What Happens In Vegas Happens In Afghanistan

theodp writes "After the morning commute from his Las Vegas apartment, Air Force captain Sam Nelson sits in a padded chair inside a low, tan building in Nevada, controlling a heavily armed drone aircraft soaring over Afghanistan, prepared to kill another human being 7,500 miles away if necessary. Welcome to the surreal world of drone pilots, who have a front-row seat on war from half a world away. 'On the drive out here, you get yourself ready to enter the compartment of your life that is flying combat,' explained retired Col. Chris Chambliss. 'And on the drive home, you get ready for that part of your life that's going to be the soccer game.' No wonder why the Air Force is interested in the Xbox LIVE crowd and the Army's opened a new arcade recruitment center!"

Comments

Fly-by-wireless-link for the win!

[LostCluster]

The risk to them: We kill them. If we ever get Bin Ladin in the sights of one of these things, it'll be well worth the investment.

The risk to us: We lose a drone. Pilot safe, and he can move on to another drone to keep going.

Sure, they can try to kill the pilot in Vegas... but that's a mainland murder and that's a whole lot easier to solve and capture them here. Furthermore, they've got to be here to do that.

So, net result is we're bringing the war to them using technology we have and they don't. Now our fighter planes don't need to have the fighter pilot on-board. They might own the ground in the war zone, but we own the air.

Re:Fly-by-wireless-link for the win!

[wigaloo]

Sure, they can try to kill the pilot in Vegas... but that's a mainland murder and that's a whole lot easier to solve and capture them here.

So, let me get this straight. If a pilot kills them anonymously with drones from thousands of miles away that's war, but if they somehow get to Vegas and kill that drone pilot it's murder? Huh. My double-standard sense is tingling.

Re:Fly-by-wireless-link for the win!

[Cassius Corodes]

They are not cowards because they hide in caves, but because they actively seek to cause civilian deaths. Hiding in caves when you are being bombed is not cowardly - its is often a necessity in war, but taking up positions among civilians and using them as shields is cowardly and dishonourable.

Re:Fly-by-wireless-link for the win!

[rtb61]

Collateral damage, hmm, do you even know that term. The greatest risk of all when murdering people by remote control, loss of humanity. It is so easy for them is it, whoops, just blew up a baby and it's mother, whoops, there goes a grandad, whoops, legless child, all so easy to walk away from the carnage with excuses of I was ordered to do it (exactly how do those victims now seek justice). Of course, but the other side is worse (number of casualties caused would tend to indicate this is a lie), of course you can always hide your shame behind faulty hardware, guess shots soon become it veered of course (you chose the hardware, you used the hardware, you are the murderer when your hardware fails).

You implement justice by upholding it not abandoning it. You can only ever capture terrorists, when you arrest them, when you try the in court, when you put up your evidence so that it can be challenged and proven. Murdering suspects in the field is just that, murder. Self defence whilst attempting to conduct arrests is the only excuse to open fire and then that fire must aimed directed and minimised, not a bomb or missile that sometimes targets the individual but always kills any innocent people in the near vicinity.

You can never abandon your human responsibility for the choices you make, when you choose to kill that is your burden, that is your act of evil which you will be forced to account for, failure to refuse to kill when it is not an act of self defence is cowardice.

Re:Fly-by-wireless-link for the win!

[wigaloo]

My double-standard sense is tingling.

The Geneva convention was set to clearly divide militaries from civilians. If there is a double-standard in there, is it that States agreed to follow these rules but not the rebels.

You can't be serious. There hasn't been a functioning government in Afghanistan for years. Who exactly did you expect to sign? The literacy rate in Afghanistan is 28%. How many of them do you think have even heard of Geneva?

If you are wearing a military uniform, using an aircraft with military marking, and target enemy militaries, you are doing war. If you disguise yourself as a civilian, you are a spy or a terrorist, and outside of the convention.

And that is very convenient for you to say, speaking from a position of strength. How did you expect the weak to fight back? Face to face? Would you do that against a vastly superior foe? Your position, or course, is just another example of a double standard. If we are ever going to end this ongoing cycle of war, we are going to have to come to grips with how we are viewed from around the world. Victory in this War on Terror requires winning hearts and minds, and that cannot happen if there is no sense of even-handedness or justice, regardless of what the Convention says. I in no way condone terrorism, but a lasting peace is going to require a much broader view of the problem than you are advocating.

Although completely unfair, your Afghani rebel is free to openly charge to Vegas in his non-existent plane, wearing his non-existent uniform to kill the remote pilot.

My Afghani rebel? Go fuck yourself.

But he cannot cowardly hide behind a disguise to kill. Maybe unfair to non-States, but those are the rules.

And what would you call piloting a flying killing machine by remote control from thousands of miles away? Heroic?

Re:Fly-by-wireless-link for the win!

[timeOday]

Look at what partisans did in ww2. Did they fight out in town centres?... No, The US goes to great length to prevent civilian casualties - They may not be perfect but I really don't like this idea that they are somehow as bad as the Taliban in their regard for human life.

In WWII the US did intentionally slaughter a couple hundred thousand civilians in Dresden and Japan (nukes). Without even entering the issue of whether that was justified, it's just not true to say we always avoided targeting civilians.

Re:Fly-by-wireless-link for the win!

[Angst Badger]

But he cannot cowardly hide behind a disguise to kill. Maybe unfair to non-States, but those are the rules.

Had we followed those rules in the 1770's, we'd still be British subjects. The rules of war are devised by powerful state actors to magnify their strengths, prohibit the exploitation of their weaknesses, and minimize their losses. A small state actor -- or a sub-state entity -- which finds itself at war with a powerful state isn't cowardly for refusing to follow rules designed to ensure its defeat; it's intelligent. We leave aside the question of whether it was very smart for the Taliban to allow al Qaeda to provoke a war with the United States. But once engaged in a fight with the United States, the various Afghan factions have three options: fight according to the rules of war and guarantee their defeat, surrender immediately, or fight dirty. And given that option three worked against a Soviet invasion next to which the current American incursion is a pinprick, it's not surprising that they've decided to try it again.

Once you come to accept that, you will see that you post was, maybe unwillingly, a troll.

Once you come to accept that, you're just a chauvinistic cheerleader for whatever imperial power you've chosen to identify with to compensate for your lack of self-esteem, making empty legalistic excuses for modern warfare, and trying desperately to divert attention away from what modern warfare actually is: an exercise in which the overwhelming majority of casualties are not among the combatants of either side, but rather civilian bystanders in whatever third world shooting gallery the arms industry has found an opportunity to drive sales of their products.

Re:Fly-by-wireless-link for the win!

[stinkytoe]

In WWII the US did intentionally slaughter a couple hundred thousand civilians in Dresden and Japan

And Berlin, Monte Cassino, Okinawa, Tokyo, etc...

I'm not going to justify these actions, they were horrendous. Nonetheless, they were all done for the purpose of ending the war.

Not the intended goal of the insurgents whom we are fighting, who are actively seeking out such conflict.

Face-to-face combat

[BSAtHome]

I think the people of the world including the leaders would think twice if they (that is, all leaders and followers) had to do this old-style with rocks and clubs. The readiness to kill is somewhat lower if you have to be involved face-to-face. It is highly problematic if you can kill as if it were a computer game. There is no better prevention than to have your own life on the edge. Yes, I do know there are people willing to do anything regardless the consequence, but I think there would be a net benefit for all if you had to kill face-on.

Re:Face-to-face combat

[MorderVonAllem]

Wouldn't it be great if wars could be fought just by the assholes who started them?

Re:Face-to-face combat

[NeutronCowboy]

You've apparently missed the last 40 years of psychological studies that demonstrate what the factors are that reduce the psychological barriers to abusing another person. Reducing psychological barriers also reduces the psychological impact. One of those factors is how personal the abuse is.

Your argument might work for you, and that's great and all. You, however, are not the rest of the world.

People problem.

[girlintraining]

I'm sure we'll hear lots about the technology, but when you're in the field, surrounded by your fellow soldiers, then blowing the shit out of a car full of people is a shared experience. You can rely on your friends and fellow soldiers to help you deal with the fact that you just helped end a bunch of lives. Yes, it was the right thing. Yes, it was you or them. But all the justifications aside there's an emotional price to be paid that every person who's been in combat or seen it, or similar.

Now we have guys sitting in rooms filled with computer screens blowing people up, and is there anyone there to talk to about it? Can they light a cigarette after, put a fist in the wall, and say "Goddamnit, I wish there'd been another way!" No. You're stuck in a sterile environment, air conditioned, quiet, and after blowing the fuck out of someone you can get up and go get yourself a soda from the vend, grab your coat, file some paperwork, and drive home.

Huge disclaimer -- I'm not in the military, I don't know what these guys to for stress relief, or to deal with the emotional consequences of what they're doing. But I do know the dangers of becoming emotionally numb to violence, and without advocating for or against what the military is doing, I want to ask -- what are we doing to help these soldiers deal with those issues? For that matter, is it even an issue? I don't really know. But I think it helps to look someone in the eye if you have to kill them. To know they were a real person. To remember what you've done -- even if it was the right thing to do, even if there was no other choice, it's a statement about the value of human life.

Additional risk to us:

[xmark]

We start to treat killing the enemy the way we treat killing chickens at the Perdue packing plant.

At the most fundamental level, war is still human beings killing other human beings...usually human beings who've never met. One of the damping feed-backs in the war loop is the ugliness and brutality of it. That loop needs more, not fewer, negative feed-backs. Further depersonalization and sterilization of war may incentivize the decision to engage in it.

Re:Additional risk to us:

[lawpoop]

The rules of war have changed... the enemy isn't a state, it's a force of people loyal to a cult that believes a corrupted religion.

That's not war, that's a crime ( just like Aum Shinrikyo ) , and when we start thinking it's a war, and treating it as such, we begin to turn society into a militarized police state. Welcome to 1984.

Re:Additional risk to us:

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything is a psy-op.

Re:Additional risk to us:

[wronskyMan]

Why? At the risk of quoting John Wayne, war isn't about giving your life for your country - it's about making the other bastard give his life for his.

Re:Additional risk to us:

[im_thatoneguy]

The best line from a TV show on the subject in the last 10 years I think is from Battlestar Gallactica.

"There's a reason we separate military and the police: one fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."

This is why I always was nervous about the "war on terror". If it's a war then it's a civil war since extremists are also American citizens. The US Military an incredible effective fighting force. It's too easy in a 'global war on terror' for its sights to be turned onto itself. After all the US despite all the 'exceptionalism' is part of the globe. If terrorism knows no borders then that includes our own.

Re:Additional risk to us:

[Dalambertian]

The Somalis see their "pirates" as the only force securing their waters right now, and I don't blame them. Europe has been overfishing their waters and polluting their shores with toxic waste for years. Where was the justice of international law then?

Re:Additional risk to us:

[evilviper]

At the risk of quoting John Wayne, war isn't about giving your life for your country - it's about making the other bastard give his life for his.

John Wayne... George Patton... Same thing, really...

Re:Additional risk to us:

[c6gunner]

AFAIK almost every Mid-East country from which terrorists come has very specific historical gripes with US foreign policy.

When Cuban citizens start flying airliners into American buildings, I'll start taking that argument seriously. Until then, as far as I'm concerned you're just creating excuses for a bunch of theistic fascists.

Re:Additional risk to us:

[Dalambertian]

When they fight dirty, they're called terrorists. When we do it, we're called heroes.

Re:Additional risk to us:

[kill-1]

Terrorism isn't an act of war. Never was, never will be.

Re:Additional risk to us:

[WCguru42]

Funny you should quote John Wayne, since he normally portrays values of
fairness.
It's not about dying for your country, it's about fighting fairly while still doing everything to win.

All I'm saying is those who don't fight fair should not also expect to be *respected* for their efforts.

War is ugly, war is violent, war is best avoided and war is definitely not fair. An unfair war where the enemy is demoralized to the point of surrender in the first month is better than a fair war that lasts for a decade. There is a difference between being unfair and being barbaric. Now, you could argue that desensitizing war leads to increased barbarism but fairness is not something that should be debated in war. Fairness is for sport fighting (ie. no hitting below the belt in boxing), not for life and death fighting.

Re:Additional risk to us:

[peragrin]

I didn't say i blamed them. Piracy is and always will be an economic problem. A somali Pirate works for say 1 year, attacks a half a dozen ships captures one and his cut out of the bounty of several million is ~$100,000 dollars. it is the kind of money many in the USA wish they were making. The best part is if you are attacked and can't get away you put down your weapons, they capture you feed you better than you have eaten in months, and set you free.

as I said piracy is an economic problem. If taking a freighter hostage earns you more money easier than fishing in water polluted and over fished by others then people will go for it. An intelligent solution would be to setup fish farms under Somali control and to buy the product from them at current market price, People will go for the legitimate option if given a fair chance. it must be fair though.

Re:Additional risk to us:

[couchslug]

"Why did the American Civil war soldiers line up and fire at each other? Because to hide behind trees, bushes, and hills would be unethical."

Everyone who modded this up deserves a (virtual) throat punch for gross and spectacular historical ignorance.

Slowly for the short-bus crowd:

Civil War weapons were not accurate or long-range by modern standards, so the way to obtain high volumes of fire was by massed formations of troops. That didn't have anything to do with ethics, but everything to do with making the best use of (usually muzzle-loading) muskets and rifles.

Massed fire required lots of troops, performing different stages of the process to ensure something like steady fire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doqgPsmT7tc&feature=related

Contemplate doing this while under musket and cannon fire you can't usually move to dodge:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z5kr2EmRIo&feature=related

Re:Additional risk to us:

[Pfil2]

Why? At the risk of quoting John Wayne, war isn't about giving your life for your country - it's about making the other bastard give his life for his.

That was not John Wayne, it was George C. Scott in the movie Patton. The whole quote is "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

Movie Quote

Re:Additional risk to us:

[SvnLyrBrto]

Bingo!

The US has screwed over any of a dozen countries in Latin America a hundred times worse than we ever even thought of screwing with the middle east. And we were doing it a hundred years before anyone, save bible scholars, bothered to take notice that the ME was even there. In fact, as I sit here typing this, I'm on land that used to belong to Mexico. And it's considerably nicer than any you'd find in that part of the world too.

Sure, it's simplistic to say things like : "They hate us for our freedom.". But there's a more fundamental incompatibility than just our awful foreign policy.

Re:Additional risk to us:

[kevinNCSU]

Yes, because everyone knows the middle ages when kings and princes were expected to lead their kingdom's troops to battle were the most peaceful in all history.

Re:Additional risk to us:

[fractoid]

I have very little respect for the pikeman, who kills his enemies from the safety of the other end of his halberd.

I respect more the lowly grunt, who actually fights with his life during combat, with his dagger and fists.

Cowards should not be held up as heroes.

Re:Additional risk to us:

[timeOday]

That was not John Wayne, it was George C. Scott in the movie Patton.

Not just that, it's an actual quote of Patton.

Re:Additional risk to us:

[vertinox]

At the most fundamental level, war is still human beings killing other human beings...usually human beings who've never met. One of the damping feed-backs in the war loop is the ugliness and brutality of it.

This is a lie repeated over and over again.

Had your statement been true. WWI would have ended in 6 months.

And the Germans and Soviets would have called it a true in 1942 at Stalingrad.

Truth is... Humans can be made to murder each other under the worst possible circumstances possible.

I remember reading a few German, Russian, and American soldier memoirs and the explicitly state that after about a year on the front line, you stop thinking about the dead bodies or who you are killing after a while.

Truth is humans can be a lot worse than machines when it comes to reprisal murders. Germans did it. Russians did it. Americans did it. (in vietnam a lot. Thats where the term Frag came from when a friendly soldier went beserk and threw a grenade at his own troops or civilians)

Take the soldier out of the battlefield and he'll be less likely to murder someone at random simply because he has stress issues.

What's worse?

[rolfwind]

Soldiers that come home shell shocked, traumatized for the rest of their lives but on the other side some becoming writers or what not and sharing the horrors of war with the general public.

Or soldiers largely untouched, but treating their experience like it was a video they watched on digg or a video game, completely detached from the inhumanity of it all - heck, during their lunch break, they may go to Walmart to get a game that will be more exciting to play after work. Even a current fighter pilot faces death, if somewhat distanced to what his weapons do on the ground.

Re:MURDER BY REMOTE CONTROL

[KarlIsNotMyName]

9/11/01 turned out as only yet another excuse as to why we still roam the world and kill people for resources.

9/11/01 was significant from similar events only in that it happened in the USA. Only in that it was *our* civilians that got slaughtered. The west have done worse many times, and many times after 9/11/01.

The only way to prevent war is to fight the reasons for them. Starting more wars only starts more wars.

The irony of military robots is...

[Paul Fernhout]

The irony of military robots is that we are using them to enforce a global economic system that is based on forcing humans to do labor in exchange for the right to consume the fruits of industry. Why not just build robots to do the work directly instead? Why not use global networks to freely share information about how to make the world a better place that works for everyone? The same is true for nuclear missiles intended to fight over oil and land instead of using the same technologies to build nuclear power plants (or solar ones and wind ones) or to create self-replicating space habitats or seasteads for endless new land. We need to start thinking in 21st century terms now that we have 21st century technology. Otherwise, we will likely accidentally kill ourselves with the tools of abundance.

As Albert Einstein said:
    http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."

Or further:
    http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/nuclear1.htm
"""
"Concern for man himself must always constitute the chief objective of all technological effort -- concern for the big, unsolved problems of how to organize human work and the distribution of commodities in such a manner as to assure that the results of our scientific thinking may be a blessing to mankind, and not a curse."
"""

Or more on how Einstein was more than the disconnected absent minded professor he is made out to be:
    http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/sep2002/eins-s03.shtml
    http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm

It is not the nukes and drones that may kill us all eventually, it is the unrecognized irony.

Hobbyists already have small UAVs

[riker1384]

RC airplane flyers already have planes with real-time video feeds and some of them even have head-tracking goggles. Of course, they tend to be much smaller and short-range than a military drone.

You can search Youtube for 'fpv flight': http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fpv+flight&search_type=&aq=f
One guy already weaponized one for the 4th of July: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBn1h0x-37E

YouKILL.com!

[wisebabo]

Announcing a new on-line game for all of you armchair warriors: YouKILL.com! With the U.S. Airforce now introducing new Predator drones with 10 cameras each and more and more battlefield "robots" (like BigDog) everyday, there is far too much sensory data for our overtaxed professional soldiers to process. So, now we allow YOU the average citizen to partake in this wonderful way to defend democracy and earn gaming points at the same time!

First stage SCOUT - after showing that you are a U.S. Citizen and 16 years of age (wink, wink), you (and 10 randomly selected other fellow citizen scouts) are assigned a real-time video feed STRAIGHT FROM THE SKIES OVER IRAN / I mean AFGHANISTAN. If a majority of you click on the button "Suspected Bad Guy" at the same time, the video feed is instantly passed on to the next level, TARGETING. When you've proven to our computers that you're a good scout by having a excellent record of detection and (as compared with your other teammates) a "low" number of false positives you'll be promoted! (Sorry, hot babes don't count!)

Second stage TARGETING - Can you take out an insurgent at 3km without harming the orphanage next door? Here again, you (and 10 newly selected random fellow citizen targeters) will wait for "the perfect moment" to pick off the bad guys. In this level, you'll need to consider range, airspeed, armanent, cover and, of course, COLLATERAL DAMAGE. When a majority of you and your teammates think the time has come to fire your feed will be instantly passed to the final stage: FIRING. If you, as measured by the our computers, are consistently picking the best time to shoot compared to your colleagues, we'll promote you to...

Final stege FIRING - Here's where the fun REALLY begins! Now, you'll be able to take out bad guys FOR REAL! Feel the excitement as you unleash high speed rockets tipped with explosives at the enemy! Not only will you get to keep your online footage of each kill but you'll receive a commemorative coffee mug! (Just don't get too trigger happy otherwise you might get a visit from some of our military lawyers.)

Not a U.S. Citizen? No problem, we have a bunch of other suppression activities... I mean games available. If you're British you can play YouCOP which takes advantage of England being the video surveillance capital of the world. Here you (and 10 other "Brits") watch for illegal activity and report it! For now, no weaponry involved. But don't worry about it!

Not a U.S., or British citizen? Care to remain anonymous? Through special arrangement with some other governments we also have a new gaming site: YouREPRESS! Here you can target Tibetans, punish the Palestinians or any other group that our clients want to suppress. All we need is your eyeballs and a good twitch reflex! Remember, points you earn in our games will be tradable for virtual items and maybe even induction into the armed forces of your choice!

NeoOCP - crowdsourcing for the benefits of Big Governments worldwide! (Not a big government but a big corporation instead? Don't worry, we'll be announcing new crowdsourced spy products for you too! Like our new YouDRM; we'll make it profitable for people to snitch!).