The centenary of the First World War also marks the anniversary of the practice of recording and naming casualties of war. But a century on, new forms of ‘shadow warfare’ limit the ability to record casualties of conflict and thus threaten to allow states a free hand to employ dangerous new tactics without threat of individual or international accountability. Without verifiable casualty figures, – including information on who is being killed and how – we cannot evaluate the acceptability, effectiveness or impact of ‘remote control’ tactics as they are rolled out among civilian populations.