[PDF] Separating Fact from Fiction in the Debate over Drone ...

In the last decade and a half, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), “drones,” has become commonplace.1 In response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States launched its ªrst armed drone strike in Afghanistan in November of that year. The strike missed its intended target—Mullah Akhund, the Taliban’s number three in command—but killed several others. A year later, the United States used an armed drone to strike suspected al-Qaida members in Yemen, including Qa’id Salim Sinan al Harithi, who was thought to have plotted the attack against the USS Cole in 2000, which had killed seventeen U.S. sailors. Since then, U.S. drone strikes have grown in both geographic scope and number, extending to Pakistan in 2004 and Somalia in 2007, and increasing from about 50 total counterterrorism strikes from 2001 to 2008 to about 450 from 2009 to 2014.2 U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta once understandably referred to drones as “the only game in town” in terms of stopping al-Qaida.3 Although the United States has been the most proliªc user of combat drones, several other countries have employed them as well, including Iraq, Israel, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. Almost a dozen states, including China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, reportedly now possess armed drones, and many others—including India—are racing to acquire them. The spread of armed drones has ignited considerable debate among scholars and policyMichael C. Horowitz is Associate Professor of Political Science and Associate Director of Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. Sarah E. Kreps is Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University. Matthew Fuhrmann is Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University and Visiting Associate Professor at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. The authors would like to thank Neil Chitrao, Debak Das, Nicholas Miras, Rachel Stohl, Amy Zegart, and Micah Zenko, as well as the anonymous reviewers, for their helpful feedback.

1. For the purposes of this article, we refer to UAVs and drones interchangeably, leaving aside debates over terminology.
2. Data from New America Foundation, http://securitydata.newamerica.net/drones/pakistananalysis.html. See also Stephanie Carvin, “The Trouble with Targeted Killing,” Security Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2012), pp. 529–555; and Julia Macdonald and Jacquelyn Schneider, “Presidential Risk Orientation and Force Employment Decisions: The Case of Unmanned Weaponry,” Journal of Conºict Resolution, forthcoming.
3. Noah Shactman, “CIA Chief, ‘Drones “Only Game in Town” for Stopping Al Qaeda,’” Wired, May 19, 2009, https://www.wired.com/2009/05/cia-chief-drones-only-game-in-town-forstopping-al-qaeda/. International Security, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Fall 2016), pp. 7–42, doi:10.1162/ISEC_a_00257 © 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Debate over Drone Proliferation Sep