Following the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, the WOT seemed like it could be nearing an end point. Coming on the heels of the Arab Spring uprisings, the politics of the Middle East entered a new phase, which held uncertainty as well as the possibility of positive change. Within a few years, however, the rise of ISIS dashed hopes for a peaceful regional status quo. This took place as the US was increasingly looking for more “indirect” ways to conduct the GWOT, as addressed in Chapter 4 . Extending our discussion on the evolution of the GWOT, this chapter focuses on the instruments of what became known as “remote warfare”, after the tool most closely associated with this approach: UAVs or drones.

Born out of the chaos of the Iraq War, as an offshoot of AQI, ISIS uti¬lized a highly sensationalized and gruesome form of violence to usher in a new wave of conflict. The tumult associated with the anti- dictatorial uprisings of the “Arab Spring” in the Middle East and North Africa cre¬ated conditions that would be exploited by the group, particularly in Syria and Libya. As ISIS conquered territory in Iraq and Syria, it also struck out at the “far enemy”, conducting a series of high- profile attacks in Europe, the US and elsewhere from 2015 to 2017. It adopted a fran¬chise model to spread its influence in Asia and Africa. Measuring trends via the number of deaths, attacks or estimated terrorist fighters, the situ¬ation in the 2010s was markedly worse than in the 2000s when the G/ WOT was first launched (Institute for Economics and Peace 2020 ). In 2014, the US and its coalition partners initiated a new campaign against ISIS, eventually named “Operation Inherent Resolve”, which primarily relied on local partners and aerial strikes, reflecting a shift away from “boots on the ground” that characterized the interventions in 2003– 11. By 2017, ISIS had lost the vast majority of its previous territorial hold¬ings, although its fighters remained active in the Syrian civil war.