The CIA's covert Predator and Reaper drone missions over Pakistan are separate from the U.S. military's unmanned flights in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Jane Mayer, an American investigative journalist, gives some details about the use of drones

"The C.I.A. runs a secret targeted-killing program, which really is an unprecedented use of lethal force in places where we are not at war, such as Pakistan. It's a whole new frontier in the use of force.

You've got a civilian agency involved in targeted killing behind a black curtain, where the rules of the game are unclear, to the rest of the world and also to us.
Where is the battlefield? Where does the battlefield end?


Toward the end of the Bush Administration, the drone program in Pakistan ramped up, but when Obama became President, he accelerated it even faster.

It's surprising, but the Obama Administration has carried out as many unmanned drone strikes in its first ten months as the Bush Administration did in its final three years.


According to intelligence officials, drones are more surgical in the way they kill—they usually use Hellfire missiles and do less damage than a fighter jet might.
At the same time, the fact that they kill civilians at all raises the same problem that McChrystal is trying to combat, which is that they incite people on the ground against the United States. When you're trying to win a battle of hearts and minds, trying to win over civilian populations against terrorists, it can be counterproductive.

That's why [the former Petraeus adviser and counterinsurgency theorist] David Kilcullen wrote,

"Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, a new revenge feud, and more recruits for a militant movement."


"It doesn't take as much talent or experience or training to pilot a drone as it does to pilot a real plane. The skills are much like what you need to do well in a video game. And the C.I.A. has outsourced a lot of the drone piloting, which also raises interesting legal questions, because you not have only civilians running this program, but you may have people who are not even in the U.S. government piloting the drones."


In fact, according to a New York Times report, the Blackwater private security firm (now known as Xe) has taken up a role in America's most contentious counterterrorism program

Blackwater operatives assigned to the Predator bases are trained at the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. They are taught how to load Hellfire missiles and laser-guided smart bombs on the drones, current and former employees say.

The CIA claim however that Blackwater is not involved in selecting targets but former employees say the company's direct role in these operations has occasionally led to disputes with the agency; when a drone misses a target, CIA operatives accuse Blackwater of poor bomb assembly,

One thing is certain, inside the targeted area some say bluntly that they would avenge the killing of their relatives, if they could only reach those remotely piloting the drones buzzing thousands of feet over their heads.

As Mayer concludes

"if the United States can legally kill people from the sky in a country that we're not at war with, other countries will argue they can do the same thing. And the people using those joysticks in Langley and the deserts of Nevada could now be considered under international law to be engaged in warfare, which means they can legally be retaliated against. It's a new horizon."