Last week America’s drone war was brought back into sharp focus when President Obama admitted that a US drone strike in January killed two al Qaeda hostages, an American and an Italian. “It is a cruel and bitter truth that in the fog of war generally, and our fight against terrorists specifically, mistakes, sometimes deadly mistakes, can occur,” Obama told the nation.
Writing in the New York Times, Peter Baker noted that the apology underscored “the perils of a largely invisible, long-distance war waged through video screens, joysticks and sometimes incomplete intelligence.” Jason Linkins and Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post put it more directly in their piece, “A Drone Program That Has Killed Hundreds Of Civilians Finally Killed Some That The White House Regrets.”
Two days before Obama’s press conference I was on a long drive, binging on podcasts, and found myself immersed in a kind of secret history of unmanned bombing. Two random podcasts came on almost back-to-back that were haunting in their description of the lengths humans will go to drop bombs on each other. The two stories are powerful in and of themselves, but were made all the more striking in light of Obama’s comments.
Bats
The first episode was from Nate DiMeo and the Memory Palace. Titled, “Itty Bitty Bombs,” it was just a short five-minute clip, but the weight of it seemed to fill my car as I listened. DiMeo describes it as “fact-for-fact one of the most bonkers stories” he ever tackled.
Balloons
The second story of unmanned bombing also comes from World War II. Radiolab introduces the episode, “Fu-Go,” on their website this way: “During World War II, something happened that nobody ever talks about. This is a tale of mysterious balloons, cowboy sheriffs, and young children caught up in the winds of war. And silence, the terror of silence.”
However, after a few initial reports in the local press the U.S. War Department issued a blanket order demanding newspapers not report on the balloons. The government didn’t want to cause a panic and didn’t want the Japanese to know their plan was working and that the balloons were reaching their target. They also argued that if the Japanese knew where the balloons were landing based on press reports, they could aim the balloons with even greater precision. For the most part, the press agreed to the censorship out of concern for national security. That’s one of the reasons many of us have never heard about the balloons today.
The Radiolab episode includes many more haunting details and personal stories from the balloon bombs. You really need to hear the full hour. On their website they have photos and schematics from the balloons as well.
Drones
Radiolab calls the balloon bombing a “seemingly ridiculous, almost whimsical series of attacks” a phrase that feels just as apt for the bat bombs Nick DiMeo describes. It is that ridiculousness and whimsy, carried to a terrifying end, that makes these two stories so poignant.
Today, our bombs aren’t carried by balloons or bats, they are delivered by robots. These robots are controlled by joysticks, driven by a new generation of soldiers in command centers that resemble office buildings. We’ve replaced the random selection of balloons riding jet streams and bats seeking shelter with a calculated, targeted specificity. But last week was a reminder that even with 70 years of technology on our side, sometimes the results are no better than balloons drifting in the fog of war.
For more secret histories of bombing, check out these two posts:
→ Eating Our Bombs
→ Disarming the Wilderness
(Screenshot of Pitch Interactive’s drone strike visualization, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” used with permission.)
Josh Stearns 
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