Behind the Scenes With America's Drone Pilots

An anonymous reader writes "As President Obama meets with advisors on an Afghanistan strategy today (who are now leaning more toward Joe Biden's more-drones policy), and even as Al Qaeda claims it's not all that scared of drones, the new issue of Esquire takes the first real in-depth look at the American military's UAV build-up. Defense geek Brian Mockenhaupt spends some time on the ground in Afghanistan, as well as back at the Pentagon, where the pilots ('more like snipers than fighter pilots') are playing a kind of role-playing game, getting to know terrorists' daily ins and outs. Looks like these Reaper drones are the real wave of the future, eh?"

Comments

U.S. government corruption

[Anonymous Coward]

U.S. government: Everything for killing, as little as possible for anything else. Killing and making the instruments of killing gives easy profits, partly because the contracts are largely secret.

The U.S. government is VERY corrupt, but U.S. citizens continue hiding from that fact.

As someone else said, the U.S. government's activities encourage other people to make drones. Soon that will be a common new threat. The rich people won't care, of course, since they will life in a radar-protected, drone-free area.

infernal machines

[czarangelus]

By its own definition, the US government is a terrorist regime. It utilizes violence to try to effect political change in other nations. According to Army Counterinsurgency Handbook (authored in part by Gen. Patraeus,) that is a defining characteristic of terrorist entities. The Taliban didn't attack us on 9/11... a bunch of Saudi Arabians, based in Florida and European nations, attacked us on 9/11. The Taliban offered to turn over Bin Ladin upon receipt of evidence that he was responsible for the attacks. The US Gov't refused. Today, EVERYONE responsible for 9/11 is DEAD or JAILED, and the US is waging ceaseless terrorist attacks on the Pashtun ethnic group of Pakistan and Afghanistan for NO APPARENT REASON. The usage of terrorist drone strikes, which have killed hundreds if not thousands of non-combatants this year, represents the kind of cowardice nominally associated with the BRAVE fighters of the so-called Taliban which resist the alien occupation of their country.

Re:infernal machines

[IgnoramusMaximus]

While Slashdot is international in scope, it is still predominantly a US-centric site. Expect to be moderated into oblivion. Truth hurts and US-ians want *absolutely nothing* to do with it. Avoidance of truth is precisely why they have meticulously constructed a nearly impregnable bubble of self-centered dogma around themselves.

Speaking against the policies of the USA here clashes terribly with the "national mythology" which has been methodically and insistently injected into the minds of USians for generations now, even the supposedly well educated ones who ostensibly gather at sites such as this.

It conflicts with this view of the world where they are the "Knights of Freedom in Shining Armour on White Chargers" upon whom the entire planet dearly depends for its liberties and its masses for their daily crumbs, a world in which their network of military installations in over half of the countries of the planet does not herald an Imperial ambition, like with all the other "lesser" cultures and countries past, but instead it indicates a kindly, fatherly concern for the betterment (defined as shift towards US-centric world-view) of the "poor wretches".

All and any challengers to this world-view are "evil-doers" and have to be exterminated with prejudice, no matter the number of bystanders killed in the process ... as long as they are not US citizens. In fact, very much like Ancient Rome where the citizens were a different breed from the conquered and the "ungrateful" slaves outnumbered them 3:1, the only "people" in the view of US-ians are .... US-ians. The "lesser" creatures, although not outright enslaved as Rome had it, still "enjoy" only a marginal status as "somewhat sentient" in the view of the US-ians, and they should be grateful for it, for after-all all of the positive developments in their lives can be, in the US-ian dogma, attributed directly and exclusively to the US.

I could go on, as could pretty much anyone outside the US who is not inspiring to join the global "winners" in hopes of snatching some crumbs from the feast of their upper echelons of corporate nobility, and the extent of this attitude of the US citizens is far far greater then just this. But then again one could only look at the tens of thousands of dead, hundreds of thousands of maimed and wounded and millions of dispossessed the US "liberators" (with some help from sycophantic side-kicks) have produced in just the last decade alone to get an idea...

And on the topics of the drones, everyone outside of the US should by now know quite well how they are used: to assassinate, remotely (with no regard for bystanders, due process or any of that "coddling" stuff) people whom US suspects of the greatest crime possible, in this Universe - i.e. opposing US interests. I envision, in some 30 years time, a world where hundreds of thousands of US drones roam the skies of all 3rd world nations, and a good portion of the "allied" ones, conducting "targetted assassinations", Israel-style, of anyone who dares to oppose our "kindly and magnanimous" global "benefactors". For "our own good", you understand.

Re:infernal machines

[JerryLove]

So your recollection is that the ATF invited the press to watch them shoot at a building where no one had fired at them without even trying to enter?

That doesn't even make sense.

You are not allowed to shoot at ATF agents. You are not allowed to shoot at police. You are not allowed to shoot at the FBI. You are required to surrender. You are not allowed to posess automatic weapons.

You like to keep saying "legally", but there's nothing legal about it, any more than there was in the statutory rape and polygamy going on inside the compound.

ATF may indeed have screwed up. Given the result, that much is obvious: that hardly does anything to make the dividians anything other than the murderers they were.

Re:infernal machines

[mjwx]

No, they are not "Americans" in the sense the word is understood across the entire globe.

Yes they are.

Mexicans and Canadians US citizens are refereed to as "Americans". When you want to differentiate between the three it's US, Canadian and Mexican but when referring to all three American is used in all cases. To say that American is exclusively referring to the US is wrong and should never be used when attempting to differentiate between people of America.

You clearly do not understand the languages of any other culture. I can Guarantee that if you go to any non American nation they will refer to Mexican, Peruvians or Cubans as Americans as well.

Shut up. Really.

I strongly suggest you take your own advice, you are doing nothing but proving the GP's point about US arrogance.

Re:ChAir Force

[jimbolauski]

So either I can choose the man who reviers a child molester (Muhammad had sex with 9 year old child) and straps a bomb to his chest to go blow up women and children in crouded shopping areas, or a guy who tries to kill him from a lazy-boy who does not target innocents.

Re:Not that bad

[WhiplashII]

Of course, that was because the British used British officers and German troops...

Re:ChAir Force

[Philip K Dickhead]

I call you "Baby Killers". There hasn't been an aerial dogfight component to "fighter" aircraft since Korea.

So stuff your "Top Gun", Nazi bullshit.

It would be an insult to men like Rudolph Galland to compare drone pilots to the Luftwaffe These aircraft - manned and otherwise - are built to reproduce the horror and WAR CRIMES of Guernica, on an order of magnitude undreamed of by Hitler or Goering.
http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/guernica/glevel_1/1_bombing.html
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/PicassoGuernica.jpg

Re:ChAir Force

[JerryLove]

Your post includes inaccurate irrelvencies, and should not have been modded up.

Muslims do not revere Muhammed. They simply believe he delivered the word of God.

"9" was widely considered a marriable age. The Catholic church at one point declared so. Juliete (of Romeo and Juliete fame) was only 12... and if I recall there was some reason Muhammed married that girl: so establishing conjugation at 9 would be difficult at best.

Though I personally like drones for their selectivity.

Re:why drones are so BAD

[nightfire-unique]

They would target our military units if they could. We're either 30,000' in the air (or not there at all) or supremely well armed.

For example: want the palestinians to stop "targetting" civilians? Sell them guidance systems.

Re:ChAir Force

[Philip K Dickhead]

Why is the parent post "flamebait"?

Is it not true that "dead babies" are the functional, practical and actual outcome of using the Predator drone?

There are ideological and political concerns that may accompany this fact, such as:

"It is worth the comfort of my life at home, that babies are killed in a distant land"

or

"The lives of those babies are an unfortunate consequence of a distant evil that we are compelled to oppose. That we rid the wold of one blackened heart is worth the dozen innocents who must perish in the effort."

or

"Regrettably several dead babies are necessary two sustain profitability."

Any way you slice it, Dead fuckin' baby. Dead fuckin' parents.

Putting the massacre into context:

[Philip K Dickhead]

It is vital to certain parties that war become intractable, perpetual and expanding.

"War brings business to Feinstein spouse: Blum's firms win multimillion-dollar defense contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan"

Afghanistan - the proxy war

"Implementing the McChrystal plan will perpetuate the longstanding fundamentals of US national security policy: maintaining a global military presence, configuring US forces for global power projection, and employing those forces to intervene on a global basis. The McChrystal plan modestly updates these fundamentals to account for the lessons of 9/11 and Iraq, cultural awareness and sensitivity nudging aside advanced technology as the signature of American military power, for example. Yet at its core, the McChrystal plan aims to avert change. Its purpose - despite 9/11 and despite the failures of Iraq - is to preserve the status quo. . . .

If the president assents to McChrystal's request, he will void his promise of change at least so far as national security policy is concerned. The Afghanistan war will continue until the end of his first term and probably beyond. It will consume hundreds of billions of dollars. It will result in hundreds or perhaps thousands more American combat deaths - costs that the hawks are loath to acknowledge.

As the fighting drags on from one year to the next, the engagement of US forces in armed nation-building projects in distant lands will become the new normalcy. Americans of all ages will come to accept war as a perpetual condition, as young Americans already do. That "keeping Americans safe" obliges the United States to seek, maintain, and exploit unambiguous military supremacy will become utterly uncontroversial."

Re:ChAir Force

[Philip K Dickhead]

Yeah. We need to kill Moslems abroad - to make the world safe for your ignorant bigotry.

Re:ChAir Force

[Nimey]

Not the same, since Jesus was the founder of Christianity (one could make a strong argument for that being Paul, but I digress), much as Mohammed was the founder of Islam, and you'd better believe the more ignorant Christians would like to stone you for insulting Jesus.