Pentagon reacts to problem of civilians dying in US drone strikes — RT World News

US Secretary of Protection Lloyd Austin plans to determine a “civilian safety middle of excellence” in an effort to monitor and reply to “drone strike classes realized” and standardize each the reporting of strikes and the compensation of victims, he revealed in a memo to Pentagon staffers on Thursday.

The undersecretary of protection for coverage, the comptroller, and different workplaces obtained the memo, with directions to reply inside 90 days with their concepts on tips on how to cut back civilian deaths going ahead. They’ve been tasked with making a uniform method between Protection Division divisions on how civilian drone strikes will likely be investigated, compensated, and publicized.

The Pentagon has lengthy been accused each internationally and domestically of displaying disregard for what has infamously been termed “collateral harm” – the excessive variety of civilian casualties killed amid Washington’s rising urge for food for drone warfare.

The RAND Company – a suppose tank with deep army ties that’s not identified for its anti-war stance – present in a latest research that “1000’s of harmless civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria” had died from US drone strikes for the reason that launch of the Struggle on Terror in 2001 as a consequence of a failure to acknowledge, report, or share “previous errors” amongst drone operators.

Not solely have been the civilian casualty estimates given by the Division of Protection “far too low” to be lifelike, however they have been additionally “damaging to the division’s credibility,” RAND senior researcher Michael McNerney revealed. He famous that unbiased estimates of the variety of civilian deaths in Syria in 2019 ranged from 490 to 1,118, however the Pentagon’s personal determine was simply 21.

RAND and the Protection Division concurred that the Pentagon was “not prepared for conflicts with potential adversaries like Russia or China,” and that the chance of civilian casualties was “a lot larger,” with “far more highly effective munitions getting used on either side.”

The Pentagon revealed in a 2013 inside memo that its drone strikes had hit their supposed goal simply 10% of the time over the course of a five-month interval in Afghanistan. Not solely have been the strikes usually based mostly on bogus intelligence, the company famous, however even once they hit the right goal, the following killings have been more likely to compromise extra essential intel-gathering operations.