Precision: A History of American Warfare

Drones are controversial weapons. For over two decades, remotely piloted aircraft have provided the US military and the CIA with the capability to deploy precision strikes globally: killing the ‘bad guys’ while purportedly saving the ‘good’. Yet drones are merely the latest technological incarnation of a long-held ambition in US warfare, one that can be traced back over the last 100 years: the aim to win wars rapidly with precision strike and little cost to US military life. By exploring the history of this ambition and the repeated attempts to make it a reality through investment in advanced weapons technologies, we can begin to understand some of the motivations behind what is now the dominant, and rapidly proliferating, form of modern warfare.