Timeline
November 1, 1911: The first instance of airpower occurs when an Italian pilot named Giulio Gavotti throws four grenades from his plane onto enemy encampments in Libya during the Italo-Turkish War.
1947: The U.S. Navy launches Operation Bumblebee to develop guided-missile technology and a surface-to-air missile system, resulting in the first unmanned guided munition, which paves the way for the modern armed drone.
August 1988: Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri establish al-Qaeda (translation: the Base) in Afghanistan.
December 1992: The first known al-Qaeda terrorist attack against U.S. personnel occurs in Yemen when two bombs explode in the seaport city of Aden, targeting U.S. troops en route to Somalia to take part in UN Operation Restore Hope.
June 1994: The first flight of a Predator drone, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is later weaponized in 2001, takes place. A year after its first flight, the Predator is deployed for the first time outside the United States to conduct surveillance missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia.
August 1996: Osama bin Laden issues his first fatwa: “Declaration of war against the Americans occupying land of the two holy places.” This refers to Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, a country where the United States stationed troops for many years until 2003.
August 7, 1998: Simultaneous truck bombings in Kenya and Tanzania kill more than two hundred people, including twelve Americans, and wound thousands. Meant to mark the eighth anniversary of the arrival of U.S. military forces in Saudi Arabia, these attacks bring al-Qaeda to the attention of the American public. On August 20, the United States responds to the embassy bombings by firing more than seventy cruise missiles at terroristtargets in Sudan and Afghanistan, countries that had been sheltering Osama bin Laden and other members of al-Qaeda.
September 7, 2000: An unarmed Predator drone flies over Afghanistan for the first time. U.S. intelligence analysts later confirm that the drone recorded video footage of Osama bin Laden.
October 12, 2000: Suicide bombers affiliated with al-Qaeda attack the USS Cole, a U.S. Navy destroyer, during a stop at the port of Aden, Yemen. Seventeen members of the Cole’s crew are killed and another thirty-nine are injured.
September 11, 2001: Al-Qaeda coordinates four terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, killing almost three thousand people. President George W. Bush signs Public Law 107–40, Authorization for Use of Military Force, one week later, authorizing the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force” against any nation, organization, or person responsible for the 9/11 attacks or for harboring those responsible.
October 20, 2001: Henry Crumpton, then deputy chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, authorizes the first drone strike against the Taliban. One month later, the first known lethal drone strike takes place in Afghanistan, targeting Mohammed Atef, a top al-Qaeda commander.
November 3, 2002: The first non-battlefield drone strike takes place in Yemen, killing Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, a suspect in the USS Cole bombing, and thirty-three others.
June 17, 2004: The first CIA drone strike in Pakistan kills senior Taliban member Nek Mohammed and five other people, including two children.
January 7, 2007: The United States carries out its first known targeted killing in Somalia against suspected militants from al-Shabab, a group aligned with al-Qaeda.
May 2008:The United Kingdom carries out the first known drone strike by a European Union country in Afghanistan.
August 5, 2009: A drone strike kills the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, in South Waziristan. Hakimullah Mehsud replaces him as head of the group.
May 28, 2010: Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, releases his report on targeted killings to the UN Human Rights Council. Alston asserts that targeted killings represent a major challenge to the international rule of law.
March 19, 2011: The United States conducts its first drone strike in Libya as part of a UN-sanctioned intervention after an uprising against Libya’s leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi.
May 1, 2011: U.S. Navy SEALs kill Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, in a raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
September 30, 2011: A CIA drone strike in Yemen kills Anwar al-Awlaki. A senior al-Qaeda leader born in New Mexico, he is the first U.S. citizen to be the intentional target of a drone strike. Samir Khan, also a U.S. citizen, is killed in the attack as well, though the CIA claims it was unaware Khan would be present at the time of the strike. Another drone strike unintentionally kills Al-Awlaki’s son later in 2011.
June 4, 2012: A CIA drone strike in Pakistan kills Abu Yahya al Libi, considered to be al-Qaeda’s second-in-command.
May 23, 2013: President Barack Obama gives a major speech on counterterrorism at the National Defense University, publicly outlining U.S. drone strike policies for the first time.
November 1, 2013: A drone strike kills the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, in North Waziristan.
June 23, 2014: The U.S. Department of Justice releases the legal memo that justified the killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.
April 23, 2015: Obama acknowledges that a January U.S. counterterrorism operation, likely a drone strike, accidentally killed al-Qaeda hostages Warren Weinstein, an American citizen, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian citizen. Obama apologizes for the incident. The White House believes Ahmed Farouq was killed in the operation and Adam Gadahn was killed in a separate operation around the same time. Both were American al-Qaeda members, but the White House says “neither was specifically targeted.”
October 15, 2015: The Intercept publishes “The Drone Papers,” an eight-part series on the policies and processes of U.S. drone strikes. The series includes a previously secret slide from the Pentagon that displays the chain of command and step-by-step process for the authorization of a strike. It also reveals that Obama, as of June 2012, had authorized a special operations task force to kill sixteen people in Yemen and four in Somalia within a sixty-day “potential targeting window.” However, over that time, 293 people were killed in Yemen, 19 percent of whom were civilians, and 6 people were killed in Somalia, raising questions about how many strikes the CIA conducted and how many people were unintentionally killed.
May 2016: The United States conducts a drone strike targeting Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, leader of the Afghan Taliban, in Baluchistan, a province of Pakistan. The attack kills Mansour. The United States conducts the strike—“believed to be the first American drone strike in Baluchistan,” according to the New York Times—without the Pakistani government’s knowledge. Occurring outside the FATA, the strike marks an escalation in the U.S. campaign to target terrorist leaders in Pakistan. Days later, Pakistan’s interior minister calls the strike “totally illegal, not acceptable, and against the sovereignty and integrity of the country,” adding that it would hinder peace negotiations with the Taliban that Pakistan had been promoting.
December 5, 2016: The White House releases a report on the legal and policy frameworks guiding the U.S. use of force. Although the report contains no new or changed law or policy, it clarifies the Obama administration’s legal positions on many national security operations, including targeting by drones. The report also outlines the four main legal principles that shape the U.S. government’s targeting practices: distinction, proportionality, necessity, and humanity.
March 2017: A suspected U.S. drone strike in Pakistan kills two Taliban insurgents. This is the first strike in Pakistan after President Donald J. Trump took office in January. Later that month, according to media reports, Trump authorizes the CIA to launch drone strikes against suspected terrorists. This marks a departure from Obama’s drone policy, which by the end of his administration had shifted the responsibility for carrying out drone strikes from the CIA to the military.
August 21, 2017: Trump outlines his administration’s new strategy toward Afghanistan and South Asia in a presidential address. He expresses disappointment with Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts and warns that the country has “much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists.” He also cautions that “no partnership can survive a country’s harboring of militants and terrorists who target U.S. service members and officials.” Trump warns that he will cut off U.S. aid if Pakistan does not “demonstrate its commitment to civilization, order, and to peace.” The Trump administration follows through by suspending military assistance to Pakistan in January 2018.
October 16, 2017: Over the course of two days, multiple suspected U.S. drone strikes kill thirty-one people, including an estimated twenty-four Haqqani network militants, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
June 14, 2018: A U.S. drone strike kills Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, along with four other Taliban commanders near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
February 2019: The United States enters into peace talks with Taliban leaders with the goal of negotiating the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and ensuring the Taliban pledge to block international terrorist groups from operating in the country. On September 7, however, Trump calls off the talks.
March 6, 2019: Trump cancels Obama-era drone strike policy requiring annual civilian casualty reports. The report was designed to increase transparency around drone strikes and limit the potential for civilian casualties in drone operations.
September 14, 2019: Yemen’s Houthi rebels launch a series of drone attacks on Saudi oil installations, severely disrupting the flow of oil from Saudi Arabia. Following the attacks, the U.S. Department of Defense announces plans to send military supplies and 1,800 more troops to Saudi Arabia. Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper calls the deployment “defensive in nature.”
Jan 3, 2020: A U.S. drone strike kills Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general, at Baghdad International Airport, significantly increasing tensions between the United States and Iran. The strike marks a significant departure from previous U.S. drone strike practices, which largely targeted members of militant and terrorist organizations without state backing.
April 14, 2021: President Joe Biden announces plans to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021 ending a nearly two-decade U.S. military presence in the country.
1947: The U.S. Navy launches Operation Bumblebee to develop guided-missile technology and a surface-to-air missile system, resulting in the first unmanned guided munition, which paves the way for the modern armed drone.
August 1988: Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri establish al-Qaeda (translation: the Base) in Afghanistan.
December 1992: The first known al-Qaeda terrorist attack against U.S. personnel occurs in Yemen when two bombs explode in the seaport city of Aden, targeting U.S. troops en route to Somalia to take part in UN Operation Restore Hope.
June 1994: The first flight of a Predator drone, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is later weaponized in 2001, takes place. A year after its first flight, the Predator is deployed for the first time outside the United States to conduct surveillance missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia.
August 1996: Osama bin Laden issues his first fatwa: “Declaration of war against the Americans occupying land of the two holy places.” This refers to Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, a country where the United States stationed troops for many years until 2003.
August 7, 1998: Simultaneous truck bombings in Kenya and Tanzania kill more than two hundred people, including twelve Americans, and wound thousands. Meant to mark the eighth anniversary of the arrival of U.S. military forces in Saudi Arabia, these attacks bring al-Qaeda to the attention of the American public. On August 20, the United States responds to the embassy bombings by firing more than seventy cruise missiles at terroristtargets in Sudan and Afghanistan, countries that had been sheltering Osama bin Laden and other members of al-Qaeda.
September 7, 2000: An unarmed Predator drone flies over Afghanistan for the first time. U.S. intelligence analysts later confirm that the drone recorded video footage of Osama bin Laden.
October 12, 2000: Suicide bombers affiliated with al-Qaeda attack the USS Cole, a U.S. Navy destroyer, during a stop at the port of Aden, Yemen. Seventeen members of the Cole’s crew are killed and another thirty-nine are injured.
September 11, 2001: Al-Qaeda coordinates four terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, killing almost three thousand people. President George W. Bush signs Public Law 107–40, Authorization for Use of Military Force, one week later, authorizing the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force” against any nation, organization, or person responsible for the 9/11 attacks or for harboring those responsible.
October 20, 2001: Henry Crumpton, then deputy chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, authorizes the first drone strike against the Taliban. One month later, the first known lethal drone strike takes place in Afghanistan, targeting Mohammed Atef, a top al-Qaeda commander.
November 3, 2002: The first non-battlefield drone strike takes place in Yemen, killing Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, a suspect in the USS Cole bombing, and thirty-three others.
June 17, 2004: The first CIA drone strike in Pakistan kills senior Taliban member Nek Mohammed and five other people, including two children.
January 7, 2007: The United States carries out its first known targeted killing in Somalia against suspected militants from al-Shabab, a group aligned with al-Qaeda.
May 2008:The United Kingdom carries out the first known drone strike by a European Union country in Afghanistan.
August 5, 2009: A drone strike kills the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, in South Waziristan. Hakimullah Mehsud replaces him as head of the group.
May 28, 2010: Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, releases his report on targeted killings to the UN Human Rights Council. Alston asserts that targeted killings represent a major challenge to the international rule of law.
March 19, 2011: The United States conducts its first drone strike in Libya as part of a UN-sanctioned intervention after an uprising against Libya’s leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi.
May 1, 2011: U.S. Navy SEALs kill Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, in a raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
September 30, 2011: A CIA drone strike in Yemen kills Anwar al-Awlaki. A senior al-Qaeda leader born in New Mexico, he is the first U.S. citizen to be the intentional target of a drone strike. Samir Khan, also a U.S. citizen, is killed in the attack as well, though the CIA claims it was unaware Khan would be present at the time of the strike. Another drone strike unintentionally kills Al-Awlaki’s son later in 2011.
June 4, 2012: A CIA drone strike in Pakistan kills Abu Yahya al Libi, considered to be al-Qaeda’s second-in-command.
May 23, 2013: President Barack Obama gives a major speech on counterterrorism at the National Defense University, publicly outlining U.S. drone strike policies for the first time.
November 1, 2013: A drone strike kills the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, in North Waziristan.
June 23, 2014: The U.S. Department of Justice releases the legal memo that justified the killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.
April 23, 2015: Obama acknowledges that a January U.S. counterterrorism operation, likely a drone strike, accidentally killed al-Qaeda hostages Warren Weinstein, an American citizen, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian citizen. Obama apologizes for the incident. The White House believes Ahmed Farouq was killed in the operation and Adam Gadahn was killed in a separate operation around the same time. Both were American al-Qaeda members, but the White House says “neither was specifically targeted.”
October 15, 2015: The Intercept publishes “The Drone Papers,” an eight-part series on the policies and processes of U.S. drone strikes. The series includes a previously secret slide from the Pentagon that displays the chain of command and step-by-step process for the authorization of a strike. It also reveals that Obama, as of June 2012, had authorized a special operations task force to kill sixteen people in Yemen and four in Somalia within a sixty-day “potential targeting window.” However, over that time, 293 people were killed in Yemen, 19 percent of whom were civilians, and 6 people were killed in Somalia, raising questions about how many strikes the CIA conducted and how many people were unintentionally killed.
May 2016: The United States conducts a drone strike targeting Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, leader of the Afghan Taliban, in Baluchistan, a province of Pakistan. The attack kills Mansour. The United States conducts the strike—“believed to be the first American drone strike in Baluchistan,” according to the New York Times—without the Pakistani government’s knowledge. Occurring outside the FATA, the strike marks an escalation in the U.S. campaign to target terrorist leaders in Pakistan. Days later, Pakistan’s interior minister calls the strike “totally illegal, not acceptable, and against the sovereignty and integrity of the country,” adding that it would hinder peace negotiations with the Taliban that Pakistan had been promoting.
December 5, 2016: The White House releases a report on the legal and policy frameworks guiding the U.S. use of force. Although the report contains no new or changed law or policy, it clarifies the Obama administration’s legal positions on many national security operations, including targeting by drones. The report also outlines the four main legal principles that shape the U.S. government’s targeting practices: distinction, proportionality, necessity, and humanity.
March 2017: A suspected U.S. drone strike in Pakistan kills two Taliban insurgents. This is the first strike in Pakistan after President Donald J. Trump took office in January. Later that month, according to media reports, Trump authorizes the CIA to launch drone strikes against suspected terrorists. This marks a departure from Obama’s drone policy, which by the end of his administration had shifted the responsibility for carrying out drone strikes from the CIA to the military.
August 21, 2017: Trump outlines his administration’s new strategy toward Afghanistan and South Asia in a presidential address. He expresses disappointment with Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts and warns that the country has “much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists.” He also cautions that “no partnership can survive a country’s harboring of militants and terrorists who target U.S. service members and officials.” Trump warns that he will cut off U.S. aid if Pakistan does not “demonstrate its commitment to civilization, order, and to peace.” The Trump administration follows through by suspending military assistance to Pakistan in January 2018.
October 16, 2017: Over the course of two days, multiple suspected U.S. drone strikes kill thirty-one people, including an estimated twenty-four Haqqani network militants, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
June 14, 2018: A U.S. drone strike kills Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, along with four other Taliban commanders near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
February 2019: The United States enters into peace talks with Taliban leaders with the goal of negotiating the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and ensuring the Taliban pledge to block international terrorist groups from operating in the country. On September 7, however, Trump calls off the talks.
March 6, 2019: Trump cancels Obama-era drone strike policy requiring annual civilian casualty reports. The report was designed to increase transparency around drone strikes and limit the potential for civilian casualties in drone operations.
September 14, 2019: Yemen’s Houthi rebels launch a series of drone attacks on Saudi oil installations, severely disrupting the flow of oil from Saudi Arabia. Following the attacks, the U.S. Department of Defense announces plans to send military supplies and 1,800 more troops to Saudi Arabia. Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper calls the deployment “defensive in nature.”
Jan 3, 2020: A U.S. drone strike kills Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general, at Baghdad International Airport, significantly increasing tensions between the United States and Iran. The strike marks a significant departure from previous U.S. drone strike practices, which largely targeted members of militant and terrorist organizations without state backing.
April 14, 2021: President Joe Biden announces plans to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021 ending a nearly two-decade U.S. military presence in the country.