Effectiveness Through Accountability
Two Presidential Drone Policies with Common Ground
By Marc Losito
With the advent of new technologies, such as armed drones, presidential administrations take different policy pathways toward employing them for the greater good. October 2020 marked the third anniversary of the Trump administration’s improvement on the Obama administration’s drone policy. This provides a timely opportunity to reflect on the policy pathways of the two administrations and a possible pathway for the new Biden administration. As a veteran SOF professional and an expert in counterterrorism, I’ve experienced the impact of both drone policies first-hand. The incremental improvements are a positive sign of civilian control measures actively governing the process while sharpening the warrior’s edge in a new age of counterterrorism by drone strike.
In May 2013, President Barack Obama signed his hallmark drone policy, colloquially known as the Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG) process. The PPG process was a legal framework for lethal action decision-making that introduced intense bureaucratic scrutiny aimed at reducing civilian casualties. This policy was designed to temper the pace of drone strikes based on a theory that high tempo operations induce civilian casualties. By introducing rigorous reviews, high-level vetting, and “near certainty” conditions, the PPG process was sure to reduce civilian casualties from drone strikes. Yet, for the three years preceding the PPG and the three years following, civilian casualties remained steady at roughly one civilian casualty for every 36 DoD drone strikes.
The PPG did not reduce the rate of civilian casualties, and its attempt came at a steep price. In 2011, US counterterrorism forces were still reeling from the “zero means zero” decision removing all troops from Iraq. Meanwhile, the Islamic State, formerly al-Qaeda in Iraq, was catching its breath and reconstituting in Syrian and Iraqi strongholds. Armed drones, or Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) armed with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, were the vestigial tool of choice to maintain pressure on a crippled but resurgent terrorist network. In 2013, the newly crafted PPG binarily identified geographic areas as “areas of hostility” and those that are not, such as Iraq. Upon signing, the PPG process governed all RPA operations in Iraq and removed our only remaining tool to conduct precision counterterrorism strikes against a resurgent Islamic State from 2013 to 2014. During this period, the Islamic State capitalized on time and opportunity to transform from a rag-tag bunch of 2,000 rebels to a functional caliphate of over 30,000 fighters in the absence of continued pressure. As a result, the world was given front row seats to devastating attacks in the US, France, Germany, and Belgium that emanated from northwest Syria.
While this single policy action cannot be wholly blamed for the Islamic State’s reconstitution, it certainly failed to account for the complexities of targeting terrorists with RPAs. For starters, the PPG process relied on “near certainty” that noncombatants would not be killed or injured in the lethal action. Accordingly, the PPG target was steeped in weeks of interagency review, deputy cabinet member review, and presentation to the President for final approval. The PPG process could never guarantee zero civilian casualties in the strike, but the delay could, and did, result in missing the window where the target was actionable.
Counterterrorism is a fluid operation partly because human behavior is not always predictable. The Islamic State was infamous for using women and children to deter RPA strikes, but did so in erratic and unpredictable fashion. Noncombatants unabatedly venture into the target area at the last minute during a strike. Thankfully, our weapons maintain a “man in the loop” feature allowing us to divert off-target in these cases. Our military commanders and special operators have designed well-oiled processes to account for the chaos of counterterrorism in ways the PPG couldn’t replicate. The policy goal to minimize civilian casualties in counterterrorism as a moral and strategic imperative is righteous, but the PPG was no panacea and was littered with bureaucratic red tape.
The more glaring failure to appreciate counterterrorism’s complexities was the “continuing, imminent threat to US persons” clause, usually interpreted to mean a gun-toting foot soldier. The Islamic State has a seemingly never-ending supply of recruits ready to handle an AK-47. In a sense, the clause reduced America’s most surgical counterterrorism tool to a lawnmower, whereby we would target as many Islamic State soldiers as possible, allow the patch to grow back, and continue “mowing the grass.” A more effective approach is to target critical vulnerabilities—low-density, highly-skilled terrorists—that often do not pose a “continuing, imminent threat to US Persons.” The critical vulnerabilities are the recruiters, trainers, couriers, administrators, and media kingpins that ensure the Islamic State functions and thrives, but rarely pose an imminent threat. The PPG process raised the burden of proof so high, it was difficult to convict these Islamic State “Al Capones.”
In October 2017, President Donald Trump replaced the PPG process with the “Principals, Standards, and Procedures” (PSP) process. While the details of the PSP process remain secret, the administration’s national security team described two proposed changes to address PPG limitations and eliminate drone bureaucracy altogether. First, proposed targeting operations and their collateral estimates would no longer be vetted at the Presidential level. This shift adapted the policy process to the speed of counterterrorism and seized initiative to stay ahead of imminent terrorist attacks. Second, the PSP process removed the imminent threat clause, permitting the righteous targeting of Islamic State’s critical players and high-value capabilities that don’t carry an AK-47. These changes were inherently linked to the increased tempo of global operations against the Islamic State in 2018 and restored the competitive advantage for US Special Operations carrying out drone strikes.
The Trump administration did leave one Obama-era condition intact: the moral and strategic imperative to minimize civilian casualties. On this organizing principle, the two presidents are united, but the difference is one of execution and outcome. Where the Obama administration injected bureaucracy to impart transparency and temper the pace of strikes, the Trump administration has chosen to empower military commanders with “target engagement authority” within parameters set out by an interagency national security team. Contrary to PPG wisdom, delegating target engagement authority to military commanders responsible for prosecuting America’s counterterrorism campaigns did not end with a significant increase in civilian casualties. In fact, targeting authority at the appropriate level of military command accompanied by clear guidance from our elected leaders increased the rate at which the US eliminated Islamic State threats by 43% and was a centerpiece to the destruction of the Islamic Caliphate in 2019. Being effective, empowering our military, and protecting the citizens of the world from the threat of the Islamic State need not compromise our values, as these are not mutually exclusive ideas.
Looking forward, if a Biden Administration truly seeks the relentless pursuit of excellence in both effectiveness and values, there is one logical progression: shift all lethal drone operations from the CIA to the DoD. Up to this point, CIA drone operations have not been discussed, and for a good reason. CIA operations are covert and not subject to the same transparency and oversight requirements as DoD operations. While publicly available data can only make the best assumptions, all accounts point toward DoD RPA operations as having higher performance, lower civilian casualties, and greater public transparency. Even if the CIA could make an argument toward their efficiency in RPA operations, they are not obligated to inform the American public of their successes or failures. As President Obama and President Trump figured out, it is not bureaucracy but accountability that is the essential element to reducing civilian casualties. This is perhaps one justification as to why DoD conducted the targeted strike on Qasem Soleimani and not the CIA. Shifting lethal drone operations from CIA to DoD enshrines accountability in publicly available congressional reporting. Not to mention, the transition would carry a tremendous upside, as it frees up CIA intelligence assets and human capital to focus on China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Such a move would restore the comparative advantage to both organizations, allowing DoD to maximize pressure on the Islamic State and the CIA to focus on foreign intelligence.
Marc Losito is a first-year MPP candidate at Duke University and an active duty U.S. Army Warrant Officer, focusing on the intersection of technology and national security. The views expressed in the article are his alone and do not represent Duke University, the Sanford School of Public Policy, nor the U.S. Army.
