The United States has removed Predator drones from Iraq and deployed them to Turkey in support of Ankara’s fight against Kurdish rebels. In one aspect of the precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, equipment like drones are being freed up for use in other countries in the region. Four U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles will be shifted from an [...]
Drone technology is advancing faster than the public or the legal system has time to catch up to their now ubiquitous use in America’s many war zones. US troops in Afghanistan will soon be able to deploy what’s called the Switchblade, a miniature drone that can be stored in a backpack and be launched from the [...]
The US drone that assassinated American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen was launched from one of the Obama administration’s newly constructed bases on the Arabian Peninsula. It was only a few weeks ago that reports were first released about the Obama administration’s new construction of “a constellation of secret drone bases,” as they were described by [...]
After a request for US assistance in suppressing separatist Kurds, the Turkish government is expecting the delivery of Predator drones in June 2012. “We have agreed in principle [on the delivery of Predators]. Negotiations will continue,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday. Erdogan also said that the number of vehicles and whether the [...]
The military’s widespread use of unmanned aerial vehicles to attack and surveil various war zones from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and others has been some what controversial as a weapon of war. But the ubiquitous drone is now being utilized in domestic police forces, presenting even more serious legal questions than before. The [...]
US Secret Drone Bases Popping Up Across Africa, Middle East | Future looks bright for flying killer robots
A secret State Department diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks has revealed that one of the primary reasons behind Israeli objections to Palestinian statehood is that lack of statehood keeps Palestinian territories outside the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which prosecutes war crimes. Military Advocate General for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Avichai Mandelblit [...]
American officials don’t often reference the CIA’s pilotless bombing program in Afghanistan and Pakistan, save for the occasional joke. It took “salty” new Pentagon chief Leon Panetta to bring it up in defense of the strategy of tossing bombs at suspected enemies, responding to criticism from a former intelligence head. Retired Adm. Dennis Blair said [...]
JERUSALEM – The concerted effort of international human rights activists to rein in violations of laws of war was given a major impetus when Human Rights Watch researchers presented a report [.pdf] Tuesday on the unbridled use by the Israeli military of unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCLAV), commonly known as drones, during Israel’s 22-day assault [...]
