The Guardian view on the new drone wars: as prices fall, casualties mount

Three days into his presidency, Barack Obama ordered his first drone strikes. Over the next eight years, he oversaw a massive expansion of the US programme of targeted killings using armed drones. The initial appeal was that the US did not risk its personnel, and strikes could be carried out without attracting much attention and, supposedly, with more precision - though civilian deaths were ignored or played down. But in the ensuing years, drone wars have undergone a dramatic evolution. Never before have so many drones been used, so intensely. The US programme relied on expensive Predator drones costing about…