Finally, we are transforming our military for a new kind of war that we're fighting now, and for wars of tomorrow. This transformation was a top priority for the enterprising leader who served as my first Secretary of Defense -- Donald Rumsfeld. Today, because of his leadership and the leadership of Secretary Bob Gates, we have made our military better trained, better equipped, and better prepared to meet the threats facing America today, and tomorrow, and long in the future.
As part of our transformation effort, we are arming our troops with intelligence, and weapons, and training, and support they need to face an enemy that wages asymmetric battle. See, this enemy hides among the civilian population, and they use terror tactics like roadside bombs to attack our forces, to demoralize local population, and to try to shake the will of the American people.
To defeat this enemy, we have equipped our troops with real-time battlefield intelligence capabilities that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. In Iraq and Afghanistan, troops in the field have used advanced technologies like Global Positioning Systems to direct air strikes that take out the enemy while sparing innocent life. We've expanded America's arsenal of unmanned aerial vehicles from fewer than 170 when I took office to more than 6,000 today. We're arming Predator drones. We're using them to stay on the hunt against the terrorists who would do us harm.
We've expanded America's special operations forces. With more forces -- more of these forces on the battlefield, we can respond more quickly to actionable intelligence on the terrorists who are in hiding. Over the past eight years, we have more than doubled funding for special operators. We created the first-ever special operations command within the Marines. We have given the Special Operations Command the lead role in the global war against the terrorists.In addition to these upgrades in our counterterrorism capabilities, we have placed a new focus on counterinsurgency. The Army has published a new counterinsurgency manual written by a distinguished graduate of this academy: General David Petraeus. The central objectives of this counterinsurgency strategy are to secure the population, and gain support of the people, and train local forces to take the responsibility on their own.
One of the reasons we're meeting these objectives in Iraq is the ability to rapidly deploy brigade combat teams. These teams can join the battle on short notice as organized and cohesive units. With these teams in the fight, our Army is better able to carry out its counterinsurgency objectives -- and better equipped to defeat the enemies we'll face as the 21st century unfolds.
Our counterinsurgency strategy also stresses the importance of following up security gains with real benefits in people's daily lives. To better meet that objective, we created Provincial Reconstruction Teams, or PRTs. These teams pair with military personnel civilian experts in areas like economics, and agriculture, and law enforcement, and education. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, these teams are helping local communities create jobs, and deliver basic services, and keep the terrorists from coming back. PRTs bring diplomats, aid workers, and other experts from across the government into the fight -- and we must expand them in the years to come.