This study is an offensive realist comparative analysis of the drone policies used by the Bush administration and Obama administration during the Global War on Terror. The emergence of violent non-state actors have led to states having to develop new strategies for countering them. Drones were used by the United States in order to combat al-Qaeda, using new technologies in warfare to achieve this goal. This research addresses a gap by focusing on drone policies rather than the legality and morality of drone attacks or the effectiveness of drone strikes. This paper uses three offensive realist concepts; power maximisation, security maximisation and preventive warfare. The method used is a comparative analysis of the Bush administration, with the operationalisation of each concept. The findings of this research show that the drone policies used by each administration can be explained by the three offensive realist concepts. The Obama and Bush administrations prioritised power and security maximisation, while the Obama administration employed preventive drone strikes to a higher degree than the Bush administration. These findings are significant as offensive realism was able to explain the drone policies made by the United States during an asymmetric conflict.