The military conflicts of the early 21st century have seen the introduction and rise of a new military technology: the armed drone. With the United States acting as the driving force behind this technological advancement, the U.S Air Force and intelligence agency CIA have madedrones their weapon of choice for pursuing suspected terrorists and insurgents in various remotelocations. American military leaders and policy makers assert that the armed drone’s high levelof accuracy make it the best available weapons platform for this task. However, new researchshows that the use of drones may result in more civilian casualties than previously thought, andmay in fact be more fallible than conventional aircraft in this respect. This paper examines this discrepancy between rhetoric and practice, and attempts to find potential causes for this in the development and early use of the first armed drone, the MQ-1 Predator. The paper cites statements from President Barack Obama and CIA director John Brennan and contrasts them with a recent research report on drone-caused civilian casualties, as well as examples of drone strikes where the wrong targets were struck. The analysis of the development and early use of the Predator Drone draws comparisons to Donald Mackenzie’s account of the development of accuracy for cold-war-era intercontinental ballistic missiles, applying the science and technology-concepts he uses to the case of the armed drone. The paper concludes with the argument that the accuracy of the early armed drones is fundamentally misunderstood or overestimated by U.S leaders, and that there are circumstances in the development-history of the system that may have contributed to this inconsistency.

Doctor of Philosophy / Security Studies Interdepartmental Program / Emizet F. Kisangani / Attacks against nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in high-risk conflict zones have increased exponentially over the last two decades. However, the few existing empirical studies on NGO insecurity have tended to focus on external factors influencing attacks, with little attention paid to the actions of aid workers themselves. To fill this gap, this dissertation theorizes that aid workers may have contributed to their own insecurity by engaging in greater political action. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used to assess the impact of political activity by NGOs on the insecurity of aid workers. The quantitative analyses test the theory at two levels. The first is a large-N country-level analysis of 117 nations from 1999 to 2015 using panel corrected standard errors. The second is a subnational-level statistical analysis of four case studies: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Colombia from 2000 to 2014. Both the country- and provincial- level analyses show that the magnitude of aid tends to be a significant determinant of aid worker security. The qualitative methods of “structured-focused comparison” and “process tracing” are used to analyze the four cases. Results show that aid workers are most likely to be victims of politically-motivated attacks while in-transit. Consistent with the quantitative findings, it is speculated that if workers are engaged in a large-scale project over an extended period of time, attackers will be able to monitor their daily activities and routines closely, making it easier to orchestrate a successful ambush. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that political statements made by NGOs—regardless of their sectors of activity—have increased insecurity for the broader aid community. These results dispel the myth that humanitarian activity has historically been independent, impartial, and neutral. Several NGOs have relied on this false assumption for security, believing that adherence to core principles has contributed to “humanitarian space.” The results also dispel the popular NGO assumption that targeted attacks are not official tactics of organized militants, but rather the result of criminality or mistaken identity. In fact, the overwhelming majority of aid workers attacked in high-risk conflict zones have been targeted by political actors.

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Normatively, protecting civilians from the conduct of hostilities is grounded in the Geneva Conventions and the UN Security Council protection of civilian agenda, both of which celebrate their 70 and 20 year anniversaries in 2019. Previous research focusses heavily on protection of civilians through peacekeeping whereas this research focuses on ‘non-armed’ approaches to enhancing civilian protection in conflict. Prior research and experience reveals a high level of missingness and variation in the level of available data on civilian harm in conflict. Where civilian harm is considered in the peace and conflict literature, it is predominantly from a securitized lens of understanding insurgent recruitment strategies and more recent counter-insurgent strategies aimed at winning ‘hearts and minds’. Through a structured focused comparison of four case studies the correlation between the level of quality, timely and consistent data on civilian harm and affect on the conduct of hostilities will be reviewed and potential confounders identified. Following this the hypothesized causal mechanism will be process traced through the pathway case of Afghanistan. The findings and analysis from both methods identify support for the theory and it’s refinement with important nuances in the factors conducive to quality, timely and consistent data collection on civilian harm in armed conflict.

This dissertation offers a new understanding about wartime decision making in the face of likely, but unintended, harm to foreign civilians. It empirically identifies conditions under which leaders in democratic nations are more or less likely to choose to attack a target when confronted with a dilemma between pursuing national security objectives and avoiding civilian casualties. An innovative targeting decision model was constructed that described both the theorized structure of the decisions inputs and the process by which these inputs are assembled into a choice. The model went beyond the normal target benefit and civilian casualty cost considerations of proportionality to also include the contextual input of prospect frame. Decision makers were expected to address the same benefit and cost differently depending on whether they were winning or losing the conflict. This was because the prospect frame would influence their risk attitudes, as predicted by prospect theory. This model was then tested via two decision-making experiments that used military officers and defense civilians as participants. Additionally, a statistical analysis of data collected from an extended period of the second Intifada was done to seek evidence that the model also applied in actual wartime decision making. All three tests supported portions of the targeting decision model. Higher target benefit and lower civilian casualty estimates increased support for the planned attack. Prospect frame influenced decisions in the cases where both target value and the civilian casualty estimates were high and the resulting dilemma was very difficult. In these situations, those told that their forces were losing the conflict were less sensitive to humanitarian harm and more likely to support the attack than when they were told their side was winning. Furthermore, the Intifada data analysis of attacks approved by Israeli officials against Palestinians found this same effect of prospect frame held generally across all six years of observations.