Saood Rehman / EPA, file

A picture dated 29 July, 2011, shows Wali Rehman (L) talking with journalists, in Shawal, lawless South-Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border in Pakistan. An American drone strike in Pakistan's restive north-western tribal region killed six Taliban militants including deputy leader Rehman Wednesday, officials said.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A U.S drone attack early Wednesday killed the Pakistani Taliban’s No. 2 commander Waliur Rehman in the volatile North Waziristan tribal region, Pakistani security officials and local tribesmen said.

The Taliban have not confirmed his death.  If confirmed, Rehman's assassination would be a huge loss to the already cornered militants engaged in a war against the Pakistani state.

The attack, which killed seven and injured four, according to government officials, comes a few days before the installation of Pakistan's newly-elected government and just days after President Barack Obama said the U.S. would cut down on the use of drones.  

Rehman was a close aide and deputy to Pakistani Taliban founder Baitullah Mahsud, who was killed in a drone attack on August 5, 2009 in South Waziristan.  Rehman was currently the deputy leader of the Pakistani Taliban after Hakimullah Mahsud and was head of the organization's most powerful South Waziristan chapter.

After Mahsud and Qari Hussain, a Taliban commander known as the mentor of suicide bombers, Rehman would be the third top Pakistani Taliban leader to be killed in a U.S. attack on Pakistani soil.

Slideshow: Pakistan: A nation in turmoil

Muhammed Muheisen / AP

Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.

Launch slideshow

Moderate?
Rehman, 42, was considered as a moderate commander in the Pakistani Taliban compared to some of his colleagues.

"Personally, he was not in favor of suicide attacks in Pakistan,” said Mahsud tribal elder Malik Mahsud Ahmad. “He always supported peace talks between the government and Taliban. I am worried after his death as bloodshed could again start in the country.”

"I am not aware if has been killed, but I believe it wasn't the right time to kill a prominent figure like Waliur Rehman when the newly elected government wanted to hold peace talks with the militants," Ahmad added.

Along with Rehman, there were reports that three other senior militant commanders Fakhre Alam, Naseeruddin and Nasrullah were also killed in the drone attack.

Pakistani security officials and local tribesmen said the drone fired two missiles early Wednesday and struck a mud-built house near Chashma village, about a mile east of Miranshah, the headquarters of North Waziristan.

Government officials said seven people were killed and four injured in the missile strikes. However, local tribesmen insisted that five people were killed and two suffered serious injuries.

"The drone attack took place at 3 a.m. and villagers arrived there after an hour and started rescue work," a security official said on the condition of anonymity.

He added that they had initially no idea about the identity of the people killed, but it was revealed when the militants and their sympathizers started talking about the death of Rehman.

Taliban quiet
The Pakistani Taliban kept mum over reports of the death of one of their top commanders.

Taliban spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan denied reports about Rehman's death. Insisting that he was alive, he said they would issue a statement after speaking with him.

The political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s spokesperson said party chief Imran Khan had condemned the latest drone strike and said it was against Pakistan's sovereignty.

"U.S. President Barack Obama had made a commitment recently that drone strikes in Pakistan would be carried out with the consultation of the newly elected government. However, the president didn't fulfill his commitment and conducted the drone attack the day the newly elected public representatives were taking oath of their office," the PTI spokesperson told NBC News.

Obama vowed last week to reduce drone strikes in Pakistan. His announcement was widely welcomed by the militancy-affected tribespeople of North and South Waziristan, where the drone strikes had mostly been carried out during the past 10 years.

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Mike Odendaal / Denel Dynamics

A Seeker 400 drone, manufactured by South African company Denel Dynamics, flies over Cape Town Stadium.

Editor's note: A clarification has been made to this article.

On a sprawling complex just outside Pretoria, South Africa, a government-owned arms manufacturer is preparing to test an armed drone that it hopes to begin selling soon to governments around the world.

The company, Denel Dynamics, says the armed version of the Seeker 400, which will carry two laser-guided missiles, will enable so-called opportunistic targeting at a range of up to about 155 miles.

“These are not combat systems, they are foremost reconnaissance systems,” Sello Ntsihlele, executive manager of UAV systems for Denel, told NBC News. He added: “(But if) you speak to any general, show him the capability, he will tell you, ‘I want to have munitions.’”

The company’s move is but one signal that the era when only a small club of countries possessed weaponized drones is drawing to a close.

Critics say the coming proliferation of the lethal remote-controlled flying machines will forever change the face of counterterrorism operations and, eventually, warfare itself – and not for the better.

“The U.S. has set a moral precedent,” said Jenifer Gibson of the human rights group Reprieve. "A state can declare someone a terrorist and just go out and kill them."

Reprieve campaigns against what it calls illegal drone strikes.

Supporters of military drones argue that they are an essential tool against terrorists hiding in remote areas and that their ability to strike with precision minimizes civilian casualties. Reprieve rejects the notion that drones are precision weapons and claims many civilians have been killed.

Who has drones — and who wants them
Only three countries are known to currently operate armed unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, as drones are technically known -- the U.S., the U.K. and Israel -- according to a recent report by the think tank RUSI. The report suggested there are only currently around 1,000 armed drones worldwide.

But China also is believed to have developed weaponized drones; the U.S. has said it would arm drones operated by Italy; and France and Germany also have decided to acquire them, according to arms trade experts and published reports.

And according to Peter Singer, director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institute, at least 26 countries have surveillance drones of a size or type that have been or could be armed, and roughly 20 countries are trying to either develop or acquire weaponized drones.

So far, the United States is the only country known to have transferred armed drone technology -- and solely to Britain, which flies U.S.-built Predators in Afghanistan.

U.S. sales of drones, armed and unarmed, "are considered on a case-by-case basis, consistent with U.S. law, regulation and policy, as well as our international commitments, including under the multilateral nonproliferation regimes," a Pentagon spokesman said in an email to NBC News. A State Department spokesman declined to comment on the record.

U.S. reluctance to share its cutting-edge military drone technology outside a few trusted NATO partners like Britain and Italy is viewed as an opportunity by arms manufacturers like Denel Dynamics.

The company aims to be among the first suppliers of armed drones to market, if tests of the armed versions of the Seeker 400 -- expected to begin in “a month or two” and last up to six months, according to Ntsihlele -- are successful. South Africa would have to purchase the armed drones first before the company would begin marketing them elsewhere, but if that happens Denel sees opportunities for growth elsewhere, particularly in “Africa and the Middle East,” he said.

Ntsihlele declined to say how much the armed Seeker 400 will cost, but said it will be far cheaper than the Predator and Reaper, the armed drones used for anti-terrorism operations by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, which cost approximately $20 million and $56.5 million apiece, respectively. And unlike those UAVs, it would not require satellite technology, being controlled instead through “line of sight” communications. That limits its range but makes it potentially available to nations without sophisticated space-based guidance systems.

The drone market
President Barack Obama, in a speech last Thursday, said he would impose new limits on drone strikes against foreign terrorists in an attempt to reduce civilian casualties to near zero and ensure that only enemies who pose a “continuing, imminent threat” to the United States are targeted.

"What we are trying to do with our (anti-terror) strategy is turn it back over to the host country and local forces," the New York Times quoted the Pentagon's top counterterrorism official Michael Sheehan as saying. "That is the future."

The sale of armed drones to other governments raises similarly thorny issues though.

Slideshow: Armed drones around the world

Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguson/U.S. Air Force

The military use of armed drones in the Middle East and Afghanistan has brought more countries and companies into the market for such weapons. Here are some of the un-crewed aerial vehicles that are known to carry weapons or that might be adapted to carry them.

Launch slideshow

There are no international treaties restricting sales of armed drones, only voluntary controls on exports. Beyond sanctions and embargoes governed by the Security Council, the United Nations does not regulate arms and arms-technology sales, although the Arms Trade Treaty approved in April by the General Assembly may change that if it is eventually ratified by enough nations.

In Denel’s case, Ntsihlele indicated that the South African government would limit sales only to governments that would be “accountable and responsible” and agree to “opportunistic” use of the weapons on justified targets. “That target could be a pirate, or could be a terrorist,” he said.

The company also provided this statement to NBC News: “All of our activities ... take place within the framework of decisions taken by international organs such as the United Nations, the policies of the South African government and the regulatory prescripts imposed by the National Conventional Arms Control Committee and the Directorate Conventional Arms Control,” referring to two South African government organizations.

Assuming it gets its product to market, Denel is expected to quickly encounter plenty of competition.

“To the extent that the U.S. backs off the armed drone business, it allows countries like China, in particular, to say they’ll fill the marketplace,” said Dennis Gormley, who teaches intelligence and military issues at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

China already has shown an armed drone resembling a smaller Reaper at an air show last fall, and photos surfaced on Chinese websites earlier this month showing what appeared to be an unmanned combat aerial vehicle known as the Lijan, or “Sharp Sword.” The Lijan closely resembles the U.S. Navy’s remote-controlled X-47B drone, which recently launched from an aircraft carrier for the first time.

Israel will also be a marketplace competitor. It is a leader in armed drones and is already considered the biggest exporter of unarmed drone technology.

Turkey also has developed a reconnaissance drone, the Anka, for spying on Kurdish insurgents. Last summer, the Turkish Defense Industry Executive Committee said that TAI, the company that builds the Anka, was starting research and development on an armed variant, the Anka +A.

Turkey had been intensely interested in buying armed drones from the U.S., said William Hartung, director of the arms and security project at the Center for International Policy. So far, the U.S. has resisted selling it such technology, despite its NATO membership, he said.

Iran also has made unsubstantiated claims to have armed drones.

Terrorism concerns
The spread of armed drone technology to volatile regions like the Middle East inevitably stirs concern that terrorists could obtain the airborne weapons. So far, the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah, considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., is the only group believed to possess the UAVS. It has flown several unarmed drones containing explosives over Israel and, in one case, apparently used an armed drone to attack an Israeli ship, according to published reports. 

Khaled Abdullah / Reuters file

Yemeni tribesmen stand on the rubble of a building in the village of Azan that was destroyed by a U.S. drone air strike on Oct. 14, 2011. Tribal elders say that suspected al Qaeda militants Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the son of slain U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, and six others were killed in the attack.

The possibility of using small drones as attack platforms was driven home by a video posted on YouTube in December by an anonymous group called Dangerous Information. It showed a small electric-powered drone equipped with a GoPro video camera and paintball gun, first flying through a neighborhood, then attacking human-figure targets in a field.

The development of smaller drones has been accompanied by new smaller munitions that don’t require the Predator’s 450-pound payload capacity. Denel’s Seeker 400, for example, will have a payload half that, according to a company brochure, but still be capable of carrying two laser-guided missiles.

“There is the development of smaller and smaller weapons, some of them specifically for UAVs,” said Philip Finnegan, director of corporate analysis for the Teal Group, which conducts market analysis in the aerospace and defense industry. “So they’ll be able to use smaller platforms.”

While armed drones appear certain to be added to more countries’ arsenals in the near future, analysts say they expect the military sector will remain a relatively small piece of the overall drone market for some time to come. A big reason for that is the restrained growth in defense budgets worldwide and cuts by the U.S. military in spending on drones, which also affect research and development.

“There is short-term pressure on the industry. … It’s a combination of budgetary pressure and the withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan,” Finnegan said. “Longer term, the U.S. remains heavily committed to advanced UAV technology.”

And sales to smaller nations are likely to be slow due to the fact that even with prices falling, armed drones remain prohibitively expensive, Denel’s Ntsihele said, recounting conversations with prospective buyers.

"When they get to know the product, they get shocked,” he said.

Keir Simmons is a correspondent in NBC News' London bureau; Gil Aegerter is an NBC News staff writer in Redmond, Wash.; NBC News' Marc Smith and Robert Windrem also contributed reporting to this article.

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Lt. Col.. Leslie Pratt / US Air Force via AP

This undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Air Force shows a MQ-9 Reaper, armed with GBU-12 Paveway II laser guided munitions and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, during a combat mission over southern Afghanistan.

ISLAMABAD – President Obama outlined new guidelines for the use of drones to kill terrorists overseas in a major speech reframing counterterrorism policy this week. 

But anti-drone activists in and out of Pakistan, as well as civilian victims in the tribal areas where many of the drones have struck, remain pessimistic about the White House’s new approach to the controversial program. 

"This will be good news for the people of North Waziristan if they really stopped drone strikes here,” said Haji Roshan Khan, a local tribal elder in Miranshah, a town in Pakistan's volatile North Waziristan tribal region, where many of the U.S. drone strikes were carried out.  

Rahmanullah Dawar, a resident of Mir Ali in North Waziristan, also said he'd welcome an end to the drones. "Believe me every one in Waziristan has been suffering from mental disorders due to non-stop hovering of drones over our heads. It has a very bad sound that pierced through the brain of the people.”

Both men said that even though senior militants or foreigners were the prime targets of the unmanned spy planes, many civilians, including women and children, lost their lives or became physically handicapped as a result of the drone strikes.

Clive Stafford Smith, a British-American lawyer who heads “Reprieve,” a human rights watchdog headquartered in London, was also skeptical of the new policy. “This is mainly smoke and mirrors. Obama wants to rein things in, but does not want to seem soft – especially after Boston.”   

Smith doesn’t believe Obama’s address at the National Defense University marked a sea change in the U.S.’s official position on the program.

“I don't think this is a big deal at all, actually,” said Smith. “This is 'transparency' in totally meaningless form, since everyone knew it was happening anyway – it is just them pretending to be transparent, but saying absolutely nothing.” 

Haji Mujtaba / REUTERS

Tribesmen gather at a site of a missile attack on the outskirts of Miranshah, near the Afghan border, October 12, 2008. Due to the remote nature of the attacks, photos are rarely available.

Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer who has been petitioning the local courts, against both what he claims is the U.S. government’s illegal drone program, as well as the Pakistani rulers’ compliance with the CIA, was not impressed with Obama’s announcements.

“What I have read from his speech today is that [Obama] is now admitting to more civilian deaths than he would admit before,” said Akbar. “But he is still continuing with it on [the] basis of more strategic benefit for U.S. than some weight on America’s conscience.”

Akbar claims that it is the emerging evidence of the strikes killing Americans without due process, as well more international attention towards collateral damage and civilian casualties from the drone strikes, thanks to recent studies, UN concern, as well as local litigation, that has forced the U.S. to finally address the details of the what many Pakistanis call the “war that does not exist.”

“Until early 2011, there was hardly any mention of civilian deaths or real names and identities of those killed. This missing human element allowed CIA to keep carrying on with what they were doing,” said Akbar. “Now with all this talk of deaths and names, pictures and stories coming out, it is becoming politically too risky. Therefore Obama has decided to be rather careful.” 

On Pakistan’s front lines, in the volatile tribal areas where most of the missiles fired from U.S. drones land, the military views Obama’s drone-cuts announcement obliquely.

“Forget the speech. It’s interesting that there have been just around a dozen attacks this year,” said a senior Pakistani commander stationed in a section of the semi-autonomous tribal agencies, the FATA, where the military has been engaged in combat operations since the mid-2000s, around the time the first drone strike was reported in 2004.

The officer, who asked not to be named, nor his location to be disclosed for security reasons, thought it might mean less work for his men. "My troops don’t have to deal with the almost immediate response that comes from miscreants whenever there is a drone strike…a suicide or armed attack on my boys within 24 hours of any drone attack.”

Slideshow: Pakistan: A nation in turmoil

Muhammed Muheisen / AP

Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.

Launch slideshow

But though Obama insisted in his Thursday announcement that “before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured,” victims of drone strikes had a different perspective about the controversial program.

"Previously [we] were told that usually foreigners belonging to al Qaeda were being killed in drone attacks,” said said Atiqur Rahman, 35, who’s family was targeted in a drone strike on Tapi village, North Waziristan last year.

“But the day they killed our mother and injured our eight children, I don't trust Americans and their claims of killing al-Qaeda fighters," said Rahman. He claimed his mother, 66, was present with her grandchildren in an open space in front of their home when a drone fired two missiles and killed her and injured his children on Oct. 24, 2012.

"I wish President Obama could feel our pain of losing our mother. We had nothing to do America or Obama but they destroyed our happy family."

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For many Pakistanis, 'USA' means drones

NBC News coverage of Pakistan

Chip Somodevilla / Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images file

Attorney General Eric Holder testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 6.

The Obama administration publicly acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that U.S. drone strikes have killed four American citizens since 2009, including the previously undisclosed death of a North Carolina resident who left the United States for Pakistan and was later indicted on federal terrorism charges.

Attorney General Eric Holder, in a letter to congressional leaders and chairman of key congressional committees made public on the eve of what was billed as a major counterterrorism speech by President Barack Obama, also confirmed the deaths in drone attacks in Yemen of three other Americans that already had been widely reported: those of radical cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki , his teenage son, Abd al-Rahmn Anwar al-Awlaki; and Samir Khan, the American who ran al Qaeda’s web-based propaganda magazine Inspire.  Previously the Obama administration had only acknowledged the senior Awlaki’s killing and refused to publicly confirm or deny reports of the other deaths.

The letter also confirmed that U.S. drones had killed Jude Kenan Mohammed of Raleigh, N.C., more than a  year after a local news report quoted a friend as saying he had died in an attack in Pakistan in November 2011.

Holder said in the letter that the senior Awlaki was the only U.S. citizen targeted in a drone strike.

Anonymous / AP

Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Yemeni cleric and recruiter for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, is shown in an October 2008 file photo.

He also provided new details about what the U.S. says were Awlaki's operational roles in terror plots, including his role in a 2010 attempt to bomb cargo planes by putting bombs in printer cartridges.

It also included an explicit explanation of the U.S. policy for targeted killings of Americans, much of which was included in a “white paper” obtained by NBC News in February.

Mohammed’s death appears to have been news to the FBI, which as of Thursday still listed him on its “most wanted” list, saying, “On July 22, 2009, a federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted Jude Kenan Mohammad for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and conspiracy to murder, kidnap, maim, and injure persons in a foreign country. Mohammad is at large … (and) is believed to be in Pakistan.”

A law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity told NBC News: “We don’t know when he was killed. That fact was classified.”

FBI spokeswoman Shelley Lynch said in an email: "Jude Kenan Mohammed remained wanted until there was official confirmation of death.  Until now, the matter was classified and it is now appropriate for the wanted poster to be removed from our website." 

Obama is expected to discuss the drone program Thursday in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.

Release of Holder’s letter came as classified documents obtained by NBC News raised new questions about the CIA-run drone program and whether it is consistent with public comments by Obama and other administration officials describing  the strikes as “very precise” and targeted at specific al Qaeda operatives and their associates. In fact, the documents show, the agency has frequently attacked low-level militants and foreign fighters in Pakistan whose names and nationalities were not known, as well as militant groups not directly connected to al Qaeda.

The documents, similar to those recently reported by McClatchy Newspapers, offer a window into the secretive drone program and how its actual operations sometimes differ from the public accounts provided by the administration.

They appear to officially confirm that the agency has engaged in “signature strikes” – a much discussed and controversial practice that has never been publicly acknowledged -- in which CIA drone operators target individuals based on the “signature characteristics” of suspects but whose actual identities are not clear.

They surface at a time that U.S officials appear to be scaling back the drone program – amid warnings from some  former military and intelligence officials that the attacks may be creating a backlash harmful to U.S. interests in the long run.

 When Obama was asked about the drone program last year during a Google News forum, he called it “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists.” In an April 2012 speech, then White House counter-terrorism adviser and now CIA Director John Brennan said: “The United States Government conducts targeted strikes against specific al Qaeda terrorists,” while acknowledging that drone targets included “associated forces.”

But a CIA list of 53 drone strikes in the fall of 2010 indicates that fewer than half – 22 -- listed al Qaeda operatives as the targets. Other strikes were aimed at targets that included suspected members of the militant al-Haqqani network in Pakistan, which is believed to have harbored and worked with al Qaeda; members of the Pakistani Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist military group that aims to overthrow the Pakistani government; and members of another Pakistani terrorist network identified as the “Commander Nazir Group.”  Fourteen of the strikes listed the targets only as “other militants.”

Agency lists for other periods show a higher proportion of strikes being specifically aimed at Al Qaeda operatives. For example, during a nine month period between January and September 2011, 28 out of 42 strikes listed al Qaeda members as targets.

But in other accounts of the strikes, agency officials refer to the targeting of individuals whose identifies do not appear to be known. One 2009 attack was described as being aimed at “military aged males”  at a site “associated with al Qaeda explosives training.” Another, in 2010, described the target as “four adult males conducting weapons training.”

The CIA and White House did not respond to requests for comment about the documents. But U.S. officials have vigorously defended the drone program and their public accounts of it, while saying they are limited in what they can say because of its classified nature and the potential impacts of full public disclosure in Pakistan. As for the use of signature strikes , they have argued that “when you have a bunch of guys building explosives, you don’t need to know who they are. They are an imminent threat.”

NBC News’ Pete Williams, Chuck Todd and Tom Curry contributed to this report.

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PESHAWAR — A suspected U.S. drone missile strike killed five people in northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border Sunday evening, according to Pakistani security officials.

Officials and local villagers said the suspected drone fired two missiles and struck a suspected militants’ hideout in the Datta Khel town of the North Waziristan tribal region after a double-cabin pickup truck entered the premises.

“Five bodies were later recovered from debris of the house when two drones flying over the area disappeared,” Hashim Khan, a local tribesman, told NBC News.

The identities of the victims are not known.

Datta Khel is considered a stronghold of foreign militants linked to al-Qaeda, according to Pakistani security officials. Officials added that the people killed in Sunday’s attack are believed to be non-locals.

U.S. military officials typically do not comment on suspected drone strikes.

Additional reporting by Daniel Arkin in New York.

Ho / AFP - Getty Images

Two freshly assembled Grey Eagle unmanned aerial vehicles sit on the tarmac at Forward Operating Base Shan in Logar Province, Afghanistan in April, 2012.

WASHINGTON - With debate intensifying in the United States over the use of drone aircraft, the U.S. military said on Sunday that it had removed data about air strikes carried out by unmanned planes in Afghanistan from its monthly air power summaries.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Afghanistan war, said in a statement the data had been removed because it was "disproportionately focused" on the use of weapons by the remotely piloted aircraft as it was published only when strikes were carried out - which happened during only 3 percent of sorties. Most missions were for reconnaissance, it said.

The debate over the use of drones in Afghanistan and elsewhere was triggered in part by U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to nominate his chief counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, an architect of the drone campaign, as the new director of the CIA.

The Air Force Times said air force chiefs had started posting the drone data last October in an attempt to provide more detail on the use of drones in Afghanistan.

The newspaper said the statistics were provided for November through January, but the February summary released on March 7 had a blank spot where the drone data had previously been listed.

"A variety of multi-role platforms provide ground commanders in Afghanistan with close air support capabilities, and it was determined that presenting the weapons release data as a whole better reflects the air power provided" in Afghanistan, Central Command said in its statement.

"Protecting civilians remains at the very core of AFCENT's (Air Force Central Command's) mission," it said. "The use of all AFCENT aerial weapons are tightly restricted, meticulously planned, carefully supervised and coordinated, and applied by only qualified and authorized personnel."

The statement said the decision to stop reporting the drone strikes was taken with the International Security Assistance Force - the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan.

Brennan was sworn into office on Friday following a protracted confirmation battle that saw Senator Rand Paul attempt to block a vote on the nomination with a technical maneuver called a filibuster, in which he tried to prevent a vote by talking continuously.

Paul held the Senate floor for more than 12 hours while talking mainly about drones, expressing concern that Obama's administration might use the aircraft to target U.S. citizens in the United States.

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As drone furor ebbs, Senate confirms Brennan as CIA director

McCain, Graham assail Rand Paul on drone policy

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LONDON — Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they had conducted tests aimed at bringing down a "hypothetical" foreign surveillance drone during a military exercise, the official Fars news agency said on Saturday.

The Islamic Republic News Agency, another official news agency, also reported the exercise, but omitted the word hypothetical giving the impression that a real drone had been downed.

Other official Iranian media outlets later referred to the downing of a "hypothetical" aircraft.

In the past, there have been incidents of Iran claiming to have seized U.S. drones.

In early January Iranian media said Iran had captured two miniature U.S.-made surveillance drones over the past 17 months.

Several drone incidents over the past year or so have highlighted tension in the Gulf as Iran and the United States flex their military capabilities in a standoff over Iran's disputed nuclear program.

Iran said in January that lightweight RQ11 Raven drones were brought down by Iranian air defense units in separate incidents in August 2011 and November 2012.

President Barack Obama has deployed American military personnel and drone aircraft to the African country of Niger, where they could be used to support a French counterterrorism mission in neighboring Mali.

Defense Department officials told NBC News that a first wave will include two Raptor surveillance drones and 250 to 300 military personnel, including remote pilots and security and maintenance crews. They are expected to arrive soon.

The officials stressed that the drones are meant for surveillance only. The White House has faced criticism for a legal memo concluding that the U.S. government can use drones to kill American citizens overseas in certain cases.

Besides helping the French in Mali, the drones could be used to provide intelligence on a growing Islamic militant threat throughout North and East Africa.

The president notified Congress on Friday under the War Powers Act, which requires him to tell Congress when heavily armed U.S. military personnel are newly deployed to a region or nation.

Obama told Congress that the U.S. military presence was under the consent of the government of Niger, and that they would “facilitate intelligence-sharing” with the French. He said that the American military personnel were armed for their own protection and security.

Next door in Mali, Tuareg rebels overthrew the government last year. Islamists then pushed the rebels aside, taking control of important towns and pushing toward the capital.

France intervened last month — initially with airstrikes and later with about 4,000 ground troops. The United States has flown French troops and equipment into Mali and refueled French fighter jets there, the Pentagon has said. France plans to begin withdrawing troops from Mali next month, once African forces are in place to take over.

On Friday, five people were killed in a remote Malian town in car bomb attacks by Islamists on Tuareg fighters, a spokesman for the Tuareg fighters said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Fri Feb 22, 2013 11:19 AM EST