Predator’s Progress: the bureaucratic challenges to the Clinton administration’s development and deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (1993-2001)

Abstract

The utilization of drone technology by successive American administrations continues to provoke global protest. However, the operational and political basis for their use can be found in the 1990s, when they first became viewed as a pragmatic, cost-effective surveillance platform during the Clinton administration. The evolution of the U.S. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) program reveals far greater continuity between successive administrations than has been previously acknowledged. This paper examines the bureaucratic challenges that the Clinton administration faced as it sought to implement the nascent UAV technology in its own war on terror, with little public scrutiny or outrage.