Drone programs in the counterterrorism context rest on the use of force in self-defense not against an (imminent) act, but against individuals in the light of their personal or behavioral characteristics. Because drone programs are motivated by the objective of permanently addressing future threats before they materialize, technology and legal rhetoric are used as instruments to authorize action against individuals who are not presently perpetrating terrorist acts, nor even clearly preparing, such acts. Some states active in the transnational war on terror have proposed a legal framework for the continuous anticipation of armed attacks against individuals who show signs of hostile intent. These changes in military strategy and legal discourse are not merely the result of how states decide to use force in the counterterrorism context, but also of what technology allows them to do. As such, drones facilitate and arguably intensify the phenomena of the individualization and dematerialization of the use of force. Although the interpretation of self-defense proposed by some states active in the war on terror is still highly contested on some points, the chapter shows that even if some limitations remain, concessions to the extensive interpretation of some limitations appear to have a direct cascade effect on the remaining checks because these limitations are interconnected.

How did the new kind of deterritorialized, dematerialized, and individualized warfare ‒ extensive in both time and space ‒ become durable? To what extent can it be considered as part of the normal functioning of the states that use drones? This chapter finds that the development of the use of drones in the US, in comparison with the use of France in the UK and France, is best described as one of institutionalization. The institutionalization of drone programs is defined as the process whereby drone practices become stable and durable activities embedded in the normative fabric of the state. This process derives from a combination of factors, from the formation of a bureaucracy – narrowly defined as the structured, harmonized, and depersonalized interaction of agents – to the formulation of legitimizing legal rationales, and the stabilizing force of the technology itself. The US drone program was stabilized through the creation of structures and bureaucratic interactions, a highly legalistic mode of justification, and narratives about drones being tailor-made to fight a transnational and polymorphous enemy.