U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says at the approval of President Obama, armed Predator drones will be used in Libya.
Gates and Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced the move at a press briefing Thursday.
Gates reiterated that U.S. troops More…
This week, the American Civil Liberties Union released a letter it received from the Department of Defense confirming that it does not compile statistics on the total number of civilians that have been killed by U.S. unmanned drone aircrafts since September 2001.
Responding to the ACLU’s Freedom of Information More…
If passed, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Claire McCaskill’s (D-Mo.) $600 million, fully-paid-for border security bill would increase the number of unmanned drones patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border, Politico reported today.
Just as the National Security Strategy places an international order based on binding global norms at the center of President Obama’s foreign policy, a United Nations official tells Charlie Savage of The New York Times that Obama’s drone strikes ought to come to end:
On March 16, Shane Harris reported that Harold Koh, the State Department’s legal adviser, asserted that the Obama administration’s drone strikes on al-Qaeda and affiliated targets are legal, and would at some point make a more fulsome public case for why that is. Last night, reports Mark More…
Last week’s two drone strikes in Afghanistan rattled journalists. Didn’t Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, sharply restrict offensive air strikes? Laura King, reporting from Kabul for the Los Angeles Times, wondered if the two strikes, occurring in rapid succession, “signaled what More…
Speaking of cybersecurity, Naval blogger Galrahn has a fascinating take on last week’s big Wall Street Journal story about insurgents in Iraq using an off-the-shelf $26 hack to intercept video feeds from U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles. It’s actually an opportunity, he explains:
From a cyber warfare perspective, the
Wow.
Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet —
There’s talk about how Iran’s apparent rejection of President Obama’s outreach represents the end of a 2008 campaign goal. And it’s not exactly wrong, though it may be premature. But in today’s Washington Post, it’s clear that another, darker campaign vow is returning, this time about Pakistan. More…
Marc Ambinder has a seriously detailed curtain-raiser on a turf war that’s roiled the intelligence community for months. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, and Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, have clashed over who controls the top U.S. intelligence officer in various foreign countries. But More…
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