Covert drone and air strikes launched outside declared war zones (the “targeted killing” program in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia) per administration. These are strikes conducted by the CIA and special-operations forces without a battlefield, the sharpest form of unchecked executive lethal power. The full-scale airstrikes of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria are a much larger, separate category, deliberately excluded here to keep the comparison honest. By total, the standout is Obama. By pace, it is the current term: about 130 strikes a year so far, against roughly 100 for Trump I and 68 for Obama.
Covert strikes in Pakistan, Yemen & Somalia, per term (independent-tracker estimates).
Clinton
0
Armed drones were not yet in use; the first strike came in 2002
Bush
~50
The program's start, almost entirely in Pakistan
Obama
~540
A roughly tenfold escalation, extended into Yemen and Somalia; includes the 2011 killing of a U.S. citizen, and his U.S.-citizen son, by drone without trial
Trump I
~400
Rivaled Obama's total and struck faster per year in Yemen and Somalia; revoked the rule requiring public reporting of strikes and civilian deaths
Biden
~55
A sharp decline under a restrictive 2022 policy requiring White House sign-off
Trump II
~220*
Partial term, through Sept 25, 2026; a Somalia surge after the strike rules were loosened again, about 130 strikes a year, the fastest pace on this chart
The accountability facts
Two details carry more weight than the raw counts, and they cut in different directions. In September 2011, a U.S. drone in Yemen killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, on the president's order and without any trial; two weeks later a separate strike killed his 16-year-old son, also a U.S. citizen, who had never been accused of anything. This is the purest instance of the power this chart measures, and it belongs to Obama. Separately, in March 2019 the Trump I administration revoked the requirement (an Obama executive order) that the government publish an annual count of strikes and civilian deaths outside war zones: ending the public accounting even as the strikes continued. One president set the record for scale; the next ran it at a similar pace and removed the transparency.
Every figure here is an estimate. Covert strikes are officially unacknowledged, so all counts come from independent trackers (New America, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Airwars, the Long War Journal) that differ by method and by which years, countries, and strike types they include; Obama's total is variously put at 542 to 571, and civilian-death estimates for his term range from the government's own 64 to 116 (covering 2009 through 2015) to 324 (Council on Foreign Relations) and as many as 807 (Bureau of Investigative Journalism). The chart shows strikes, not deaths, for that reason. Conventional airstrikes in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, a far larger tally, are excluded on purpose. Every president here inherited ongoing conflicts under the same post-2001 congressional war authorization. Trump II is a partial term whose figure is almost entirely Somalia; its total is not directly comparable to a full four- or eight-year total, which is why the per-year pace is given alongside it.