a huge increase in attacks on suspected militants in the ‘safe havens’ of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The New York Times reported in 2012 that President Obama personally authorised all strikes in Yemen and Somalia and “the more complex and risky ones” in Pakistan (about a third of the total). The Washington Post reported in the same year that the director of the CIA signed off strikes in Pakistan (see here). The Post also detailed how targeting lists were built up and decisions to kill people made. See also reporting on this from The Guardian and The Intercept).

Both the CIA and the military, in particular the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), well-known in Afghanistan for being the key player in kill or capture operations there, are involved in targeted killing operations using drones. Different legislation governs the CIA and the military, which gives the CIA extensive license to run secret programmes and legally restricts the government from providing information about them (although the military has scarcely been more open about what it does). There are particular concerns about the CIA’s lack of accountability and transparency. (See a legal analysis of the dangers of the CIA conducting military operations here and specifically in Afghanistan, here).

There have been reports of ‘turf fighting’ between the Pentagon and CIA over who should control the programme, but mainly reports of a high degree of operational cooperation, for example in kill/capture operations in Yemen, Iraq and cross-border strikes from Afghanistan into Pakistan, (4) and of air force pilots flying drones on behalf of the CIA. Last year, a general shift from the CIA to JSOC carrying out drone strikes was reported. That could mean the US government wants to be less secretive about its drones. However, as Robert Chesney of the US law and national security website, Lawfare, has said, in terms of practicalities, it may make little difference: although the military may now be giving the final order, subject to presidential approval where required, the operations themselves may still be hybrid, involving both military and CIA surveillance and intelligence.

For many years, the US neither confirmed or denied its targeted killing programme. Then, in 2013, Obama published rules governing the use of lethal force in counterterrorism operations outside the US and “outside areas of active hostilities,”(see here) defined in 2016 (see here) as “not Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and certain portions of Libya.” (Pakistan appears possibly not to be covered by this guidance or just not (see here) by the ‘imminent threat’ pre-condition for attack, mentioned below.

Lethal force, the guidance says, can only be used against “a target which poses a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” If force is used in foreign territories, “international legal principles, including respect for sovereignty and the law of armed conflict, impose important constraints.” There must be “near certainty” that the terrorist target is present, as well as near certainty that non-combatants are not, capture (which is preferable) is not possible and there are no other alternatives for dealing with the threat and the government of the country “cannot or will not effectively address the threat.” (Given that much of the legal debate over the US targeted killings programme is whether it is covered by the Laws of Armed Conflict or International Human Rights Law, it is interesting that the Obama guidance draws on both.)

Drones in Pakistan

Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have seen the most drone strikes outside of Afghanistan, reports the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, with the first coming in 2004. The Bureau has calculated that more than 400 strikes aimed at the Pakistani Taleban (TTP), al Qaeda and other foreign jihadist groups and the Afghan Taleban have been launched. (5) (See a mapping of the strikes here). Strikes increased in frequency in 2008 and peaked in 2010. The author of “Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars”, Chris Woods, has argued that the increase was driven by the US military in Afghanistan wanting to hit insurgent safe havens across the border. The many strikes on the TTP which were not a threat to the US in Afghanistan might have been part of a quid pro quo deal between the CIA and Islamabad, ie the US struck the TTP in return for Pakistan turning a blind eye to the US killing those threatening American soldiers in Afghanistan.

The most recent reported attack in Pakistan was on the then Taleban leader, Mullah Akhund Mansur in Baluchistan in May 2016 (see AAN reporting here). Exceptionally, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, this was claimed by the US military. Otherwise, the CIA has been in charge of the Pakistan programme, the secrecy surrounding its actions helping Islamabad pretend it was hostile to the strikes. However, as the International Crisis Group said in a 2013 report, “Ample evidence exists of tacit Pakistani consent and active cooperation with the drone program, contradicting the official posture that it violates the country’s sovereignty.” It said that President Musharraf, after 2001, had permitted a substantial CIA presence in at least two airbases, Shamsi in southern Balochistan and Shahbaz in Sindh’s Jacobabad district, for intelligence gathering and collaboration. “Both were used to gather intelligence for drone strikes,” it said, “and possibly even to conduct them.” That sort of cooperation ended when a NATO air strike in November 2011 on the border killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Crisis Group said:

Pakistan’s attitude towards drones borders on the schizophrenic. Rather than inherently opposing the strikes, its leadership, in particular its military, seeks greater control over target selection. This is often to punish enemies, but sometimes, allegedly, to protect militants who enjoy good relations with, or support from, the military – leaders of the Haqqani network, for example, or some Pakistani Taliban groups with whom the military has made peace deals.

Drones in Yemen

The first US targeted killing using a drone outside Afghanistan came in Yemen, in 2002, with a strike on those believed to have attacked the USS Cole in Aden harbour in 2000 (see here). It began to fly drones consistently into Yemen from 2009 (see here). The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports between 145 and 165 confirmed drone strikes on Yemen with about one hundred others possible but not confirmed. (6) The most recent drone strike was on 30 January 2017. On 29 January, another a capture operation led by JSOC, with commandos also from the United Arab Emirates, targeted a commander with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP); it reportedly resulted not only in the deaths of 14 men claimed by the AQAP as their fighters, but also more than twenty civilians. These reportedly included nine children under the age of 13. These two operations were President Trump’s first ordered targeted killing by drone and his first ‘kill or capture’ operation.

Both the JSOC and CIA have carried out drone strikes in Yemen, operating from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti and a base in Saudi Arabia (location unknown). The US has also carried out air strikes using conventional aircraft and Cruise missiles.
Drones in Somalia

 The US has carried out targeted killings of suspected fighters with al-Shabab since 2011, although al-Shabab was only officially designated an ‘associated force’ of al Qaeda in November 2016, a shoring up of the legal basis for strikes under domestic US legislation brought in after 9/11 (see here). The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that JSOC is the lead agency, with its own fleet of armed Reaper drones flying from various bases in the region. “Elite troops,” reports the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, “are routinely deployed on the ground for surveillance, reconnaissance, and assault and capture operations. Since June 2011, the US has reportedly carried out 32 to 36 drone strikes, (7) most recently on 7 January 2017, a “self-defense strike” a press release said, carried out “in coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia,” by Somali partner forces, African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces and US advisors. The strike came, it said “during a counterterrorism operation to disrupt al-Shabaab,” after “the combined partner forces observed al-Shabaab fighters threatening their safety and security.” No-one was killed.

The impact of drones on civilians

One thing to stress at the outset is that US military operations in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia are far less transparent or accountable than its operations in Afghanistan. The US war in Afghanistan is overt and there is a military presence in country which means citizens, MPs, the UN and others can speak directly to officers. The media, both Afghan and international, is comparatively strong and UNAMA, with its Security Council ‘protection of civilians’ mandate, has built up a reliable, nationwide monitoring operation and advocates effectively on behalf of civilians. Finding out about drone strikes in other countries is far more difficult, although a number of studies have tried to determine the impact on civilians, including whether the Obama guidance is being followed.

That the US is underreporting the numbers of civilian casualties in drone strikes appears to be clear across the board. The Bureau of Investigative Reporting contrasted the US estimate of between 64 and 116 killed in countries other than Afghanistan between January 2009 and the end of 2015 with the number it had recorded – 380 to 801, ie six times lower. In Pakistan and Yemen, a 2016 Open Societies Foundation (OSF) report on mitigating civilian casualties found that the United States had failed to publicly acknowledge a single instance of civilian casualties over 400 and 120 strikes, respectively. Human rights and media have, however, documented “credible claims of civilian harm” and in Pakistan, these have been “corroborated by leaked internal Pakistani government documents.”

A 2015 Open Societies Foundation report on Yemen which investigated nine targeted killings (seven by drones and two by other aircraft) found that civilians had been killed and injured in all of them, leading it to question the US’s assertion that strikes are not conducted unless there is “near-certainty” that civilians are not present. It also looked at whether the Obama guidance had been followed in other instances. The study questioned whether the US used an overbroad definition of combatant to mask the number of civilians killed, in particular using proximity to a target as a proxy for determining someone’s combatant status. (8) It found that, in two of the strikes, the militants targeted could have been detained by the Yemeni government (ie lethal force was not necessary). Finally, it found that in none of the nine strikes documented “did the U.S. or the
Yemeni government state that the individuals targeted and killed had posed
a continuing and imminent threat to the American people.”

In its use of drones in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan, the US has been accused of expanding the category of ‘combatants’, for example, assuming men in proximity to the target are fighters or that all ‘military-age’ men are fighters, (it denies both accusations), not taking proper precautions to safeguard civilians and having a programme that lacks transparency and proper investigations into who is killed: all of this ends, critics say, in civilians being killed and injured.

As has been seen in Afghanistan, there are particular dangers with targeted killings if people are killed not in response to hostile action, but based on intelligence. If the intelligence is wrong, airstrikes end up killing civilians (see analysis here). This may be especially problematic when people are attacked based solely on their ‘patterns of life’ which indicate to US targeters that they are combatants (these are called ‘signature strikes’). Some evidence for this has come from Pakistan where, the OSF civilian casualties study reported, statements by US officials and media reporting suggested that stricter rules on targeting and a reduction in ‘signature strikes’ had resulted in a marked decrease in the number of civilians killed in drones strikes (from an average of five civilians killed in each of 120 strikes in 2010, to one per strike in 2012, and to less than one per strike in 2013-15). (9)

The wider picture

The US targeted killing programme cannot be judged solely in terms of dead civilians, or even dead militants. Drones do not operate in a vacuum. Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia all have a variety of armed actors operating on their territories, ranging from militant groups and government forces to African peace-keepers in Somalia, and Saudi and other forces in Yemen (all of whom tend to be far less careful about civilians than the US military, and far less transparent). That plethora of armed actors means that local civilians have other concerns than just US drones. Moreover, US choices of local allies and the compromises this involves also have consequences.

Several studies on Pakistan have tried to assess this ‘wider picture’. Neither the US or Pakistani governments are open with information and travel by independent researchers and journalists to the tribal areas is hazardous, so getting reliable information is tough. “Fearing retaliation from the militants or the military, respondents choose their words carefully,” International Crisis Group reported in 2013. It thought it impossible to gauge the real views of local civilians. Some studies have tried, however, and reached very different conclusions.

In 2012, the Stanford and New York University Schools of Law (see here) reported that drones were counterproductive, imposing a great strain on civilians living beneath them and leading to increased recruitment to militant groups:

Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves. 

A 2016 study by Aqil Shah of the University of Oklahoma, however, found that hostility to drones increases the further you go from the ‘battlefield’. Attitudes towards them, he said, were far more positive in the tribal areas and most favourable in the area which had seen the highest number of drone strikes, North Waziristan:

In fact, 79 percent of the respondents [from North Waziristan] endorsed drones. In sharp contrast to claims about the significant civilian death toll from drone strikes, 64 percent, including several living in villages close to strike locations, believed that drone strikes accurately targeted militants. While many interviewees did specifically point to pre-2013 “signature strikes,” which targeted groups of men based on behavior patterns rather than individual identity, as the cause of occasionally high fatalities, 56 percent believed drones seldom killed non-militants.

 Locals, Shah found, were much more frightened of local militants and said the drones were more accurate than the Pakistani military’s ground and air offensives. He found no evidence that drones led to greater recruitment to militant groups.

The US believes its operations in the Pakistani tribal areas have been successful; they have “disrupted terrorist plots and reduced the original Qaeda organization along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to a shell of its former self.” The OSF civilian casualties report, while accepting this is the case, argues that the situation is not so simple:

“Core” al Qaeda leadership may have been severely diminished, but the United States has paid a high political price as a result, arguably undermining its longer-term interests and strategic objectives in Pakistan. Domestic observers have raised concerns that the space for rational domestic debate around counter-terrorism and conflict resolution has shrunk beneath the dominant anti-U.S., anti-drone narrative, which has been capitalized on by religious conservatives.

Similar complexities are seen in Yemen where the US has not only targeted AQAP, but also backed Saudi Arabia and its coalition fighting Houthi rebels. It has provided intelligence, air-to-air refuelling and arms sales to Riyadh. The Saudi-led air campaign has been characterised by multiple, egregious targeting of civilians, including strikes on hospitals, schools and wedding parties; the UN estimates it has caused twice as many casualties as all other warring parties. In the face of Saudi and US strikes, says OSF, AQAP has managed to re-brand itself as a nationalist, pro-poor populist movement: “Victims and experts have questioned whether U.S. drone strikes, and subsequently its seemingly uncritical support to Saudi Arabia have also strengthened the hand of al-Qaeda, ISIL (Daesh), and other militant groups, while undermining the credibility and interests of the United States.”

The picture in places like Pakistan and Yemen is complicated. At the very least, it can be said that targeted killings always have wider consequences: they can stir up domestic support for rebels and strengthen the power of conservatives, and US air power can also be manipulated by governments to target their own, domestic enemies. Drone strikes may also mean non-military options – better civil and political rights in FATA, for example – can be ignored. However, all claims and assumptions need to be scrutinised: some of the criticism made in Pakistan, for example, asserting that drone strikes encourage locals to join armed groups seem not to be true, although the strikes may have encouraged militancy beyond FATA.

The future of drones in Afghanistan and beyond

Many people feel an instinctive unease about armed drones. Human Rights Watch’s John Sifton believes this is because they enable “the most intimate form of violence – the targeted killing of a specific person,” while being “the least intimate of weapons,” mixing “everyday violence” with “all the alienation of intercontinental ballistic missiles.” Nevertheless, in America’s wake, other countries are following. Armed drones are fast becoming a standard feature of many arsenals. Those already making or acquiring them include Israel, Russia, Turkey, China, India, Iran, Britain and France (see here), Iraq, Nigeria and Pakistan, with China (see here) as the main seller. (10) The primary constraint on their use now seems to be the capability to deal with huge streams of data (unless you just attack what you can see). Up till now, it has largely been the US arguing that it was legal for it to kill people using drones outside traditional battlefields. It is now possible for other countries to do the same: will Washington be as sanguine about Russia, Iran or China carrying out targeted killings in the way it now does?

Apart from the lowered barriers to initiating hostilities across borders, the other obvious concern coming from the research on the US drone programme is over accountability and transparency. This last problem is amplified when those carrying out the killings are secretive (JSOC) or covert (the CIA). Having said that, however, compared to most other countries and non-state armed groups, the US is still relatively careful and transparent when it comes to civilian casualties. (11)

As to Afghanistan, a US ‘drones-mainly’ strategy there as seen in Pakistan’s FATA and elsewhere, is not on the cards in the near future. However, given the seemingly never-ending nature of the war in Afghanistan and the fact that it remains a place attractive to foreign jihadists with internationalist aims, that could change. A future US Afghanistan mission limited to counterterrorism operations conducted mainly from the skies is not impossible to imagine.

Edited by Sari Kouvo and Borhan Osman

 

 

(1) Targeted killings have proved to be one of the least controversial of practices and reinterpretation of the law carried out by the Bush administration in the war on terror. Others, including torturing and rendering security detainees and denying them the protections of common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions were thrown out by the courts or by Obama, but may again make a come back under President Trump.

(2) Heather Brandon, writing on the Lawfare website, said that the US accepts the ‘Tadic formulation’ which sets out the intensity which violence must reach for there to be a ‘non-international armed conflict’ (the legal term for a conflict that does not involve two or more states). In the Dusko Tadic case at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) ‘non-international armed conflicts’ were defined as requiring “protracted armed violence” between either government forces and sufficiently organized non-state groups or between two or more of these organized non-state groups.”

(3) Legal papers looking at targeted killings, including with drones, include:

Gabriella Blum and Philip Heymann, “Law and Policy of Targeted Killing”, Harvard National Security Journey, Volume 1—June 27, 2010.

Philip Alston “Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions: Addendum
Study on targeted killings”, Presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council, A/HRC/14/24/Add.6, 28 May 2010.

Jelena Pejic
“Extraterritorial targeting by means of armed drones: Some legal implications”, International Review of the Red Cross, 2015, 1-40.

HCJ 769/02 Public Comm. Against Torture in Israel v. Gov’t of Israel (Targeted Killings Case), 2005.

Heather Brandon “Will Obama’s Targeted Killing Policy Say What “Areas of Active Hostilities” Means?” Lawfare, 5 May 2016.

(4) The Washington Post’s 2011 article reported:

Their [CIA officials, special forces and contractors, all under CIA command] activities occupy an expanding netherworld between intelligence and military operations. Sometimes their missions are considered military “preparation of the battlefield,” and others fall under covert findings obtained by the CIA. As a result, congressional intelligence and armed services committees rarely get a comprehensive view.

Hybrid units called “omega” or “cross matrix” teams have operated in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen, according to senior U.S. military officials. Those employed in Afghanistan were “mostly designed against specific high-value targets with the intent of looking across the border” into Pakistan, said a former senior U.S. military official involved in Special Operations missions. They wore civilian clothes and traveled in Toyota Hilux trucks rather than military vehicles.

(5) The Bureau’s figures for Pakistan are:

Total strikes: 424

Obama strikes: 373

Total killed: 2,499-4,001

Civilians killed: 424-966

Children killed: 172-207,
Injured: 1,161-1,744

(6) The Bureau’s figures for Yemen are:

Total confirmed strikes 145-165

Total killed: 601-871

Civilians killed: 65-101

Children killed: 8-9
Injured: 100-234

Possible extra drone strikes: 90-107

Total killed: 357-509

Civilians killed: 26-61

Children killed: 6-9

Injured: 82-109

Other covert operations: 21-84

Total killed: 234-509

Civilians killed: 78-127

Children killed: 28-36

Injured: 47-136

(7) The Bureau’s figures for Somalia are:

Drone strikes: 32-36

Total killed: 242-418
Civilians killed: 3-12

Children killed: 0-2

Injured: 5-24

Other covert operations:

10-14
Total killed: 59-160

Civilians killed: 7-47

Children killed: 0-2

Injured: 11-21

(8) AAN’s 2010 investigation into a targeted killing in Takhar province of Afghanistan found that, as well as intelligence failures leading to a civilian being mistaken for a commander and killed, his companions were all also assumed to be combatants as well, ie proximity was used as a proxy for distinguishing civilian from combatant. In this case, ten civilians were killed, all campaigners in parliamentary elections.

(9) In Yemen, a reverse trend was seen: reported civilian casualties from U.S. strikes, said OSF, declined in 2011-2012; then in 2013-2014, the rate of civilian casualties per operation rose by five per cent.

(10) CNBC reported that China had moved into the market strongly because, unlike the US, it is not a signatory to the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime, which requires signatory states to “apply a “strong presumption of denial” to exports of unmanned vehicles capable of carrying a 1,100-pound payload more than 185 miles.” 

(11) See, for example, data from Physicians for Human Rights on attacks on medical facilities in Syria, largely by Syrian state and Russian forces, and reports on attacks on civilian targets, including medical facilities in Yemen, published by Physicians for Human Rights (see here) and Médecins Sans Frontières (see here).

 

The US Navy has decommissioned its Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Albuquerque (SSN 706) during a ceremony held at Keyport Undersea Museum, Washington.

The UK Government has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the British Royal Navy and the Argyll and Bute Community Planning Partnership to invest millions of pounds for developing HM Naval Base (HMNB) Clyde in Scotland.

Raytheon has been awarded a new indefinite-delivery / indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract to operate and maintain two forward-deployed shipboard radars.

Americas

• Raytheon has been contracted $128 million to support the USAF’s Mobile Sensors program. The four-year deal will see the company operate and maintain forward-deployed radars including the Cobra King used aboard the USNS Howard O. Lorenzen and the Gray Star radar used aboard the USNS Invincible. Both vessels are US Navy Missile Range Instrumentation Ships, which are designed to monitor missile launches and collect data.

• US President Donald Trump has announced hopes for an “historic” increase in defense spending, with plans to add $54 billion, or 10%, to current funds. Trump said the funds would go toward rebuilding a depleted military, and officials familiar with the proposal say there will be a focus on shipbuilding, military aircraft, and establishing “a more robust presence in key international waterways and choke points” such as the Strait of Hormuz and South China Sea. In order to pay for the increase, cuts have been proposed to US foreign aid, environmental protection, and education, and have already been met with opposition from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers as well as warnings from military officials.

• Israel Aerospace Industries’ (IAI) Elta North America subsidiary will provide counter-unmanned air system equipment to the USAF in a $15.5 million deal. The contract calls for the production and delivery of 21 MANPADS kits and the provision of training to the service. Last year, IAI unveiled the Drone Guard system which integrates a 3D radar and electro-optical (EO) sensors for detection and identification of UAS vehicles, plus jamming technology to disrupt its flight by either using a “send to home” function or causing the UAS to crash.

Europe

• Finland’s government has blocked the use of direct lobbying for the HX Fighter Replacement Program (HX-FRP) in an effort to add transparency and fairness to the competition. All the manufacturers entering the competition: Boeing (F/A-18), BAE Systems (Eurofighter Typhoon), Saab (JAS Gripen), Dassault Aviation (Rafale) and Lockheed Martin (F-35), have recruited Finnish lobbying and public relations agencies to represent their special interests, as well as contracting former senior Finnish military officers to help them develop sales strategies and add energy to their separate marketing efforts. The HX-FRP is estimated to be worth between $15 and 20 billion.

Asia Pacific

• Chinese media has reacted angrily to the Lotte Group and South Korea’s agreement to a land-swap that will allow for the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. The influential state-run tabloid the Global Times called for a boycott of Lotte in China and proposed “that Chinese society should coordinate voluntarily in expanding restrictions on South Korean cultural goods and entertainment exports to China, and block them when necessary.” Tourism to South Korea has also been affected with South Korean central bank figures citing a drop in the number of Chinese tourists visiting the tourist island of Jeju by 6.7% over the Lunar New Year holiday from last year, partly because of Beijing’s “anti-South Korea measures due to the THAAD deployment decision.”

• China has received their largest foreign order for the indigenous next-generation Wing Loong II UAV. However, the report did not disclose the identity of the buyer or the size of the order. Beijing has been driving to increase their market share of the military drone market at the expense of US and Israeli products, by offering lower-cost technology to customers and a willingness to sell to governments to which Western states will not sell. The Wing Loong II’s predecessor is marketed for $1 million, while the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, to which it has sometimes been compared, is priced at around $30 million.

• Australian firm Austal has announced the successful completion of the detailed design review of its $243 million Pacific Patrol Boat Replacement Project. The contract has tasked Austal with designing, producing, and sustaining 19 steel vessels that will then be gifted to 12 Pacific island nations as part of efforts to bolster regional maritime security. Austal hopes to begin construction for the ships in April 2017, and expects to begin deliveries between 2018 and 2023.

• Australia and Indonesia are to resume defense ties following a short suspension in cooperation. In January, Indonesian Armed Forces’ head of communications, Major General Wuryantyo, announced that the service was halting all activities with their Australian counterparts in response to an Indonesian officer taking offense to allegedly insulting reading materials found at an Australian military training facility. In addition to military exercises, the agreement facilitates defense-related trade and cooperation on counter-terrorism and maritime strategies.

Today’s Video

• Wing Loong UAV strike capabilities:

PB Lata

Australia’s Pacific Patrol Boat program solves a regional problem. Australia needs stability, but many of its neighbors are island sets with vast territories to cover, small populations, and small economies. Australia’s regional Defence Cooperation Program eventually provided 22 Patrol Boats to 12 different Pacific nations from 1987 – 1997. This includes all ongoing maintenance, logistics support and training, as well as Royal Australian Navy (RAN) specialists in the countries where the PPBs are based. Pacific nations, in turn, use them to support their local military, police and fisheries agencies.

It hasn’t always gone well…

Australian patrol boats were used in Papua New Guinea’s blockade of Bougainville during their civil war, and in 2000, the Solomon Islands boat was co–opted by Malaitan militias and used against Guadalcanal villages. Even so, the program’s overall benefits led Australia to begin a life-extension program in 2000, designed to extend Australia’s involvement to at least 2017 at a cost of A$ 350 million.

In 2014, the Australian government made another major commitment to the program, with a $2 billion proposal to build new boats.

Contracts & Key Events

Honaira

February 28/17: Australian firm Austal has announced the successful completion of the detailed design review of its $243 million Pacific Patrol Boat Replacement Project. The contract has tasked Austal with designing, producing, and sustaining 19 steel vessels that will then be gifted to 12 Pacific island nations as part of efforts to bolster regional maritime security. Austal hopes to begin construction for the ships in April 2017, and expects to begin deliveries between 2018 and 2023.

Dec 9/14: Tending the tender. Frazer-Nash, a British engineering consultancy which opened offices in Australia in 2010, announces that it was recently contracted by the Australian government to review the PPB-R’s high level technical specifications. The AUS $186K award was for a consulting engagement from July to November 2014. Meanwhile Power Initiatives, another consulting firm, won an AUS $243K study on October 7 to support the acquisition. These are small awards but they show that the tender is moving along. The effort is known as SEA3036.

Oct 17/14: Tender. Australia’s DMO published a notice saying that they intend to “release a Request for Tender (RFT) in Quarter 3 2014/2015 seeking a prime contractor for both the acquisition and support of a replacement fleet of Pacific Patrol Boats with the possibility that the support contract will include the provision of training services to the Pacific Island Countries.”

June 17/14: Announcement. Australia announces an A$ 594 million program to build “more than 20” purpose-designed, all-steel patrol boats for 13 PPB member countries: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Republic of Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and new member Timor-Leste.

Exact numbers and allocations will be discussed with the member states, and the boats themselves will be built under a competitive tender. Given that the current program involved 22 boats, a final tally of 22-25 boats is reasonable. The major cost driver will actually be an estimated A$ 1.38 billion for 30 years of through-life sustainment and advisory personnel costs. Sources: Australian DoD, “Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Defence – Maritime security strengthened through Pacific Patrol Boat Program” | Fiji Times Online, “$2b for Pacific patrol boat program”.

March 6/14: Maritime security cooperation talks between the Federated States of Micronesia and Australia. Micronesia’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs Lorin S. Robert singled out the Pacific Patrol Boat program:

“We cannot overemphasize its importance and its utility not only in ensuring maritime surveillance and law enforcement but also in addressing emergency relief operations, apprehending and preventing sea-borne security threats and delivering needed government services to outlying remote islands in the federation…”

Unsurprisingly, the program’s future was a subject of their talks. At the time, the report said only that “The dialogue ended on a clear direction of what to achieve for 2014 and the long-term plan for the patrol boats.” Sources: Islands Business, “Australia, FSM discuss Pacific patrol boat program”.

Additional Readings

• Nautilus Institute – Pacific patrol boat program. Useful background 2000 – 2009.

• Australian National University – Australian member committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (Aus-CSCAP).

Swedish RBS 70 Man-Portable Air Defense Missile System

On March 1 st EUCAP Nestor, the European Union Maritime Capacity Building Mission to Somalia, will be renamed “EUCAP Somalia”, the EU Capacity Building Mission in Somalia.
A Council decision published on December 12th 2016 in the Official Journal of the European Union, states in article 1, EUCAP Somalia has been established as a Capacity Building Mission in Somalia.

The operational “switch-over” to the new Mission’s name is now taking place.
For the occasion, a redesign of the Mission's Website has been launched under www.eucap-som.eu . All past content from www.eucap-nestor.eu has been migrated and will be accessible on the new site.

EUCAP Somalia operates under a new, broadened civilian maritime security mandate. With an active presence in Mogadishu, Hargeisa (Somaliland) and Garowe (Puntland), EUCAP Somalia works to strengthen Somali capacity to ensure maritime security, carry out fisheries inspection and enforcement, ensure maritime search and rescue, counter smuggling, fight piracy and police the coastal zone on land and at sea.

Source

Tag: EUCAP SomaliaEUCAP Nestor

China, Japan und Südkorea sind die größten Volkswirtschaften in Ostasien und als solche entscheidend für Prosperität und Sicherheit der Region. Ihr Verhältnis untereinander ist jedoch zunehmend von Spannungen geprägt. Bislang fehlt es an einer regionalen Organisation oder Institution, die hier eine stabilisierende Rolle spielen könnte. In der vorliegenden Studie geht es um eine bisher wenig beachtete Konstellation, nämlich die Zusammenarbeit zwischen den drei Staaten, die sich Ende der 1990er Jahre herausbildete und seither als eigenständiges Format etabliert hat. Die zentrale Fragestellung der Studie lautet: Kann diese trilaterale Kooperation ein neues Muster der Interaktion in Nordostasien begründen, oder werden in diesem Prozess nur die existierenden – überwiegend negativen – Trends bestätigt und reproduziert? Dabei hat die Untersuchung zwei Schwerpunkte. Zum einen analysiert sie die Entwicklungen in den drei bilateralen Beziehungen, zum anderen bietet sie einen systematischen Überblick zum bisherigen Umfang der trilateralen Kooperation. Wie sich zeigt, sorgen nicht nur historische sowie territoriale und maritime Konflikte für Spannungen innerhalb des nordostasiatischen Dreiecks, sondern auch die wachsende Konkurrenz zwischen den USA und China um die Vormachtstellung im asiatisch-pazifischen Raum. Die Bilanz der bisherigen Dreierkooperation zwischen Beijing, Tokio und Seoul fällt gemischt, insgesamt aber eher bescheiden aus, vor allem im Bereich Sicherheitspolitik. Dennoch kommt dem Format insofern Bedeutung zu, als es einen institutionellen Rahmen für Meinungsaustausch bietet und Gesprächskanäle unterhalb der »hohen Politik« auch in Zeiten erhöhter bilateraler Spannungen offen hält.

Der gesellschaftliche Druck ein Kind zu haben ist groß. Noch größer scheint die Belastung, wenn der Nachwuchs nicht perfekt ist.