Weekend Read: JSOC Once Taught the Rules. Now It Breaks Them

A former drone operator’s account reveals how far a once rules-bound command has drifted.

During four years as a drone sensor operator supporting Joint Special Operations Command missions, Brandon Bryant learned one thing above all else: JSOC followed the rules.

“I had officers that would talk about the Geneva Conventions, the Law of Armed Conflict, and the rules of engagement,” said Bryant, who later became an outspoken critic of the drone program. The pilots he flew with were “extreme rule followers.”

Now, watching the Trump administration’s drone campaign against suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean, Bryant cannot reconcile what he’s seeing in the 22 airstrikes that have killed more than 80 people to date. In one strike, JSOC targeted unarmed and helpless shipwrecked survivors of an earlier strike, an operation that Bryant said his instructors would have called a war crime.

From 2007 to 2011, Bryant operated drones in support of JSOC missions, which oversees Delta Force, SEAL Team Six, and other clandestine units that handle the nation’s most sensitive counterterror…