How does the number of US drone strikes under Trump compare to Obama and Biden?
Executive summary
Research compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism counted 1,878 drone strikes during Barack Obama’s eight years and reported 2,243 strikes "since Mr Trump was elected in 2016," a figure cited by BBC reporting when the Trump administration rolled back Obama-era reporting rules [1]. Public sources in this collection say Trump loosened centralized approvals and reduced transparency while Biden halted strikes without White House sign-off and began a review [2].
1. Counting strikes: headline numbers and why they disagree
Different trackers put different tallies in public iterations; the BBC reported that researchers recorded 1,878 strikes under Obama and 2,243 strikes “since Mr Trump was elected” as of its March 2019 story — a comparison used when the Trump administration revoked an Obama-era reporting requirement [1]. Other sources in the dossier (the Bureau of Investigative Journalism original reporting summarized separately) and later analyses reproduce similar claims about a notable uptick under Trump, though absolute totals vary by tracker and time window [3] [1].
2. Policy changes that reshape the arithmetic
Counting alone misses policy shifts that change what gets reported. In 2016 Obama issued an executive order requiring annual accounting for civilian and enemy casualties in strikes outside active hostilities; Trump later designated large areas (e.g., parts of Yemen and Somalia) as “areas of active hostilities,” which exempted them from that reporting and revocation of the annual reporting order further reduced official disclosure [2]. The BBC and the Bureau’s numbers were cited in coverage of Trump’s revocation of the Obama reporting requirement [1].
3. Rules of engagement: decentralization under Trump
Multiple sources in this set say Trump replaced the Obama-era centralized approval process with a looser, decentralized approach that gave military and CIA officials more discretion to authorize strikes without White House sign-off, a structural change that both enabled more strikes and reduced centralized accountability [2] [4]. The ACLU and media reporting described an erosion of the "near certainty" standard to a lower threshold in Trump’s rules, a change the Biden administration later redacted in released documents [4].
4. Geographic focus and tempo differences
Reporting highlights that some theaters saw concentrated activity under Trump. For example, in Somalia researchers attribute a majority of U.S. counterterrorism airstrikes, drone strikes and ground raids between 2003 and 2021 to the Trump years, with 202 of 263 strikes occurring under Trump in that theater [2]. Such theater-level concentration can push a president’s aggregate strike numbers higher even if other theaters taper off.
5. Civilian casualties, transparency and contested tallies
Observers and human-rights groups say estimates of civilian harm vary widely and that transparency matters when comparing administrations. The Bureau and secondary analyses report large ranges—for instance, scholars and NGOs have reported varying civilian-death estimates for different presidencies; one academic summary in this collection cites a Bureau-based estimate placing Biden’s civilian deaths much lower so far (around 20 to 70 depending on counting), but emphasizes these are minimums and subject to methodologies [5] [2]. The underlying reporting changes under Trump (designation of active hostilities, revoked reporting deadlines) make cross-administration comparisons of civilian harm incomplete [2].
6. Biden’s posture: pause, review, and partial rollback of Trump rules
According to the same compendium, when Joe Biden took office he halted counterterrorism drone strikes that lacked White House approval and launched a broad review of U.S. strike policy, signaling a reassertion of centralized oversight that had been relaxed under Trump [2]. The sources note Biden initiated investigations and greater scrutiny after problematic strikes, but available sources here do not provide a comprehensive, single-number tally of strikes during Biden’s term comparable to the Obama/Trump counts cited earlier [2] [5].
7. How to read the numbers: methodology matters
The apparent increase in strikes under Trump relies on independent trackers and is tied to shifts in policy definitions (what counts as outside active hostilities), reporting requirements, and theater-specific surges [1] [2]. Journalistic and NGO tallies differ by inclusion criteria (state-reported strikes, covert CIA strikes, strikes in declared war zones) and thus produce different presidential comparisons [3] [1].
8. Bottom line and reporting caveats
Available reporting in this packet supports that independent researchers counted more drone strikes in the early Trump period than in Obama’s entire presidency, and that Trump’s policy changes reduced White House-level approval and public reporting of strikes [1] [2]. Sources disagree on exact totals and civilian-death estimates; methodological differences and deliberate redefinitions of "areas of active hostilities" undercut direct, apples-to-apples comparisons across administrations [2] [4]. If you need a single authoritative, up-to-date numeric comparison or detailed civilian-casualty tallies, the sources here do not provide a reconciled dataset — consult the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and other trackers directly for their methodology notes [1] [3].