Opposition to Drone Warfare from Hancock Air Field
A car caravan demonstration is going to Hancock on June 16th, 2020.
Those interested in participating can contact Tom Joyce at tomjoyce51@aim.com or 607-277-7426 or
Mary Anne Grady at gradyflores08@gmail.com or 607-280-8797
A car caravan demonstration is going to Hancock on June 16th, 2020.
Those interested in participating can contact Tom Joyce at tomjoyce51@aim.com or 607-277-7426 or
Mary Anne Grady at gradyflores08@gmail.com or 607-280-8797
Opposition to Drone Warfare from Hancock Air Field
This is a very brief history of the nonviolent resistance to drones warfare and the part that the Air National Guard base at Hancock Field in Syracuse plays in that war. A bigger goal for this article is to update you on the state of our country’s drone war fighting, which our national media goes out of its way to avoid covering.
Hancock Air Field is just outside of Syracuse, NY, adjacent to the commercial airport there in the Town of De Witt. It is the base of the 174th Attack Wing of the Air National Guard. MQ-9 Reaper drones are operated by remote control from the base, and have carried out surveillance and attacks in Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East and now northern Africa. It is also a major training center for drone pilots, sensor operators and maintenance technicians.
Our Catholic Worker community joined other upstate anti-war organizers in 2010 to raise awareness of this war making in our back yards. On April 24, 2011 a large demonstration was held at the base and 38 people were arrested during an act of civil resistance. Since then at least 15 similar actions have occurred with over 150 people arrested. These have resulted in numerous trials in De Witt Town Court, many jail sentences, fines and at least one jury finding the nonviolent resisters not guilty!
Currently the Upstate Drone Action Network has three groups of resisters awaiting trial. One case, following a July 2018 action of Catholic Workers, is in a state of uncertainty. At the group’s last scheduled court appearance, the judge didn’t even show up, with no communication from him since. There were two actions in 2019 that took the theme of When Drones Fly, Children Die. Both groups were scheduled to go on trial in late March. However, this appearance was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic and has not been rescheduled.
To the Niagara Falls Air National Guard Drone Base – June 2020
Buffalo anti-war activists have renewed awareness in the Upstate Drone Action Network of the Niagara Falls Air N ational Guard. In September of 2019, public reporting of their part in military operations in Syria was revealed. The 107th Attack Wing, based there, also deploy MQ-9 Reaper drones. A base commander reported that in the previous 11 months they had “employed 83 air-to-ground missiles and nine guided bomb units, which removed over 130 enemies from the battlefield.” He also quoted a previous commander who was known to say that “Our job is to put warheads on foreheads.”
The Secret Wars of 2020
When was the last time you read about or heard about a drone strike by the military?
I’m guessing that it has been some time ago. That being the case why did the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, in his 2020 report on the Protection of Civilians ( in Armed Conflicts) raise concerns over the increased use of drones in targeted killings? This is only the second time extra judicial killings by drones have been mentioned in the 21 year history of this annual report.
That being the case, why haven’t we heard about the 49 airstrikes in the last six months in Somalia against armed Muslim fundamentalists? The U.S. military now reports only “airstrikes” not differentiating between armed drones and manned bombers. Since President Trump expanded the war in Somalia (you knew we were at war in Somalia, right?) there have been 47 airstrikes in 2018, 63 in 2019 and 40 already to date in 2020. In the first 4 months of 2020, there were more airstrikes in Somalia than in Obama’s eight years.
There are 5 U.S. bases in Somalia with 650-800 reported troops, the 2nd most in Africa after those in Niger. The U.S. Air Force Chabelley Airfield in Djibouti, Somalia has been the center of U.S. airstrikes in northern Africa since 2013. Construction at the airfield (May 2020) is currently upgrading the airfield to have increased flights of remotely controlled aircraft.
In a February 2nd airstrike in Somalia, the Pentagon reported killing one terrorist. Al Shebab, an armed Muslim fundamentalist organization, reported that the airstrike killed a disabled girl and wounded her mother and sister. Amnesty International’s (AI) investigation found that the airstrike hit a house where a family of five had just sat down for dinner. A young woman, 18, was killed. Her grandmother and two sisters were injured when struck by shrapnel.
In a February 24th airstrike in Somalia, the Pentagon reported killing one terrorist. AI reported that the dead man was a banana farmer and office manager for a telecom company. His employer disputed that he was an Al Shabab member. In fact, they said he was arrested by Al Shabab previously for disobeying their edicts.
History of Drone Warfare
Reconnaissance Predator drones were first used when deployed by President Clinton to the CIA in the Balkan Wars. Then armed with Hellfire anti-tank missiles, their use was exponentially expanded in the wars in Afghanistan, then Iraq and Syria. Although piloted by regular military Air Force pilots, drone warfare remained under the auspices of the CIA, thus obscured from any oversight or scrutiny. This is when the targeted killing of individuals linked to armed Muslim fundamentalist groups began. Immediately, non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) began reporting civilian bystander deaths and injuries.
One legacy of the war in Afghanistan is that thousands of killings remain to be investigated and victims’ families compensated.
In the recent Trump era years, drone warfare has moved toward the Persian Gulf and northern Africa. The aforementioned UN report highlights the U.S. use of drones in Somalia, but also refers to Libya as “the world’s largest theatre for drone attacks” and mentions Yemen where Saudi, U.S. and Iranian backed military forces are operating.
In 2013, President Obama moved most of the drone program to Pentagon control, which allowed for some limited oversight and accountability. However, two factors remained to cloud any real transparency. The 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) remained and remains law. We’ll point out two recent challenges to the AUMF below. Thus the “forever” wars continue unabated. The second is that some drone strikes are still in CIA hands. We learn about them only when NGO’s and civilians report on the “collateral damage.”
Authorization for the Use of Military Force
The Congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force legislated the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001 following the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. This legislative declaration of war has been used by three Presidents to fund and carry out military operations in a half dozen countries or more. In recent years, to its credit, Congress has tried twice to limit the use of the AUMF. After the murder of a Saudi U.S. based journalist by Saudi operatives, Congress tried to limit U.S. military support for the Saudi war in Yemen. This was stopped by a President Trump veto. In January 2020, a Reaper drone strike killed an Iranian general outside of an Iraqi airport. The Senate voted 49-44 to limit further military provocations against Iran. That opposition was not enough to override the ensuing Trump veto.
Reporting Accountability and Rules of War
Only in the last six months of the Obama presidency did any transparency occur regarding civilian deaths and injuries from drone attacks. He issued an executive order to investigate reports of noncombatants killed by U.S. action and to publish an annual report. Since this executive order never became law, the Obama administration never instituted reports. This is the one official check on the deep secrecy of drone warfare. It was quickly ignored or manipulated by the incoming Trump administration.
In 2018 Congress legislated the 2016 Obama reporting mechanisms to require the Pentagon to submit annual reports on confirmed or suspected civilian causalities. The reliability of the subsequent reports in 2019 and now 2020 is questionable as detailed below. Looking for reports and investigation by NGO’s continues to be a better source of the truth. Those include Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders and AirWars, a London-based airstrike monitoring group.
The war in Somalia started in 2007. In these 13 years, the Pentagon has admitted to 4 civilian deaths. AI investigated 9 airstrikes and found 21 civilian deaths and 11 injuries. AirWars found up to 142 civilians killed in the 227 declared actions (this would include airstrikes and ground based fighting) since 2007. In the first Pentagon report mandated by the 2018 legislation, 14 months of 91 airstrikes were acknowledged. The report noted that in 27 incidents there were 90 alleged civilian causalities. The military reported admitted that 1 caused civilian deaths, 7 were still under review and in the rest (of the 27) the civilian deaths were “unsubstantiated.”
The 2019 mandated report on 2018 civilian injuries and deaths from U.S. strikes was 10% of those reported by independent assessments. One obvious difference is that the Pentagon report only included those within designated battlefields, not feeling the responsibility to report those outside of “combat” zones.
For the duration of the air campaign in Syria against the armed Muslim fundamentalist groups there, Pentagon estimates of civilians killed diverged from NGO’s by a factor of 20 to 50.
Under the Obama Administration’s understanding of the laws of war, the military had looser targeting restrictions for battlefields and higher one for non-battlefields. “Battlefields” are where U.S. troops were deployed as in Afghanistan and Iraq. Non-battlefields, at that point, were places like Yemen and Somalia were troops were not deployed.
The Trump administration quickly redefined the military sphere in Yemen and Somalia as battlefield operations that make any restrictions on targeting meaningless. The new administration also rolled back a number of Obama era drones war fighting procedures:
Reporting Inconsistencies
In July of 2016 the British Secretary of State for “Defence” reported to Parliament on their military air campaign in Iraq and Syria against the armed Muslim fundamentalist organization there. He reports on the method of counting the number of airstrikes by UK human piloted and remotely piloted bombers. He compared that to the method used by the Coalition (i.e. U.S. lead) air forces. Between September 2014 and June 2015, there were 84 less “airstrikes” by the Coalition method than the UK method. The minister concluded by saying. “I have concluded that it would be preferable in future to use Coalition produced numbers for UK strikes.”
When is an airstrike not an airstrike? Is it when a remotely piloted vehicle is used? Or when it is fired by an unaccountable entity like the CIA?
Current Events
The UN Secretary-General has called for a world-wide cease fire during the COVI-19 pandemic so that nations can join together to fight it. The U.S. State Department issued the following statement. “The United States supports the secretary-general’s call for a global ceasefire, but have noted that we will continue to fulfill our legitimate counter-terrorism mission.”
A Catholic Worker Perspective
There are two overall points that we would like to make. The armed Muslim fundamentalist organizations that we are supposedly at “war” with have instigated numerous atrocities and we share no support with or justification for those. We feel most responsible for those atrocities that are carried out in our name. We believe that violence begets violence and are working to stop the violence that comes from our hands. Second, there are no “rules of war.” My experience from the times of hearing from brothers and all combat veterans coming back from Viet Nam is that during combat when push comes to shove, soldiers are commanded to do whatever it takes to win. In those days, everyone lying dead after a firefight were Vietcong. And now every male over the age of 16 is an enemy combatant. And women and children killed in the line of fire were either in the wrong place at the wrong time or being used as shields by the enemy.
This is a very brief history of the nonviolent resistance to drones warfare and the part that the Air National Guard base at Hancock Field in Syracuse plays in that war. A bigger goal for this article is to update you on the state of our country’s drone war fighting, which our national media goes out of its way to avoid covering.
Hancock Air Field is just outside of Syracuse, NY, adjacent to the commercial airport there in the Town of De Witt. It is the base of the 174th Attack Wing of the Air National Guard. MQ-9 Reaper drones are operated by remote control from the base, and have carried out surveillance and attacks in Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East and now northern Africa. It is also a major training center for drone pilots, sensor operators and maintenance technicians.
Our Catholic Worker community joined other upstate anti-war organizers in 2010 to raise awareness of this war making in our back yards. On April 24, 2011 a large demonstration was held at the base and 38 people were arrested during an act of civil resistance. Since then at least 15 similar actions have occurred with over 150 people arrested. These have resulted in numerous trials in De Witt Town Court, many jail sentences, fines and at least one jury finding the nonviolent resisters not guilty!
Currently the Upstate Drone Action Network has three groups of resisters awaiting trial. One case, following a July 2018 action of Catholic Workers, is in a state of uncertainty. At the group’s last scheduled court appearance, the judge didn’t even show up, with no communication from him since. There were two actions in 2019 that took the theme of When Drones Fly, Children Die. Both groups were scheduled to go on trial in late March. However, this appearance was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic and has not been rescheduled.
To the Niagara Falls Air National Guard Drone Base – June 2020
Buffalo anti-war activists have renewed awareness in the Upstate Drone Action Network of the Niagara Falls Air N ational Guard. In September of 2019, public reporting of their part in military operations in Syria was revealed. The 107th Attack Wing, based there, also deploy MQ-9 Reaper drones. A base commander reported that in the previous 11 months they had “employed 83 air-to-ground missiles and nine guided bomb units, which removed over 130 enemies from the battlefield.” He also quoted a previous commander who was known to say that “Our job is to put warheads on foreheads.”
The Secret Wars of 2020
When was the last time you read about or heard about a drone strike by the military?
I’m guessing that it has been some time ago. That being the case why did the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, in his 2020 report on the Protection of Civilians ( in Armed Conflicts) raise concerns over the increased use of drones in targeted killings? This is only the second time extra judicial killings by drones have been mentioned in the 21 year history of this annual report.
That being the case, why haven’t we heard about the 49 airstrikes in the last six months in Somalia against armed Muslim fundamentalists? The U.S. military now reports only “airstrikes” not differentiating between armed drones and manned bombers. Since President Trump expanded the war in Somalia (you knew we were at war in Somalia, right?) there have been 47 airstrikes in 2018, 63 in 2019 and 40 already to date in 2020. In the first 4 months of 2020, there were more airstrikes in Somalia than in Obama’s eight years.
There are 5 U.S. bases in Somalia with 650-800 reported troops, the 2nd most in Africa after those in Niger. The U.S. Air Force Chabelley Airfield in Djibouti, Somalia has been the center of U.S. airstrikes in northern Africa since 2013. Construction at the airfield (May 2020) is currently upgrading the airfield to have increased flights of remotely controlled aircraft.
In a February 2nd airstrike in Somalia, the Pentagon reported killing one terrorist. Al Shebab, an armed Muslim fundamentalist organization, reported that the airstrike killed a disabled girl and wounded her mother and sister. Amnesty International’s (AI) investigation found that the airstrike hit a house where a family of five had just sat down for dinner. A young woman, 18, was killed. Her grandmother and two sisters were injured when struck by shrapnel.
In a February 24th airstrike in Somalia, the Pentagon reported killing one terrorist. AI reported that the dead man was a banana farmer and office manager for a telecom company. His employer disputed that he was an Al Shabab member. In fact, they said he was arrested by Al Shabab previously for disobeying their edicts.
History of Drone Warfare
Reconnaissance Predator drones were first used when deployed by President Clinton to the CIA in the Balkan Wars. Then armed with Hellfire anti-tank missiles, their use was exponentially expanded in the wars in Afghanistan, then Iraq and Syria. Although piloted by regular military Air Force pilots, drone warfare remained under the auspices of the CIA, thus obscured from any oversight or scrutiny. This is when the targeted killing of individuals linked to armed Muslim fundamentalist groups began. Immediately, non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) began reporting civilian bystander deaths and injuries.
One legacy of the war in Afghanistan is that thousands of killings remain to be investigated and victims’ families compensated.
In the recent Trump era years, drone warfare has moved toward the Persian Gulf and northern Africa. The aforementioned UN report highlights the U.S. use of drones in Somalia, but also refers to Libya as “the world’s largest theatre for drone attacks” and mentions Yemen where Saudi, U.S. and Iranian backed military forces are operating.
In 2013, President Obama moved most of the drone program to Pentagon control, which allowed for some limited oversight and accountability. However, two factors remained to cloud any real transparency. The 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) remained and remains law. We’ll point out two recent challenges to the AUMF below. Thus the “forever” wars continue unabated. The second is that some drone strikes are still in CIA hands. We learn about them only when NGO’s and civilians report on the “collateral damage.”
Authorization for the Use of Military Force
The Congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force legislated the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001 following the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. This legislative declaration of war has been used by three Presidents to fund and carry out military operations in a half dozen countries or more. In recent years, to its credit, Congress has tried twice to limit the use of the AUMF. After the murder of a Saudi U.S. based journalist by Saudi operatives, Congress tried to limit U.S. military support for the Saudi war in Yemen. This was stopped by a President Trump veto. In January 2020, a Reaper drone strike killed an Iranian general outside of an Iraqi airport. The Senate voted 49-44 to limit further military provocations against Iran. That opposition was not enough to override the ensuing Trump veto.
Reporting Accountability and Rules of War
Only in the last six months of the Obama presidency did any transparency occur regarding civilian deaths and injuries from drone attacks. He issued an executive order to investigate reports of noncombatants killed by U.S. action and to publish an annual report. Since this executive order never became law, the Obama administration never instituted reports. This is the one official check on the deep secrecy of drone warfare. It was quickly ignored or manipulated by the incoming Trump administration.
In 2018 Congress legislated the 2016 Obama reporting mechanisms to require the Pentagon to submit annual reports on confirmed or suspected civilian causalities. The reliability of the subsequent reports in 2019 and now 2020 is questionable as detailed below. Looking for reports and investigation by NGO’s continues to be a better source of the truth. Those include Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders and AirWars, a London-based airstrike monitoring group.
The war in Somalia started in 2007. In these 13 years, the Pentagon has admitted to 4 civilian deaths. AI investigated 9 airstrikes and found 21 civilian deaths and 11 injuries. AirWars found up to 142 civilians killed in the 227 declared actions (this would include airstrikes and ground based fighting) since 2007. In the first Pentagon report mandated by the 2018 legislation, 14 months of 91 airstrikes were acknowledged. The report noted that in 27 incidents there were 90 alleged civilian causalities. The military reported admitted that 1 caused civilian deaths, 7 were still under review and in the rest (of the 27) the civilian deaths were “unsubstantiated.”
The 2019 mandated report on 2018 civilian injuries and deaths from U.S. strikes was 10% of those reported by independent assessments. One obvious difference is that the Pentagon report only included those within designated battlefields, not feeling the responsibility to report those outside of “combat” zones.
For the duration of the air campaign in Syria against the armed Muslim fundamentalist groups there, Pentagon estimates of civilians killed diverged from NGO’s by a factor of 20 to 50.
Under the Obama Administration’s understanding of the laws of war, the military had looser targeting restrictions for battlefields and higher one for non-battlefields. “Battlefields” are where U.S. troops were deployed as in Afghanistan and Iraq. Non-battlefields, at that point, were places like Yemen and Somalia were troops were not deployed.
The Trump administration quickly redefined the military sphere in Yemen and Somalia as battlefield operations that make any restrictions on targeting meaningless. The new administration also rolled back a number of Obama era drones war fighting procedures:
- Relaxed drone and laser targeting technology export restrictions;
- Gave greater authority to military commanders and CIA agents to target individuals;
- Stopped the reporting requirements outside of specified battlefields.
Reporting Inconsistencies
In July of 2016 the British Secretary of State for “Defence” reported to Parliament on their military air campaign in Iraq and Syria against the armed Muslim fundamentalist organization there. He reports on the method of counting the number of airstrikes by UK human piloted and remotely piloted bombers. He compared that to the method used by the Coalition (i.e. U.S. lead) air forces. Between September 2014 and June 2015, there were 84 less “airstrikes” by the Coalition method than the UK method. The minister concluded by saying. “I have concluded that it would be preferable in future to use Coalition produced numbers for UK strikes.”
When is an airstrike not an airstrike? Is it when a remotely piloted vehicle is used? Or when it is fired by an unaccountable entity like the CIA?
Current Events
The UN Secretary-General has called for a world-wide cease fire during the COVI-19 pandemic so that nations can join together to fight it. The U.S. State Department issued the following statement. “The United States supports the secretary-general’s call for a global ceasefire, but have noted that we will continue to fulfill our legitimate counter-terrorism mission.”
A Catholic Worker Perspective
There are two overall points that we would like to make. The armed Muslim fundamentalist organizations that we are supposedly at “war” with have instigated numerous atrocities and we share no support with or justification for those. We feel most responsible for those atrocities that are carried out in our name. We believe that violence begets violence and are working to stop the violence that comes from our hands. Second, there are no “rules of war.” My experience from the times of hearing from brothers and all combat veterans coming back from Viet Nam is that during combat when push comes to shove, soldiers are commanded to do whatever it takes to win. In those days, everyone lying dead after a firefight were Vietcong. And now every male over the age of 16 is an enemy combatant. And women and children killed in the line of fire were either in the wrong place at the wrong time or being used as shields by the enemy.
