The 'drone ecology' and United States counterterrorism practice in the global war on terror

Abstract

This thesis investigates the technologies and processes that underpin one of the United States’ counterterrorism practices of drone-based targeted killing. The thesis develops the concept of a ‘drone ecology’ to outline the complex networked system of armed drone aircraft, intelligence databases and high-speed communications networks that the U.S. uses to target suspected terrorists in many remote areas of the globe. The study achieves this via an analysis of the network structures that support targeted killing operations in two case studies situated in Yemen and Somalia, based on data from a series of leaked U.S. military documents.