In what the Washington Post describes as the “next phase of drone warfare,” the Obama administration is set to “extend the Pentagon’s robust surveillance networks far beyond traditional, declared combat zones.” According to thePost, Washington is set to deploy the drone fleet to new areas across the globe, where it will be used to monitor drug runners, pirates and “other targets that worry US officials.”

A Defense Department spokeswoman said the military is “committed to increasing” drone activities throughout Asia and the Pacific. The Post also cites Colombia as a war theater that will likely see increased use of American drones, although US drones have already been engaged in operations against “narco-terrorists” in collaboration with the Colombian military.

“Surveillance drones could really help us out and really take the heat and wear and tear off of some of our manned aviation assets,” Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, head of the US Southern Command, said in March.

While Obama has claimed that “the tide of war is receding,” actually the US government is intensifying military operations worldwide. During the past decade, the Pentagon has assembled a fleet of hundreds of high-altitude, “unmanned aerial vehicles” (UAVs), which now carry out missions on a daily basis in service of the strategic aims of US imperialism. The “Predator” drone series alone has carried out at least 80,000 sorties in conflict areas including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Somalia.

In their 2013 article, “How Many Wars Is the US Fighting Today?” Linda Bilmes of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Michael Intriligator of the University of California, Los Angeles argue that the US is engaged in at least five “unannounced and undeclared” wars fought to a large extent with robotic weapons systems.

As the paper points out, these conflicts are part of a long “tradition of many previous covert US military incursions,” including those in Chile, Cuba, Nicaragua and many other countries. Advanced military technologies have facilitated a massive extension of such covert military incursions, the authors argue, writing that “the emergence of robotic warfare is enabling the US to become involved in more conflicts worldwide.”

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