Drone Strike Orders Reportedly Down This Year As US Seeks More Intelligence

Not learning anything by just killing

The number of drone strikes approved by the Obama administration on suspected terrorists has fallen dramatically this year, as the war with al Qaeda increasingly shifts to Africa and U.S. intelligence craves more captures and interrogations of high-value targets.

U.S. officials told The Washington Times on Wednesday that the reasons for a shift in tactics are many — including that al Qaeda's senior ranks were thinned out so much in 2011 and 2012 by an intense flurry of drone strikes, and that the terrorist network has adapted to try to evade some of Washington's use of the strikes or to make them less politically palatable.