A single kill by drone, for example, involves anywhere from 100 to 200 people

The US government classifies any male eligible for combat as a potential enemy combatant, producing an embodied target of drone warfare.

This gaze is also productive of turning people into objects, classifying, categorizing, and making them knowable as potential targets.

The development of drone warfare is linked to a masculine framework of thinking, where the fleshy body is seen as getting in the way of war. Drones are presented as more reliable, intelligent, and vigilant than humans, and are seen as surpassing all human limitations. This masculine framework is evident in the way drones are represented as "just warriors," more humane in their precision and rational calculations. The relationship between masculinity and vision is also explored, where vision is seen as a way to signify a leap out of the marked body and into the conquering gaze from nowhere.

threat that drone warfare involves hypermasculine killing machines (Masters 2005; Manjikian 2014) or that it entrenches the distinction between “our” space and “their” space (Gregory 2011), either of which would make violence easier

Narrative offers a way to access bodily experiences, such as those of killing with or dying by drones,6 that are otherwise “impossible to reproduce” by those who live them (Wibben 2011, 44)

This can involve studying the experiences of bodies coded as women, gay, or of color in flying drones.

The experience of killing with drones can be both hypermasculine and emasculating, as operators are both invulnerable to physical harm and removed from the traditional masculine ideals of combat.

The technostrategic discourses of drone warfare also distance the use of lethal technology from its deadly consequences, using rational language, euphemism, and abstraction. The altered spatiotemporal experience of drone warfare makes killing easier, but it also raises questions about the masculinity of drone operators. They are often depicted as being in the domestic sphere, juxtaposing their combat experience with running errands for their spouses or coaching a kids' soccer team.

In September 2017, Pompeo sought authority for the CIA to make covert drone strikes without the Pentagon's involvement, including inside Afghanistan.