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

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: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.

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

[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.