A Pair of Drone-Less Raids Doesn't Mean the US Is Officially Ditching Drones

The strikes, in Somalia and Libya, made headlines over the weekend as much for the one's shortcomings as for their apparent non-reliance on weaponized drones. Both rested squarely on the shoulders of highly trained commando units, and as such represented a decidely manned approach to counterterror in a region notoriously marked by the buzz, "bugsplat", and double-tappage of hunter-killer drone strikes.

For all we know, that is still the case throughout the Middle East and Horn of Africa. Who's to say it isn't?

Some nameless congressional aide. That the two raids did not feature armed drones (key word: armed) was enough to have the anonymous aide tell the LA Times how "this goes along with this policy that [the administration is] trying to move counter-terrorism operations from CIA to Defense, and trying to operate less with drones."

So what happened? On Saturday, US Navy Seals stormed a neighborhood along the Somali coast. The suspect—the leader of the Shabab terror cell reponsible for recent mall attacks in Nairobi—managed to slip away. What that says about not using armed drones is anyone's guess. Raining Hellfire down on a populated city would be plain idiocy. But what if he'd been in a more remote area? We'll never know.

The other raid, in Tripoli, saw an Army DELTA Force unit pull a wanted terrorist, a figure alleged to have played a key role in al Qaeda's 1998 bombing of American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, right out of an SUV. There, calling up drones didn't necessarily make sense either, but for other reasons: As in a lot of places and tactical situations, even in today's drone-filled air, flesh-and-blood is the way to go in the ongoing pursuit of al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Nevermind that this, too, had it featured armed drones, would've been another case of stupidly dropping munitions on a populated city. The X factor here was that the US doesn't have a base in close enough proximity to the Libyan capitol from which to launch an armed Predator or Reaper.

Which is to say, the speculations of some anonymous congressional aide simply "don't make an official turnaround", as the Atlantic's Connor Simpson rightly points out. As far as anyone can tell, what the Times called a "tale of two raids, one that succeeded and one that did not", does not signal the US's marked shift away from its favorite weapon in the ongoing shadow wars.

True, drones may no longer be the only game in town, but they are by now so deeply engrained in America's counterterror apparatus that they shouldn't be seen as anything but a permanent part of the equation.

Time is required to accurately size up the US's dronings. A year from now and we might be in a better place to take stock of what the hell is going on. But a few days after two drone-less raids that come out to a record of 1-1? That, as they say, is jumping the gun.

@thebanderson