US military increasingly using drone missile with flying blades in Syria | Hacker News Reader

US military increasingly using drone missile with flying blades in Syria

theguardian.com

83 pointslilbaine121 comments

I'm kind of over the whole "Look, we killed someone far, far, far away for dubious reasons with NEW technology" articles. These folks halfway across the world aren't bothering, nor do they actually threaten my freedom in any way shape or form.

I've pretty much only seen articles like these take a 'warcrimes, but even worse because technology is NEW' stance, which is honestly just as bad but at least gets the harm in it.

We have to fight them over there otherwise the alternative is armed radical militias in our streets (something that we definitely do not have anywhere in America at the moment) /s

Yeah, if we didn't make those people afraid of swift death from the sky they might grow to despise the US and start working to destroy it /s

Yeah, the headline seems to imply it’s some new ‘big bad’ where the article just slowly exposes that it’s a non-explosive missile. Killing fewer people by not combusting the surrounding area sounds like an improvement.

And spending your valuable resources on developing such weapons shows that you're the good guy.

Mass murdering fewer people still makes you a mass murderer.

Killing one's enemies does not necessarily make one a "murderer."

By very definition it does.

Extrajudicial targeted assassinations are pretty far on the bad side, no matter how few other people get killed in the process.

Sure, if you are doing it, killing fewer bystanders is preferable on the surface. But if individual assassinations are less likely to cause an international outcry since fewer people died that likely leads to more assassinations.

Isn't the US is, like, at war in Syria?

Wars being a terrible thing and all, one won't expect a speedy and fair trial on a battlefield.

I only leaned this a few days ago in another HN thread, but no, the USA has not declared war since 1942: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24567355

The US is not at war in Syria. ISIS is deemed to be a threat to stable governments in the area including Israel, Iraq, and even Turkey, and US is assisting those governments in fighting ISIS back. The seemingly endless civil war in Syria is still a civil war although US had at one point been supporting certain groups.

My idea was that the US is fulfilling the ally obligations towards these governments. ISIS itself is not a recognized sovereign, so it cannot be declared a war to, thus no congressional approval.

The rise of non-state actors has definitely complicated public policy regarding the use of force. IANAL, but it seems like much of the legal frameworks around use of force, just war, etc. is predicated on Westphalian sovereignty, which doesn't really have a place for groups like ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, etc.

With whom exactly? With Syria? Then why have the Congress never declared war on it? With some terrorists who happen to be in Syria? Then why is the US fighting them there, not the Syrian government? What's that? The Syrian government is actually fighting them too but demands the US forces to leave the Syrian territory, which demand the US ignores because why wouldn't it? It can't be declared to be engaging in a non-provoked aggression against a sovereign state since it has veto in the UNSC, after all.

Well that's the thing... None of the superpowers are actually at war with anyone there.

It's mainly a local conflict with the superpowers backing different factions. Kind of like a proxy war during the cold war. A lot of countries backing opposing local factions while trying not to escalate.

A full blown declaration of war would give us WWIII in no time due to it being such a complex mess of alliances they're.

Doesn't that line of reasoning presuppose you need to be firing missiles into crowded areas?

Rather than develop those missiles, what could be achieved by investing those millions into developing economies and relationships abroad?

I think it's more along the lines of you can hit a car or a meeting without decimating everything nearby.

It's the difference between sending an assassin and a suicide bomber.

But usually we despise both suicide bombers and assassins, not congratulate the assassin on killing so few bystanders.

The question by GP is more along the line of "what if instead of spending lots of money to kill fewer bystanders we spent that money to reduce the number of people that are so dangerous to us that we kill them".

Of course we know that won't happen because building weapons helps US companies and building hospitals and helping local people in foreign countries doesn't.

Usually because it costs more to do so. Many times the local governments are corrupt, and U.S. money gets funneled to terrorist organizations or just pocketed, never actually helping the populace have better lives..

I agree. Or to take it further, if the US had even made a serious effort to help the country / people of Afghanistan live a better life, and build up some sort of institution, instead of invading Iraq.

Or, after even the terrible decision of invading Iraq, if the US had been halfway competent / invested in post-invasion administration...

I understand that. I'm saying it's a false dichotomy.

Like, would you rather drink a shoe leather smoothie or a shoe polish smoothie? Neither! Why are we drinking shoe related smoothies at all?!

Why do we need to assassinate anyone at all?

Capitalism doesn't promote that kind of change. See, e.g, China...

The thing the USA has been doing for almost 20 years?

You can pour in millions into an economy, but they will only make a difference if there is peace (not even the rule of law yet). To achieve peace, you first have to win the war — if you care about peace on your terms. In a war you unfortunately have to fight — it's quite unpleasant and bloody, but else your foes will kill you and those who you are trying to protect.

We already invest billions abroad. But economic development cannot happen in the absence of security. Recall that in Syria, we got involved because our allies around Syria got freaked out about that the civil war would mean for their own countries’ security.

Flying swords which cut through the roof of a SUV probably give the targeted individuals something to ponder.

https://www.quotes.net/mquote/992742

"Paul Kersey: Nothing's too good for our friends!"

While we can debate the level to which America needs to get involved, are you forgetting 911 or any of the other terrorist attacks? It honestly feels downright insulting to the victims of terrorism that you would imply these extremist groups do not threaten your freedom.

The article specifically references that these devices used on members of aal-Qaida; the group responsible for 911.

The war on terror has killed easily three orders of magnitude more people than 9/11, and antagonizes the US with the regional population.

It's neither proportional nor effective.

Proportional? You think a proportionate response would be a bigger deterrent?

I'm not the OP, but I fully believe the disproportionate response, including invading an unrelated country in an oil grab, racial profiling, and the continued spread of FUD by politicians and lobbiests designed to sell votes and weapons, has itself created many people who now hate the US.

Dropping bombs on civilians all over the world in response to 3k people being killed in a single, highly unusual event, is not going to deter anyone - quite the opposite.

You clearly didn't read my comment. It starts with "we can debate the level in which America needs to be involved." I was not interested in getting into whether or not these tactics should be used.

My point was the OP said "these people do not pose a threat to my freedom" which is categorically false. Aal-Qaida is a terrorist group that directly caused the deaths of thousands of Americans, ripping them from their loved ones. To make _this specific argument_ against this weapon is just insulting to the victims.

I should clarify: I meant to say that the first line was trying to indicate the comment was not specifically focused towards arguing for or against the weapon.

They don't threaten your freedom, but they threaten the freedom of the people who live in the Middle East

I don't see them drone striking and assassinating the Emirs and Saudi royalty who are responsible much of the "freedom-limiting" activity in the Middle East though.

Why should we believe that? Why do you believe that? Who is to say the people targeted have affiliations to the organizations claimed? The US federal government has little credibility. Usually we demand they back up their assertions in court before they're believed. Courts exist because we know governments lie, so how can you be so confident here?

You can watch frontlines on the Syria conflict if you don't believe the government.

It's all about money and power, nothing about freedom, neither yours or theirs

Maybe you are only under the impression that your freedom is not threatened due to the legions of people working in the background to secure it.

Yeah because those "legions of people" surely haven't done more to erode our freedoms over the past decades than some militants in the thord world.

This is similar to the prevention paradox with COVID. We will never know what inaction would have brought.

Not really. I'm a black person in the US. Historically, the people "threatening" our freedom have always been in the US. It's never been the Soviets, never been the VietCong, never been the Sandinistas, never been Al-Qaeda or anyone the US has chosen to go to war with. As Jay-Z said:

"Bin Laden been happening in Manhattan Crack was anthrax back then, back when Police was Al'Qaeda to black men"

They’re certainly bothering people and threatening peoples’ freedom. Thanks to the export of fundamentalist Islam from certain countries, my home country of Bangladesh is a more dangerous place today then when we left 30 years ago. (And it was under a military dictatorship then!) Unsurprisingly, we take harsh measures to crack down on fundamentalism, including banning Islamist parties and executing terrorists: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48154781 (noting that British-Bangladeshi teenager who left to join ISIS would be executed if she went back to Bangladesh). And it’s not just in Bangladesh or Pakistan—while America has been fortunate to be spared from a major terrorist attack since 9/11, our European allies deal with them routinely. To a great extent, the United States is subsidizing the cost of fighting terrorism for all of these countries. After all, in Syria, which is the subject of the article, we got dragged into the conflict by our middle eastern allies.

Now, it’s fair to say that none of this is America’s problem. And I probably agree with you. But there is a risk we wake up 30 years from now and huge swaths of the world have been taken over by fundamentalist ideologies that are very hostile to us. We should think a bit about what that world would look like and whether it’s desirable.

Americans take for granted that we live in a world shaped by American norms. 160 constitutions around the world are based directly or indirectly in our own. (Bangladesh’s constitution begins with “we the people” just like the United States’.) The Star Trek version of the future (“America in Space”) comes about because of our willingness to invest in the security and economic and social development of the world. And maybe we’ve done enough, and maybe it’s time to let others lead. I’m pretty sympathetic to the arguments that it’s time to turn our focus inward, and we’re doing more harm than good. But the analysis is much bigger than whether certain specific people are attacking US soil at this very moment.

If radicalization in these countries works anything like it does in the west, then the missiles would be more effective at preventing radicalization if pointed at social media tech executives.

The particular missiles discussed in the article are killing high-value leaders, etc. So not so much about stopping radicalization as wearing an existing organization.

But yeah, I’m sympathetic to your overall point, for sure.

Rayiner, I wrote this response to you before you deleted your comment:

If the US were targeting the House of Saud then I might believe what you say, but those guys going untouched undermines claims that the US is combatting radicalization coming from the euphemistic "rich middle eastern countries with fundamentalist ideologies funding schools"

They’re certainly bothering people and threatening peoples’ freedom.

All of them? What percentage of the dead were terrorists? Because "they" in this case is referring to around 1 million people now.

People fail to notice that many who are killed are innocent, and this actually creates more people willing to fight back.

It's a vicious cycle, and the murdering of innocent people only makes it worse.

I don't think people are failing to notice. That's one of the most common complaints.

It’s not clear to me whether that’s true on a larger scale. Obviously, innocent people die in war and that’s regrettable and to be minimized. But innocent people also suffer from the instability and insecurity caused by terrorism. Note that while most countries opposed the US invasion of Afghanistan, opinion polling in India—which shares a border with that country—showed a majority of people there supported military action against the Taliban.

Note that leaving terrorism unchecked also has a cost. I agree folks tend to have a perception of terrorism risks that outweighs the actual cost in lives. But while the psychology is in peoples’ heads, the dollar impact is real. People don’t want to invest in an area where terrorism isn’t a risk. People with means and opportunities leave such areas, creating brain drain. The existence of these unstable places like Afghanistan imposes a real cost on the people in surrounding countries.

Innocent people will die in any significant military action. And if avoiding those casualties is the overriding concern, then you should never engage in non-defensive military action. And that’s certainly a very defensible position, but I’m not sure it’s always the correct one.

> while most countries opposed the US invasion of Afghanistan, opinion polling in India—which shares a border with that country

India does not de facto share a border with Afghanistan (Its claimed extent of Kashmir does have a small border, but in practice that's irrelevant)

"Note that leaving terrorism unchecked also has a cost."

True, but I believe there were a LOT less terrorists on this earth, before the US started its War On Terror.

So fighting terror, yes, but maybe not by blowing up whole weddings, because one guest has a cell phone that was linked to a bad guy?

(sadly not really exaggerating)

"I'll tell you what war is about, you've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting."

-Curis LeMay

> Thanks to the export of fundamentalist Islam from certain countries,

Yes Saudi Arabia which we continue to sell weapons to and blindly support. This administration is even more willing to bend to SA, as seen with Trump's visit and subsequent veto the bipartiston resolution to end US military assistance in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.

> while America has been fortunate to be spared from a major terrorist attack since 9/11

That is untrue. The Orlando shooting was absolutely driven by islamic fundamentalism, as was the 2015 Chattanooga and San Bernardino attacks and arguably the Boston Marathon Bombings.

Great, why aren't we striking the Saudis then?

There really isn't a threat over the next 30 as you are trying to paint. Both Pakistan and Bangladesh are 90+ percent muslim. So by default, any social strike from pickpocketing to bombings are going to be perpetrated by muslims and have muslims as the victims by and large. And let's keep in mind, that ISIS is blowback from the 2003 Iraq invasion, where once again we went to the Middle East based on "terrorism".

> where once again we went to the Middle East based on "terrorism"

A little more complicated than that: invasion of Kuwait, 1st Gulf War, chemical weapons, WMD confusion, violation of UN sanctions, post 9/11 fears/unknowns, concern about impact to global energy economy, etc.

One of the benefits of the US energy leverage created by fracking is that the energy market considerations that were part of our Middle East policy aren't as important any longer, we have many more degrees of freedom in this regard. I believe there are other benefits that come from less money available for state-sponsored terrorism/extreme groups due to lower oil prices.

My read of Islamic extremism is that it's largely funded by arab dictatorships, either the elites, or the governments themselves. At the same time, the basic recruitment pitch is usually grounded in popular dissatisfaction about these dictators.

So you have people like Osama Bin Laden, an elite Saudi funded by other elite Saudis, with a recruitment pitch that was heavily dependent on the intense hatred many arabs have for the brutal dictatorships of the middle east, and their American backers.

America is more or less the sole reason why dysfunctional dictatorships like Saudi Arabia survive. They provide the arms, the intelligence, the diplomatic cover, and sometimes the military assistance these states need to survive. The same states then fund the most intolerant forms of Islam, while radicalizing their own citizens and those of neighboring countries through intense repression and military adventurism.

That has elements of truth but is not really the whole story. First, terrorism is a problem in many countries. Bangladesh and India aren’t dictatorships, but face significant terror threats. The idea that a pan-Islamic state should replace the existing nation states is a real thing. Second, don’t overlook the hatred of Israel. Attitudes ranging from anti-Zionism to outright anti-semitism are nearly universal in the Muslim world. America’s support of Israel is a huge recruiting tool.

Third, you’re conflating fundamentalism with terrorism. Though the former often leads to the latter, the two are a bit different. Saudi isn’t funding terrorists that want to overthrow the Kingdom. That would make no sense. But they do want to promote and export their fundamentalism brand of Islam to make the Muslim world more cohesive (with themselves at the head of it). And insofar as there is funding of terrorism, at least the intention isn’t for it to be directed back at themselves.

Fourth, everyone, even people who intensely dislike these governments, fear what would replace them if they fell. Syria is a good example. Assad might have been a dictator, but he was propped up by the west for a long time because what was waiting to replace him was ISIS.

The Howard Zinn-style “blame America for everything” approach is illuminating to a degree because our involvement really is a key factor. But these countries also have vast and complex politics that have nothing to do with us. Overlooking the factors behind American involvement encourages magical thinking—that if only we would disengage, these problems would sort themselves out.

I actually agree with almost everything you've said. America is not responsible for the ME's ills. However, I do think that many states in the ME are classic client regimes, much more interested in keeping foreign sponsors happy than their own populations.

This creates a very strange and perverse set of incentives, where the US is incentivised to back their clients, even while the clients are essentially destabilizing the region.

I would assume[1] Saudi Arabia doesn't fund terrorists that aim to topple the kingdom. I do think that terrorism and instability is most common in states that don't have strong civil institutions, a civil society capable of mediating disputes.

Client regimes are already toxic to civil institutions, because at the end of the day, they don't need a very broad platform of civil support when their primary source of power comes from abroad. By propping up bloody-handed dictators, the US basically ensures that whatever replaces them will be worse - because the dictators are so damaging to the kind of civil society that would allow for a peaceful transition into something better.

I'm not saying that America is responsible for this. Probably if they withdrew support for Saudi Arabia, some other power would fill their shoes. I am saying that they, and nations like them, are inevitably powerful forces for instability in resource-rich, strategically important regions like the middle east. America is particularly bad because their policy is so inconsistent - one moment, it's about US strategic interests, next, economic, next, it's about exporting democracy and protecting human rights. So they prop up somebody like Saddam Hussein for years, then they sanction Iraq for years, then they basically demolish his entire country and state, and somehow expect this completely savaged country to gin up a functioning government from literally nothing while fighting a civil war. Their involvement in Afghanistan was even more insane.

[1]: It's impossible to be sure about this kind of thing. In the Russian Revolution, government funded terrorists blew up the minister of the Interior, for instance. Even a functioning state is pretty far from monolithic.

The critical point is that the US has never cared about any other country in the world. Every foreign policy decision is based on what is advantageous to the US at the time. For example, you seem to believe that the US is fighting Islamic extremism for the good of the world and the people in the places it's bombing. If that were a priority for the US, don't you think they'd have a problem with the Islamic extremism and dictatorship promoted and brutally enforced by their close allies in the Saudi Arabian government? Instead, the US just agreed to sell the Saudi regime more weapons.

The US engages with the rest of the world in a way that is advantageous to the US. This is clear when you learn about the modern history of US foreign policy[1]. The US backed over 40 authoritarian coups through the 20th century. To write such a long comment about how the US cares about the places they bomb is at best naivety and at worst willful ignorance.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

> The critical point is that the US has never cared about any other country in the world. Every foreign policy decision is based on what is advantageous to the US at the time.

s/US/<any-country>/

Acting according to self interest is not unique to the US. And just to be clear that doesn't mean that any country's foreign policy is immune from criticism just that the US isn't unique in this respect.

Pretty naive to not understand the concept of allowing these terrorists to operate abroad allows them to more easily coordinate and carry-out attacks in the US, but especially in Europe.

> These folks halfway across the world aren't bothering, nor do they actually threaten my freedom in any way shape or form.

As a counterargument, you can't know that. It seems like this argument could be restated as "I don't trust the US government to dispassionately determine who is a threat and even if they were a threat I am not in favor of killing people as a response." Which seems fair but the world is a complicated place and there are justifiable uses of drone strikes.

> the world is a complicated place and there are justifiable uses of drone strikes

Herein lies the problem, different people and groups see different actions as justifiable or not. Drone striking the hell out of a country half way around the world has very debatable justifications. And what throws a lot of shade on the justification is when the country doing the bombing goes on to ally itself with with countries that are, from the point of view of the justification, no better or worse than the one being bombed.

That same argument could have been used to justify staying out of WW2. Even if Hitler was guaranteed to stay out of US affairs post-war, the fact remains that joining sooner would have resulted in millions of Europeans keeping their lives.

Same here. Prematurely joining conflicts now allows us to save scores of lives abroad (at least in theory).

Nazi Germany declared war on the US first.

Even if they hadn’t we still would have declared war on them. It only moved up the timetable slightly.

I would say that the recent interventions in Libya, Syria, Iraq have only destabilized the region, thus resulting in a huge loss of live and miserable living conditions for citizens of affected countries, which in turn supports and revitalizes radical Islam organizations and further destabilizes situation in Europe, which has to be on the receiving end for refuges created by those interventions.

How far do you take that line of thinking? Should the US have entered the second world war in Europe?

> These folks halfway across the world aren't bothering, nor do they actually threaten my freedom in any way shape or form.

Rest assured, there are people who wake up every single day plotting how they can kill Americans or Westerners, or training to do so.

This may be the West / USA's fault - but it's where we find ourselves, regardless.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_St...

Given the many articles about new and exciting ways to kill brown people from halfway across the world at the touch of a button, I'd wager there are just as many Americans who wake up every single day plotting how they can sell their newest killing machines to the US gov in the name of stopping terrorism etc.

The Drive has a series of detailed articles about this kind of missle:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31409/everything-we-kn...

It's not clear to me why we're focusing on killing people in Syria.

What are we gaining from doing this?

R&D and political power I guess

Firstly there's the vengeance aspect. Al Qaeda did 9/11, along with many other terror attacks against the US.

Hurras al-din has also given support to ISIS, who destabilized a good chunk of the middle east. It's a bad look since a lot of Americans died to effect regime change in Iraq. If Iraq ends up turning into a full-blown theocracy, it makes our efforts there seem even more wasteful.

According to the Russians, he was trying to gather supplies to make illegal chemical weapons but definitely take that with a grain of salt.

Supposedly this helps US goals in Syria, but TBH I'm not really sure what the US goals are. I suspect that both our current and previous president would have a hard time articulating goals that are consistent with their actions in Syria

>Al Qaeda did 9/11, along with many other terror attacks against the US.

This statement is funny because the US support of "moderates" has resulted in military support of the Al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda wing in Syria (they have tried to rebrand themselves, but only blind will not recognize in them a radical islamist organization).

It's also funny because Al Qaeda was a front for the people that actually did 9/11.

And Osama bin Laden was a "freedom fighter" in the eyes of the West once.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/anti-soviet-warrior...

1 - Because Russia is there and apart from a brief period of time at beginning of 90's in the rest three quarters of century US and Russia (Soviet or not) went to war with each other by proxies. Syria is just the latest proxy in that wrestling.

2 - Probably maintaining/honing the skills. "If you don't use it you lose it" it's a very old and very actual saying.

I got hit very hard by this one at beginning of my programming career. Went home for vacation after my 1st year at Uni and when came back 3 months later I got very surprised to find I lost my speed typing ability. Had to start from beginning and was very frustrating. Never let my guard down after that.

WPM? Key layout? Favourite keyboard and switch? Main and/or favourite programming language(s)? IDE/Code editor of choice? How have you been keeping up your typing speed since then?

Not going to let you off so easily here!

Was learning Pascal and Assembler back then. Like I said took the 3 months off (former communist country, not everybody could afford to have such a device at home) so I had no PC interaction during that time. When I came back to school in October I found my typing was slower. The year was 1994, so over 25 years ago. Learned like every single major programming language ever since, it is my day job after all, the one that puts food on my family's table. Freelancer for 12 years now, I love working from home - it's basically pay to be around my kids. Any more hooks you need?

Was obviously just messing with you but I appreciate the serious answer. Very interesting to me as a fellow freelance dev with far less field time under his belt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKsDjpKr2Mk

The world is grey, Jack. - Clear and Present Danger

Was WWII a more acceptable war because one side was clearly more morally reprehensible? Even then, it seems to often be a difference in degree, not in kind. Please do not take this as an excuse or lessening of severity for any group.

Seems like a win-win. Remove a threat, while limiting civilian and surrounding damage.

This is amazing, no splash damage.

tl;dr this is a gruesome but targeted missile that doesn't explode and thus reducing collateral damage.

Overall a good thing.

Overall wars are terrible and so are "police actions" that we often do.

So my opinion is still that we need to figure out how to combat misinformation, propaganda, and radicalism rather than figuring out better/more efficient ways to kill each other. But that requires going after both social media companies, and stabilizing governments by providing spreading of wealth in poor countries, and relief to natural disasters.

> Overall a good thing.

I wouldn't be so sure. The ultimate issue here is the casual use of cold blooded extrajudicial assassination via drone. Anything which makes the decision to do that easier is a net negative. The whole reason we got to the point of regularly doing this over the last 20 years is because the technological means to do so have become commoditized and extremely "hands off". Colatteral damage is not what we should be worried about, but whether the act is even just in the first place. These are not battlefield commanders engaged in tactical decision making against our front line troops we're killing. They are strategic level beaureaucrats. The argument that this is just warfare doesn't apply. And if those people we were targeting had the means to do this to our own military officials driving down the street in Washington, we'd be hauling them into war crime tribunals.

How long until the US is subject to this kind of targeted assassination? It doesn't seem that this tech is so inaccessible to state actors with billions to invest. There are sufficient such enemies. Is the Secret Service really confident that it can protect its charges from this kind of attack?

I think they'll find that a drone missile can also be a boomerang.

EDIT: The objections to this scenario are taking it more literally than I was. I was thinking of a few dozen launched together from a yacht or freighter or enemy safe house in a nearby suburb. That's a lot easier than reproducing the US global operation.

There was a similar sequence near the beginning of Olympus has Fallen.

Imperialism and extrajudicial killing is only bad when other people do it, obviously. /s

There is no _bad_ on this scale. There is only "aligned with our objectives" and "not aligned with our objectives". And we short-hand the latter with "bad" and the former with "good" to create the propaganda association of ethics. So yes, I would gladly repeat your comment unironically.

I think this is sound. Pax Americana is part of the foundation for massive human progress. It has led to a Golden Age the like of which has never been seen before.

I mean, I don't know if this would be the tech leap that does it. This is spending millions of dollars to stab someone from a chair a continent away. I think we were probably at the "this is going to backfire" moment with the first round of drones. I doubt that this ability to now ostensibly limit civilian casualties weighs heavily on those who would perform an attack such as you're imaging.

A state actor with billions of dollars to invest would just use a regular missile. But not against another state actor with billions of dollars to invest into anti-air defense. The only reason why these are used in places like Syria or Yemen is because there's nobody there with the capacity to reliably shoot down drones and/or warplanes.

I don't think there is any air defense system capable of defending vast civilian areas from drone attacks?

The closest is probably the Israeli Iron Dome, and that costs about $50M for a battery with 17km range. Great for a tiny country under constant attack, but hardly economical for good coverage of larger countries.

The drones that are capable of launching those missiles are huge, and require airstrips to operate - we're not talking quadcopters here. Consider that e.g. Reaper - which can carry at most 2 such missiles - has a wingspan of 15 meters, and weighs a ton. Any such thing trying to cross the border would be quickly detected and shot down, same as any other warplane.

There is a different issue with small off-the-shelf quadcopters that are turned into "assassin drones" by adding a small shaped charge sufficient to kill the target if they manage to get close enough to detonate it point blank. But that's also something the Secret Service can handle fine, once they realized that it was a viable attack vector.

> until the US is subject to this kind of targeted assassination?

I suppose this depends on one's definition of "this kind."

The R9X is deployed from a massive drone platform. Using it on our homeland requires air superiority around the target. That's not, in the near term, a significant risk.

Technically the US has already, over two subsequent administrations intentionally and with a handful of discrete attacks, gone after and killed a father, his US citizen son (a minor), and US citizen daughter (a minor) in a series of targeted missile and commando strikes. It was done outside US soil but it was at least one targeted killings of US citizen kid. The daughter may have been accidental since her assassination was a commando raid and not two seperate drone strikes like they used to get the son.

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-tea...

2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/01/yemen-strike-e...

Never because the US tightly controls its airspace. Targeted killings in the first world tend to make use of poisons and bullets.

It worked wonders on 9/11.

Let's analyze what it would take to make your scenario work: some state actor is going to fly a drone or aircraft with the range to reach the US (launched from where?), past any radars and other sensors that the continental US has without being detected (and then fly back out even), drop a specialized munition that leaves large, analyzable debris behind, and somehow not be identified to face reprisal. That is exceedingly unlikely.

Why not just launch the drone from inside the US and use a generic explosive? Unexplained drone swarms near sensitive targets have been fairly common.[1,2] Them not being weaponized seems like more of a choice for reprisal like you said than a lack of capability.

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/07/30/drone-...

[2]https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34662/faa-documents-of...

> Is the Secret Service really confident that it can protect its charges from this kind of attack?

Yes. Our military is pretty confident that it can handle any form of missile/flying object trying to reach US soil before its an issue, which is part of why we feel pretty much zero repercussions for being terrible.

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Technically almost impossible. The US have bases overseas, its enemies don't have anything within or close to the US borders.

It's interesting how public has forgotten that ISIS is no longer any different from your usual terrorist organization with cellular structure, which is actively eradicated by both Syrian government and Kurds. So what mandate US forces have in Syria for their military activity? Not only they occupy some strategic land (Al-Tanf), but also actively kill military forces of the internationally recognized government (you can call it a dictatorship, evil to the core, etc., but it does not change the fact) inside Syrian borders without declaring a war on it.

But luckily for the public in his utter unprofessionalism Trump was pretty honest about it: https://www.newsweek.com/syria-trump-stealing-oil-us-confirm...

I wonder what the relevance of a government is if they're internationally recognized, but don't actually control their own territory.

Who operates where and does what has always been more fluid than just 'well they're internationally recognized'.

The biggest reason why they do not control the territory is the US and Turkey military presence in the region (with some active interventions from time to time), effectively it's a military occupation, but with extra steps.

After Trump declared that US troops will be withdrawn and they will not defend Kurds against Turkish forces, the government has easily reclaimed control over the large area with a very limited fighting.

I would go a little farther back and say the biggest reason was the Civil War... after that things played out.

Yes, but let's not be naive. The forces which were opposing the Asad regime were actively supported by Gulf states with political backing from the US and Europe (and quite probably with some intelligence officers coordinating situation on the ground), which led to the hot civil war together with the failing of the Syrian government.

It's not like that same regime didn't make their own deals without folks from the outside...

I don't buy into the idea that the Syrian government can claim some level of legitimacy by default and everyone else is subject to criticism for gathering support from other places....

The local's weren't sitting around happy as a clam and just up and decided to start a civil war because someone told them to, it's not that simple.

There is a REALLY big difference between country-wide protests and a hot civil war. Without support from the Gulf state and the West, I think it's quite probable that this civil war wouldn't have started.

>I don't buy into the idea that the Syrian government can claim some level of legitimacy by default and everyone else is subject to criticism for gathering support from other places....

The fact that the government is recognized internationally (see my first comment) DOES automatically give it a legitimacy in the eyes of international community. Unilateral support of rebel forces opposing the recognized government without UN Security Council sanction is generally viewed as an act of aggression and usually condemned, but I guess the US is so "exceptional"[0] the usual rules do not apply to it.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxndIsku2W8

It's an interesting contrast, your concern about outsiders involvement, and the basis for support for a oppressive government ... recognition from the outside.

I believe government legitimacy has more to do with it's own people's feelings about the government's legitimacy and that government's own actions.

Let's get it straight, in your opinion a simple unilateral designation of a foreign government as "oppressive" is enough to justify actions which will help to overthrow it (including black flag operations and general destabilization), to fund and train militias which will fight against it, and even take a direct military action against the government forces?

Do you think that Russian support of Donbass rebels in the Ukrainian civil war is justified?

If your answer to the first questions is yes, and no to the second one, then I am afraid you think in terms of the mainstream propaganda, so the further discussion between us will be fruitless.

I think a government's legitimacy comes form the people.

Locals don't start a civil war just because someone tells them, but as far as I can tell that seems to the only way you understand it.

You haven't answered my two questions. They are simple yes and no questions.

Yes, legitimacy comes from people, but any dictatorship or authoritarian government does require some amount of support from its people otherwise it will not last long (the number can be significantly smaller than 50%, but usually quite substantial). There are a lot of people in Syria who sincerely support the government (you can call them brainwashed by propaganda, but it does not change the fact) and any state has a sufficient amount of people who are unhappy about its government and would like to change it as soon as possible.

Is the current US government a legitimate one? Can Russia start covert support of the BLM protests by supplying means to confront police forces and embedding intelligence officers into the movement to help with coordination, while being justified in your eyes? What gives the US right to decide that Syrian government is not a legitimate one, thus creating a justification for such crude interventions, which only destabilize situation further?

The point is: one internationally recognized government can do deals with another internationally recognized government (with some restrictions, such as non-proliferation agreements, UN sanctions and others) and such deals are not equivalent to military support of foreign non-state actors and active attempts to overthrow "oppressive" governments (list of which by a very strange coincidence does not include Saudis and similar countries).

I guess like depleted uranium bullets is a useful way to re-purpose a byproduct of nuclear weapons production, flinging blades at an enemy is a good way to re-purpose decommissioned servers. I can only imagine the military uses for all the severed cable ties.

if ISIS get stronger they'll carry out more terrorist attcks over, ratcheting up the lethality

why not take them out overseas first? they've declared war so are lawful combatants

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