How many drone strikes were carried out under the Obama administration by year?
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Executive summary
Published tallies disagree sharply about how many drone or “air” strikes occurred during Barack Obama’s presidency because researchers use different geographies, agencies and definitions; independent trackers report totals in the mid‑500s , campaign documents from U.S. intelligence counted 473 strikes in “areas of active hostilities,” while other researchers have cited figures as high as 1,878 depending on inclusion criteria [1] [2] [3].
1. What the main datasets say about total strikes
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) logged 563 air strikes “largely by drones” in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen across Obama’s two terms, and called this figure ten times the number under Bush [1]; the ODNI’s published accounting reported 473 strikes between January 20, 2009 and December 31, 2015 in areas it described as “areas of active hostilities,” a narrower administrative category highlighted by fact‑checkers [2].
2. Why one headline number can be 473, ~563, ~571, or 1,878
Different counts come from different choices: TBIJ and New America include covert CIA and military strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia and sometimes count strikes outside declared battlefields [1] [2], ODNI’s 473 is limited to strikes the government labeled inside “areas of active hostilities” [2], and other widely cited tallies that reach into the thousands aggregate additional airstrikes globally or use broader definitions of “drone” and “air” strikes — producing the BBC’s citation of 1,878 strikes for Obama when using an expansive research dataset [3].
3. Why year‑by‑year breakdowns are hard to produce from these sources
None of the provided sources supplies a consistent, fully comparable per‑year table for 2009–2016: TBIJ gives a cumulative 563 for the administration without a reliable public year‑by‑year table in the excerpts here [1], ODNI’s reports referenced by Snopes list 473 for the 2009–2015 span but the snippet does not provide the annual split [2], and other organizations cite different multi‑year summaries without annual detail [4] [5].
4. What can responsibly be said about trends across years
Multiple analysts agree that strikes rose sharply early in Obama’s first term compared with the late Bush years and that Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia were major theaters of covert strikes during his presidency; Brookings and Eagleton note near‑400 figures for Pakistan/Yemen across overlapping periods and observe ramp‑ups in early Obama years, but these sources do not deliver a full year‑by‑year table in the material provided [5] [4].
5. Sources, definitions and political frames to watch when interpreting counts
Researchers’ implicit agendas and methodological choices matter: TBIJ emphasizes civilian casualty estimates alongside strike counts [1], ODNI’s narrower “areas of active hostilities” definition reduced the government’s official published tally [2], and opinion pieces and advocacy outlets often cite totals (e.g., “well more than 500”) that serve rhetorical points about legality or policy [6] [7]; readers should therefore compare methodology notes before treating any single headline number as definitive [1] [2] [6].
6. Bottom line and what’s needed to answer the question precisely
Using the reporting provided, the most defensible headline is that independent trackers count roughly 550–570 strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia during Obama’s terms (TBIJ 563; New America ~571 referenced by Snopes), while the U.S. intelligence accounting for “areas of active hostilities” lists 473 for 2009–2015; none of these excerpts supplies a reliable, source‑documented year‑by‑year breakdown for 2009–2016, so producing an exact per‑year table would require consulting the original TBIJ/New America datasets and the ODNI annual reports not reproduced here [1] [2] [3].