Claims

The first drone strike in US history was executed in fall 2001 because the counterterrorism center in the late 1990s identified drones as a promising idea; they strapped a Hellfire anti-tank missile to a Predator drone at Nellis Air Force Base for testing, which created the foundation for armed drone programs.

In the Cold War era, as a second lieutenant, Petraeus was stationed with a rifle platoon in an airborne battalion in Vicenza, Italy, specifically positioned to jump into NATO territory that lacked large NATO forces (such as Eastern Turkey/Turkish Thrace) to fight Soviet incursion and ensure U.S. involvement in potential conflict—a force posture that differs fundamentally from current NATO arrangements.

The conflict in Ukraine represents precision-guided munitions (precision) versus mass assault (quantity), an age-old strategic dilemma where historically the mass side tends to win wars of attrition.