Drone Strike

Nicholas Irving's Reaper: Drone Strike is the next book in the explosive thriller series by the former special operations sniper and New York Times bestselling author of The Reaper. On a classified mission to help the Israeli Defense Forces stop a Syrian and Hezbollah invasion to seize the Golan Heights, Ranger sniper Vick Harwood and his spotter go deep undercover. Operating with limited support from the American and Israeli governments, Vick is out on the edge. Alessandra Cavezza, Director of Operations in Syria for the Italian UN Commission for Refugees, is moving families out of an embattled neighborhood. The nearly vacant suburb has been a haven for anti-Assad forces, ISIS militants, and Russian private military contractors. As she crawls into the basement of a home to help find a young girl’s doll, she finds a secret room that has detailed descriptions of unthinkable attacks on the United States, and falls into the hands of a madman: Jasar Tankian, Lebanese mastermind behind the plots. As Syrian tanks attempt to push through Israeli defenses at the border, Team Reaper picks off Syrian tank commanders as they battle Israeli tanks, jets, and infantrymen. Combat intensifies as Vick goes black on ammunition. Commandeering a cargo drone to deliver Team Reaper to a landing zone near the coordinates, Vick becomes Alessandra’s—and America’s—only hope for survival.

"By 1999, few people outside the military recognized the potential of armed, unmanned flting vehicles. In today's digital world, Unmanned Combat Aerial vevicles, or UCAVs, form a vital part of U.S. military strike forces and are controlled electronically from halfway around the world."--back cover.

Douglas Dillon Fellow Micah Zenko analyzes the potentially serious consequences, both at home and abroad, of a lightly overseen drone program and makes recommendations for improving its governance.

The intense debate over US targeted drone strikes outside war zones has been limited by the failure to review and assess a considerable body of quantitative research and qualitative material on the impacts of such strikes on terrorist groups and civilians. This book fills an important gap in the literature by conducting a careful and rigorous review of such evidence. It argues that decisions about the use of targeted strikes as a counterterrorism instrument, as well as legal and ethical evaluations of such use, must be informed by our best understanding of the insights that empirical evidence can provide on the effectiveness of strikes and the costs they impose on populations where they occur.

The United States increasingly relies on unmanned aerial vehicles to target insurgent and terrorist groups around the world. This monograph analyzes the available research and evidence that assesses the political and military consequences of drone strikes. It is not clear if drone strikes have degraded their targets, or that they kill enough civilians to create sizable public backlashes against the United States. Drones are a politically and militarily attractive way to counter insurgents and terrorists, but, paradoxically, this may lead to their use in situations where they are less likely to be effective and where there is difficulty in predicting the consequences.

Explores the secretive history of the United States' use of armed drones and their key role not only on today's battlefields, but also in a covert targeted killing project that has let to the deaths of thousands. There is a covert war, one in which drones scour the skies of Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia in search of militant and terrorist targets

A reveal of the government's secret drone warfare program.

While conventional warfare has an established body of legal precedence, the legality of drone strikes by the United States in Pakistan and elsewhere remains ambiguous. This book explores the legal and political issues surrounding the use of drones in Pakistan. Drawing from international treaty law, customary international law, and statistical data on the impact of the strikes, Sikander Ahmed Shah asks whether drone strikes by the United States in Pakistan are in compliance with international humanitarian law. The book questions how international law views the giving of consent between States for military action, and explores what this means for the interaction between sovereignty and consent. The book goes on to look at the socio-political realities of drone strikes in Pakistan, scrutinizing the impact of drone strikes on both Pakistani politics and US-Pakistan relationships. Topics include the Pakistan army-government relationship, the evolution of international institutions as a result of drone strikes, and the geopolitical dynamics affecting the region. As a detailed and critical examination of the legal and political challenges presented by drone strikes, this book will be essential to scholars and students of the law of armed conflict, security studies, political science and international relations.