What's It Like To Pilot a Drone? a Bit Like Call of Duty

Velcroman1 writes "Teenagers raised on Call of Duty and Halo might relish flying a massive Predator drone — a surprisingly similar activity. Pilots of unmanned military aircraft use a joystick to swoop down into the battlefield, spot enemy troop movements, and snap photos of terror suspects, explained John Hamby, a former military commander who led surveillance missions during the Iraq War. 'You're always maneuvering the airplane to get a closer look,' Hamby said. 'You're constantly searching for the bad guys and targets of interest. When you do find something that is actionable, you're a hero.' Yet a new study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found real-life drone operators can become easily bored. Only one participant paid attention during an entire test session, while even top performers spent a third of the time checking a cellphone or catching up on the latest novel. The solution: making the actual drone mission even more like a video game."

Comments

Insert PC vs. console flamewar here

[muel]

Solution to issues of boredom? Allow mouse+keyboard!

Re:Insert PC vs. console flamewar here

[tnk1]

Reason for innocent civilian deaths? Inaccuracies of using a controller instead of keyboard and mouse. I could target that Hellfire on a bathroom window, whereas those Xbox boys could only hit the broad side of a barn if there were women and children in it!
 

Re:Insert PC vs. console flamewar here

[anypundit]

TFA: "The real military use a touchscreen notebook to control drones . . ."

Seriously? The real cause of civilian casualties = sausage fingers.

Re:Insert PC vs. console flamewar here

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why they have to pilot these for such long boring hours. Why can't they have a team and take breaks every hour and go do something else? Why does it have to be like a cockpit where you can't really go stretch your legs?

It seems to me it would be a lot easier to pay attention in 15 minute boring spurts, and spend 15 minutes training on a dogfighter or something.

Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[siddesu]

There is no guilt. The "enemy" is no longer people, but pixels rendered in false colour. No need to justify or otherwise rationalize murder. Neat. Welcome to the Ender's game.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[moniker127]

You beat me to the enders game reference, you sonofabitch.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most drone observations are surveillance. And it's made the battlefield safer and cleaner for both soldiers and civilians. You'd rather go back to the old "Bomb everything with this big bomb" paradigm?

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[siddesu]

Sorry. You could have replied with a reference to the Speaker for the Dead. I think it would be very appropriate that the people who are about to be shot from the air had someone to say a word on their behalf to someone. Not the drone pilots or their commanders, but to the executives who make the decision to kill them based on largely one-sided, information. Not as good as a due process, but still an improvement over Call of Duty.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[hawks5999]

How about we go back to the "we don't need to police the world" paradigm.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[jbeaupre]

As opposed to the long bow or catapult, where you don't necessarily see the other guy ever. Only in the last decade has warfare become impersonal.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[Tackhead]

There is no guilt. The "enemy" is no longer people, but pixels rendered in false colour. No need to justify or otherwise rationalize murder. Neat. Welcome to the Ender's game.

On the other hand, if you fuck up because you got bored grinding out the full-bird-colonel level, you don't get to restore from the last save point, you can't even reroll a new character. Yes, rebuying some of your Steam games if you get caught cheating or griefing is rough, but it's nothing compared to a permaban in the form of a dishonorable discharge.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[siddesu]

No, I'd rather go forward to using the proper tools for the job, like addressing the problems that result in unwanted consequences like terrorism. But shooting is so easy.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[oodaloop]

I'd like to point out that the drone pilot doesn't decide to fire. There is a rather lengthy and complicated targeting process to get authorization to fire. The worst problem with a bored drone pilot is that he may miss something on the screen, not that he'd launch a Hellfire missile because it was something to do.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[l0ungeb0y]

How quickly we forget the lessons learned on September 11th, 2001.

And what lesson is that?

Take repeated intelligence reports from your allies seriously?
Bother to read and take heed of reports entitled "Bin Ladin plans to attack within the US" that detail planned use of aircraft?

Ohh -- I'm sorry, I forgot.. we're all supposed to shove our heads up our ass and run around in fear while the US Government takes away more and more of our rights every time they say boo.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[couchslug]

Death was ALWAYS acceptable, done up close and personal.

Have some Kampuchea, Rwanda, the Holocaust, etc.

Also, "cannons" called, citing prior art.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[interkin3tic]

You responded to a false dichotomy with another false dichotomy. I'm confused as to whether this makes a false trichotomy or a false quadchotomy.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[siddesu]

Yep. There is a reason murderers in general and the government-sponsored murder in Kampuchea, Rwanda and the Nazi camps is not cherished, but frowned upon.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[memnock]

What if the pilots were required to distinguish between obvious non-targets, such as children, and people with weapons or else face a stiff punishment, such as time in the jail? Oh, what, you're not interested in being a pilot now that a mistake leading to "collateral damage" is now actually more than you losing points in your game?

Oh, that's right, everyone the drone hits is a enemy combatant. So, I guess there is no motivation to worry about what one shoots at.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[chispito]

There is no guilt. The "enemy" is no longer people, but pixels rendered in false colour. No need to justify or otherwise rationalize murder. Neat. Welcome to the Ender's game.

I am not anti-drone when they are used responsibly. But I did find this quote from the article a bit provocative:

Cummings says the secret could be to make drone missions work more like a video game. That’s the opposite of the trend in the automotive industry, where distracted driving can lead to more frequent accidents and higher fatalities.

Emphasis mine. Are they worried more about the fatalities (bad guys dying) or the accidents (good guys dying)?

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[Samantha Wright]

It depends on how the second dichotomy maps to the first one. Sometimes they cascade into a true monochotomy. (Also, it would be 'tetrachotomy', due to Greek.)

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[Joce640k]

Most drone observations are surveillance.

But not all of them.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[Joce640k]

At least you're out on a field where the other guy can shoot back, not in a cozy armchair, texting with one hand and bombing people-shaped-pixels with the other.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[Joce640k]

Oh, that's right, everyone the drone hits is a enemy combatant. So, I guess there is no motivation to worry about what one shoots at.

Not since Wikileaks was shut down.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Combat is still going to happen. You think we shouldn't use a better tool? Of course we should. Drones are that tool, and they'll even help back at home.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[Warhawke]

It's worth remembering that the concept of war as murder is an extraordinarily modern concept with regards to human society. It wasn't that many generations ago that our forefathers even believed that if you died home safe in bed and not in the heat of battle that you would never see the afterlife and your soul might simply vanish. While plenty may consider that to be sociological evolution, and perhaps rightly so, I do not think it is fair to blame the dehumanization of war solely upon LCD screens and video games. The British wore red uniforms to disguise blood, and even the bloodthirsty Romans put sand in the gladiatorial arenas to soak up the gore. We have dehumanized war and death for far longer than the presence of the console video game.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[siddesu]

Elimination of your "enemy" as a tool for solving problems (internal, like keeping power, economic growth or resource acquisition, or external, such as threats from belligerent neighbours) was probably the most straightforward solution when level of technological and social development was comparatively low. The question that needs to be asked and answered is how appropriate is it today, and is there a better way.

It is a long topic, and Slashdot isn't the right place to pour one's soul out in a long treatise, but my opinion on the matter is that there is very little creative thinking involved when solving international problems, and the reason for this is that the people who end up being in charge are, by the virtue of the selection process to get them there, poorly equipped to solve such problems.

Hence, we tend to get suboptimal solutions as a matter of course, and it is only after a major crisis that such tendency is temporarily corrected.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[VAElynx]

And that's a good thing how, unless you believe that only dying in combat will bring you eternal reward in Valhalla?

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[tnk1]

There has never been any guilt where it counts. You forget that the people who start wars have traditionally not been the ones who do the dirty work. Yes, Kings used to actually fight in wars, but they used to consider it entertainment, or at the very least, upward career mobility.

Unless you're lamenting the fact that the grunts now don't have to sit in a trench, get maimed, or PTSD, drones are generally a good thing. I suppose that less of that makes it easier to keep prosecuting wars in the face of public opinion, but sending millions of boys off to war to be killed hasn't stopped wars in the past, so I think I'll go with the fewer casualties where I can get them.

Unless you thought that no one could bomb, shoot or burn civilians before?

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[ShanghaiBill]

At least you're out on a field where the other guy can shoot back, not in a cozy armchair,

Close contact with the enemy does not make one dispassionate, and less likely to commit war crimes. It is exactly the opposite. A grunt on a patrol probably hasn't slept more than a few hours in the last week. He is hungry, and tired. His whole body aches with fatigue and itches with bug bites. His canteens are empty and his eyes sting with sweat turned to brine. Just yesterday he saw his best friend get his foot blown off by by a "toe popper". You think he is going to make more ethical life and death decisions than a well-rested, well-fed operator in an air conditioned van in Nevada who is having his every decision recorded? The depersonalization of war is a GOOD THING. Mistakes are still made, but we do not see any intentional atrocities like we did at My Lai, or No Gun Ri.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[Hentes]

Which is not necessarily bad. As the "collateral murder" video has shown, people tend to be more aggressive when they fear for their own lives. A drone pilot is in perfect safety, so he has enough time to calmly make a decision.
Relying on a soldier to make moral decisions is naive. Soldiers are trained to do exactly what they are told. The decision to attack have always come from the officers and the politicians who don't participate in the fight anyway.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[hjf]

Who is the good guy?

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[History's Coming To]

I think Gith may have been refering to the idea that if fear is gone then war is easy. We can remove the fear by using remote drones, or by using people who have accepted and welcome their own death for a greater cause. Either works, and it's a really dumb arms race.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[TubeSteak]

There is no guilt.

[Citation Needed]
The available evidence suggests otherwise: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/drone-pilot-ptsd/

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[cavreader]

"US Government takes away more and more of our rights"
Exactly what rights have been taken away?

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[drkim]

There is a rather lengthy and complicated targeting process to get authorization to fire

Flip a coin?

...more like,
"DR705 to JTAC, recce complete. Request clearance to go hot on target?"
"Stand by DR705. (shake, shake, shake.) Ah, 'It is decidedly so.' DR705 you are cleared hot on target, cleared to release."
"Copy JTAC.Copy: cleared to go hot on target, cleared to release. Thank goodness. Last time it came back, 'Reply hazy, try again.'"

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[AK Marc]

No, it won't. If we didn't kill them, then nobody would.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[VortexCortex]

Who is the good guy?

Good point. I think the word he needs is "skilled".

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[ShanghaiBill]

I wouldn't want to be on the other end of your so called targetting "process":

http://www.cryptome.org/2012/01/0094.pdf

This was a MANNED AIRCRAFT flying a mission in support of troops under fire. This NOT an example of the targeting process for drones the GPP was referring to. If fact it is the opposite: an example of what happens when you DON'T use drones, and you don't have the review and dispassionate decision making that they enable.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[chispito]

Civilians and combatants that do not hide behind civilians or intentionally target them.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[viperidaenz]

Thanks for pointing out the meaning of the word "Most".

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[shutdown -p now]

A war is not a war movie. It's point is not to make you experience strong feelings and emotions. It's point is to do the thing that's necessary to achieve your objectives (which, in a just war, is basically the security of your own nation) with minimal amount of force and bloodshed. Drones help minimize that on both sides - their operators are mostly safe, barring a terrorist attack on their control center, and the fact that they're removed from the battlefield and not subjected to stress of possibly being shot at any moment lets them remain calm and rational, taking their time to identify their targets (and filter out noncombatants) and engage them only as necessary and with the amount of force appropriate for the situation. Not always, of course - humans are humans - but definitely much closer to that ideal than a grunt on the battlefield with bullets whizzing above, who will chuck a grenade in a suspicious window first and ask whether there might have been any civvies there later...

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

How old are you? The right to go through an airport without nude pictures of you being taken, for one.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[cheekyjohnson]

The fourth amendment has been violated time and time against by laws such as the Patriot Act and organizations such as the TSA.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[oursland]

What do you want? The US to come in and kill everyone involved? Would that make you happy?

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so that's why Drone operators never fire on civilians, funerals, first responders (look up 'double tap') or people who look like they would look at them funny at some point if they were ever in the same place.

Further, I seem to recall bomb strikes in the Vietnam war (by well-rested, well-protected pilots in airconditioned cockpits) that would most likely be classified as war crimes had anyone but american soldiers perpetrated them.

No, the impersonalisation of war is not a good thing. The end of war would be, and that is further off than ever, given the ease by which the US can keep bombing.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[siddesu]

Drones aren't used in a war, they are used to police by murder people from a foreign jurisdiction without any kind of due process. Drone operations are very error-prone, cannot be appealed by the receiving end in any way, manner and form whatsoever. They seem expedient, but they set a bad precedent and create a lot of animosity among those, who are subject to the treatment.

Are they the best answer to the problem they are purportedly solving?

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[shutdown -p now]

Drones aren't used in a war

Are you claiming that Afghanistan isn't war? Or are you claiming that drones aren't used for strikes against combatants?

they are used to police by murder people from a foreign jurisdiction without any kind of due process.

Due process and war are largely mutually incompatible. If you want due process, don't wage war. If you wage war, due process goes out of the window. Once again, it doesn't matter if it's a Hellfire missile from the drone that hits a civilian hut, or a shell from a howitzer.

Drone operations are very error-prone,

You'll have to quote some numbers to back that up, seeing as how you're claiming that drones are somehow more error-prone than air strikes called in by infantry spotters (a typical scenario in the absence of drones).

cannot be appealed by the receiving end in any way, manner and form whatsoever

Neither can bullets, shells, bombs or cruise missiles.

Are they the best answer to the problem they are purportedly solving?

Efficiently waging war against low-tech enemy? Yes, absolutely.

Whether that is the right problem to solve is a different matter entirely. Again, the nature of drones is completely irrelevant here; they don't do anything that a dozen other weapon systems don't do. If anything, they do it better / with less collateral damage.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[shutdown -p now]

Just because the motives behind it are not to your liking, does not make it not a war. It involved massive application of force on country scale, and several large battles. It is most certainly a war, just as Soviet operations in Afghanistan in 80s were a war. Not a "conventional" war, where both sides have roughly equal training and materiel, but that's also not a prerequisite.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[siddesu]

Well, if you have convinced yourself that using the drones to police Afghanistan is a war, be my guest. I am certainly not going to argue the obvious with every nut on slashdot, but that doesn't make you any less wrong.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[infolation]

You shoot the wrong thing. LIke a Wedding Party

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[drinkypoo]

A war is not a war movie. It's point is not to make you experience strong feelings and emotions. It's point is to do the thing that's necessary to achieve your objectives

Its point is either to make money (every war started by a major power, ever) or to not have your country destroyed or co-opted (every defender in every war ever.)

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[TheCarp]

Clearly what the article is saying is the lesson learned from 9/11 was that killing people with planes and terrorisizng populations of people makes you a hero. We learned that one pretty good, because we have been making a lot of heros.

And in no way was the lesson that sometimes people locally actually suffer the consequences of a small group of their neighbors insistance on using violence and clansdestine action as matters of normal policy in other people's local communities.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[philip.paradis]

Which branch of service do you hail from? There are a great many highly effective and honorable service members who have done their duty as ordered, and not only loathe the act of killing but also suffer from issues related to it for the rest of their lives. Ask their husbands, wives, or children about it.

There is a distinct difference between innate clinical psychopathy and behavior drilled into soldiers through military training. Perhaps you're a mental health professional; would you care to explain your background a bit more?

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[tehcyder]

At least you're out on a field where the other guy can shoot back, not in a cozy armchair,

Close contact with the enemy does not make one dispassionate, and less likely to commit war crimes. It is exactly the opposite. A grunt on a patrol probably hasn't slept more than a few hours in the last week. He is hungry, and tired. His whole body aches with fatigue and itches with bug bites. His canteens are empty and his eyes sting with sweat turned to brine. Just yesterday he saw his best friend get his foot blown off by by a "toe popper". You think he is going to make more ethical life and death decisions than a well-rested, well-fed operator in an air conditioned van in Nevada who is having his every decision recorded? The depersonalization of war is a GOOD THING. Mistakes are still made, but we do not see any intentional atrocities like we did at My Lai, or No Gun Ri.

If your soldiers are committing atrocities against civilians, you need to train and monitor your soldiers better.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[tehcyder]

I have a suspicion that you have never a) actually served in a military, b) never been shot at or c) never had to clean up your friend's blood after he has been while next to you.

It amazes me how many people who have not had these experiences are willing to put in their comments (paid for in the blood of those who have). Great idea - join up for 2 years with an Army and see what the world is like instead of sitting in your comfy chair posting to slashdot.

Guess what? I've never been the Commandant of a fucking Concentration Camp but I still know they were evil.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[tehcyder]

You're right, they're not people. They stopped being people when they accepted the unholy religion of Islam. Any rational human knows that those meatbags are an abomination to anything humane and logical.

I seem to remember reading about a moustached Corporal in Germany in the 1930s saying something similar about another religious group.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[tehcyder]

It wasn't that many generations ago that our forefathers even believed that if you died home safe in bed and not in the heat of battle that you would never see the afterlife and your soul might simply vanish.

Were your forefathers Vikings? It's been a long while since anyone else believed this.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

And when a known, verified, confirmed, visually-identified terrorist leader/bomb maker/etc. surrounds himself with his various wives and children with the express purpose of using them as human shields, what do you do then?

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[cavreader]

Can you provide any details to back up your assertion? Examples of US citizens being denied the 4th amendment protections? Any prosecution and conviction based on evidence gathered by breaking the fourth amendment? The judicial segment of the US government provides remedies to those who feel their constitutional rights have been violated. The Patriot Act and similar laws issued by the executive and legislative branches can be challenged in court. It's not a perfect system but there are plenty of examples of legislative and executive branch laws being ruled illegal and overturned. The new immigration laws passed in several states is a good example of the judiciary invalidating laws that infringe on peoples constitutional rights even when if they are not US citizens.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[X0563511]

"War is not nice."

Period. Dancing around the particulars doesn't change this fact.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[X0563511]

It's not DR705's fault JTAC is a dickbag.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[X0563511]

There's nothing wrong with Islam itself. The problem is jackasses trying to push Shariah or Islamic Law on others.

You make laws with morality, not morality with laws.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[X0563511]

This is why laser weapons would be so nice to have.

Point and zap. Minimal collateral.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[Koreantoast]

Honestly though, no different than an air strike from an F-16 or a AC-130. Still dropping death from a long distance away.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[HappyPsycho]

I'd agree with you for the most part, but I'd say the conclusion it only applies in the current situations where there is a serious imbalance of military power.

If two opponents of similar capabilities to the current US were to meet each other on the battlefield I'd guess the first targets would be New York, Hollywood, seeing as they wouldn't be a battlefield per se.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

But completely useless of your target decides to go indoors for a bit after being ID'd.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[drkim]

It's not DR705's fault JTAC is a dickbag.

"Signs point to yes"

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[cheekyjohnson]

Examples of US citizens being denied the 4th amendment protections?

Warrantless wiretapping and people being molested at airports don't count? The latter happens in broad daylight, and if you think the government hasn't been using warrantless wiretapping despite the fact that they now think they have the power to, well, I don't know what to say.

The judicial segment of the US government provides remedies to those who feel their constitutional rights have been violated.

Except that the entire government is obsessed with safety over freedom; even the people don't seem to care.

It's not a perfect system but there are plenty of examples of legislative and executive branch laws being ruled illegal and overturned.

I wish they were overturned, but until they are, they'll stick around.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[cavreader]

Are people being convicted of crimes using information from warrant less wiretapping? Are there any examples of evidence collected by warrant less wiretapping being used at someones trial to convict them? Law enforcement agencies are all subject to having their evidence vetted by the courts as part of someones legal defense. Courts throw out illegally obtained or tainted evidence quite frequently. Courts have also nullified laws passed by the legislative and executive branches of government. Like I said before the system is certainly not perfect but the legal mechanism and framework that protects a citizens civil rights is in place and used regularly. As far as I know no provisions or protections in the constitution or bill of rights has been removed. People who cite "privacy" violations often equate "privacy" with "anonymity". The government has always had the means to collect personal data on the average citizen, the electronic age has just made the process easier and faster.

There are precedents of the government suspending or ignoring certain laws and rights. If you look at US history you will find several examples of the government blatantly ignoring constitutional rights. Pre-WW2 Congress passed a bill expressly forbidding warrant less wiretapping and Roosevelt issued a written presidential memo later the same day instructing the justice department to ignore Congress and they did. At the time Roosevelt was concerned that German agents were infiltrating and running operations in the US. Roosevelt also blatantly ignored the Congressional mandate when it came to providing Britain with war related materials and services. Congress had voted not to become involved with supplying Britain with anything that might cause the US to abandon it's stated policy of neutrality. The Lend-Lease program was designed and implemented to circumvent the express will of the Congress and it worked. Roosevelt also unilaterly declared that US territorial waters extended half way across the Atlantic so ships could supply Britain without being torpedoed by Germany. He pushed until the Germans, by accident, torpedoed an American merchant ship and the incident was used to get the US public to support his war policies. The internment of the Japanese-Americans was also a huge violation in citizens rights that dwarfs any perceived abandonment of constitutional mandated laws in today's world. I saw a documentary where Carter, Bush 1, Clinton, and Bush 2 were interviewed and asked would they have made the same decisions that Roosevelt did and they all said they would have done the same thing even though the decisions were without a question illegal. They all commented on how US national security super seeded certain laws and rights. Another example of the government really violating civil rights was when Lincoln unabashedly suspended habeas corpus during the civil war.

"Except that the entire government is obsessed with safety over freedom; even the people don't seem to care"

It is the "people" who had conniption fits after 9/11 because the government did not prevent the attack. All the people complaining about airport security today would crucify the airlines and government if the scanning and searching procedures were halted or relaxed and an airplane gets blown up.

Re:Death becomes acceptable, doesn't it?

[cheekyjohnson]

Are people being convicted of crimes using information from warrant less wiretapping?

It doesn't matter to me whether they are or aren't; I feel that people's rights are being violated simply because the government is spying. But I somewhat doubt that the government would give itself these powers and then not even use them.

Like I said before the system is certainly not perfect

It is far from perfect.

As far as I know no provisions or protections in the constitution or bill of rights has been removed.

They do not need to remove them.

There are precedents of the government suspending or ignoring certain laws and rights.

And...? Something being old doesn't make it good.

It is the "people" who had conniption fits after 9/11 because the government did not prevent the attack. All the people complaining about airport security today would crucify the airlines and government if the scanning and searching procedures were halted or relaxed and an airplane gets blown up.

I know that already.

Droning on and on

[retroworks]

I think that's the whole point. It should not be fun. That's why we didn't name them something flashier.

Re:Droning on and on

[Kaenneth]

like 'Predator'?

Re:Droning on and on

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

Not according to Wordnet:

"drone
            n 1: stingless male bee in a colony of social bees (especially
                  honeybees) whose sole function is to mate with the queen"

In the workers' society of the beehive, drones have all the fun.

Re:Droning on and on

[loufoque]

Why should it not be fun? Do you want your soldier "workforce" to be miserable, down, and inefficient?

Re:Droning on and on

[viperidaenz]

If your idea of fun is to have sex with the biggest, fattest female around.

Joystick?

[NamTaf]

Pretty sure I haven't used a joystick in Call of Duty or any other computer game in the last decade.

Re:Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, in video games, you get penalized when you shoot the random civilian instead of the guy with the gun

I learned the hard way you don't fuck with chickens in ocarina of time.

Tesla is not amused

[jsepeta]

Tesla wanted robots fighting robots by wireless remote, so humans wouldn't have to participate in war.

Re:Tesla is not amused

[inputdev]

sadly, robots fighting robots does seem inevitable at this point, although humans are still likely to be participating.

Re:Tesla is not amused

[drkim]

sadly, robots fighting robots does seem inevitable at this point, although humans are still likely to be participating.

"Sadly?" It's already in production:
James Cameron and Mark Burnett Team for Discovery's 'Robogeddon'

http://www.thewrap.com/tv/article/mark-burnett-alaska-series-others-announced-discovery-36832

more important...

[slick7]

What's it like to be bombed by a drone and its faceless pilot? Even more important, do you think they (the faceless pilots) care?

Re:more important...

[shutdown -p now]

What's it like to be bombed by a drone and its faceless pilot?

Same as being bombed by a piloted plane. Basically, there is a flash, and then you die, if lucky. If not, you live long enough to see your limbs flying.

What they need is more pilots

[Hentes]

No wonder pilots get bored during 24 hour long missions. But these aren't real planes, you are not limited to 2 pilots per drone. Assign a team of 10 to each and make them work in shifts. I'm pretty sure that will help more than giving achievments for watching rocks.

Re:What they need is more pilots

[c0lo]

That's exactly what I was thinking. If the pilots rotated out every hour or whatever then nobody would get bored. It's idiotic to force the same couple of people in to a 24 hour mission of sitting there doing nothing. What did they think would happen?!

What do you think will happen?

Predator cost per unit: $4.03 mil (in 2010)
Operational costs - for operating one for border surveillance double that. For operating it non-stop (every hour of the year): multiply by 7 ($28.5 mil) - same 2010.

Re:What they need is more pilots

[DoctorBit]

I was thinking a tiered system. There'd be tier 1 pilots watching a couple dozen monitors each, and the second anything becomes even slightly interesting on one of the feeds, immediately hands off that feed to a queued-up and ready tier 2 person. The tier 2 person triages the feed into one of the following:

1) False alarm - hands the feed back to a tier 1 pilot.
2) Possibly interesting - continues to pilot and watch.
3) Definitely interesting - hands the feed to a queued-up and ready tier 3 pilot.

The tier 3 pilot does the actual combat flying.

I'm guessing each tier would attract pilots of a particular personality type: tier 1 would have concientious laid-back personalities, tier 2 would have more moderate personalities, and tier 3 would have gung-ho gamer personalities.

Re:What they need is more pilots

[Dahamma]

The thing is, from what I can tell from TFA (yes, I read it, gasp!) the participants in the study were *not* actual UAV pilots, but the usual psych study volunteers (probably unfortunate undergrads).

And they even mention that real UAV operators are "seasoned fighter pilots" - who by definition are college graduates with *years* of flight school and operational experience, often from the Air Force Academy. These people have already been highly selected to be the types who *can* in fact endure hours of boredom and still pay attention without "checking a cellphone". Maybe we in fact don't need to have a random 20 year old psych undergrad piloting military hardware, and in fact the current system of requiring highly trained military pilots to do a job where they make decisions potentially resulting in human casualties is actually just fine as is.

The person with the highest score overall was the one who paid the most attention to the simulation. “She’s the person we’d like to clone for a boring, low-workload environment,” Cummings says — but such a work ethic may not be the norm among most operators.

Yeah, that's the tiny but highly motivated fraction of the population making it through years of training that i was talking about. And in fact from what I have read, the UAV pilots (though who often do a tour in Iraq/Afghanistan for takeoff & landing which requires better latency) are based in NY, Kansas, Nevada, etc - which is why a lot of the very senior experienced pilots are happy to take that assignment...

maybe it's time to replace the drone pilots, too

[Trepidity]

Just crank the AI up to max setting.

Re:No Motivation to End the War

[vux984]

We need to get a Republican elected to president so we can start caring again.

I agreed with everything else that you said but that.

The last republican president started the current wars, and the last 2 republican candidates have given no indication they would have prosecuted war less aggressively.

You seem to be in denial.

We saw it happen in "Toys"

[Anonymous Coward]

If I recall correctly, this concept is addressed in the 1992 movie "Toys" [1] as seen in
http://reelchange.net/2012/04/27/was-the-worst-robin-williams-movie-just-ahead-of-its-time/

[1] and yes, I know it's a bad movie, but the idea of maneuvering real drones as videogames doesn't seem so out-of-time today.

The Sound matter

[chrisale]

If Americans, Canadians, or any other citizens of Western Countries had to live with the sound of drones overhead 24/7 they'd think again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBRET2BCZUE

And

[M0j0_j0j0]

Know what bothers me the most, is that there are democratic countries with "kill lists" , they even go public with it, and is fine, completely fine no one seems to bother !!

Re:And

[DNS-and-BIND]

I suggest reading about the people on these lists. This world is a better place every time one of the names is removed from the list.

Re:And

[gl4ss]

there's a shitload of countries with no capital penalty and which literally as a nation want nobody dead.

who's on norways kill list? nobody. denmarks? nobody. swedish? nobody.

Re:And

[Anonymous Coward]

Every country has a list somewhere of people that they want dead. Every. Last. One.

No, this is false. Your entire post is based on a false premise.

Re:And

[YoungManKlaus]

Don't pin your own faults to others. Just because your contry is a bunch of violent twerps does not mean others are. Eg. no european country has anything like this (not even for ex-dictators, they usually are on the UN-list of searched criminals).

Re:And

[LQ]

Know what bothers me the most, is that there are democratic countries with "kill lists" , they even go public with it, and is fine, completely fine no one seems to bother !!

Every country has a list somewhere of people that they want dead. Every. Last. One. And what's wrong with them being public? Would it be more ethical and moral if they were private? What's really going on here is your idea of democracy is this utopian society where everyone is nice to each other and because it's so wonderful nobody would ever want to kill another person. The only place like that is North Korea. Everywhere else strives for balance between freedom and security. And even if a perfect utopia were to emerge in the world, it would be standing shoulder to shoulder with dystopias wanting nothing more than to pull it down to their level.

Non-violence is a virtue; It's something to strive for. It's not something that has ever, or likely will ever be, obtainable. Not by large groups of people. Not by governments.

This is so incorrect I don't know where to start. But I would guess the poster is a US-ian who thinks the whole world has the same violence-is-the-only-solution mindset as them. Well, they don't. Most of the world considers US foreign policy to be part of the problem.

Re:And

[martin-boundary]

Would it be more ethical and moral if they were private?

Of course it would be. I don't see why you even ask the question.

A public kill list is an endorsement. It's a clear expression that killing people without due process is a normal, morally acceptable part of the nation's conduct. A private kill list is at best evidence of corruption.

In the latter case, there is a legal process which can put the murderers in jail. In the former, they only get medals.

Re:No Motivation to End the War

[jbeaupre]

His point was that people cared about the wars and pushed for them to end when there was a republican president. People don't seem to care as much now with a democrat as president.

You may or may not agree, but it is an interesting way of looking at things.

Chilling

[Foxhoundz]

For the pilot of the drone, it's just a matter of pushing a red button on a dreary Monday morning. What we don't see is the brother, mother, husband, or son whose flesh was blown to bits by the drone. Bombing someone with a high tech manned aircraft is one thing, but the moment we abstract ourselves further and further from the hell that is war, we become the very monsters we're supposedly out to stop. I predict the drone strikes, the occupation in Iraq, and all other activities in the middle east we've been undertaking are only going to bite us back in another tragic incident like 9/11. Remember 9/11? We forgot 9/11 the day we let ourselves got lulled into two wars. We're breeding a new generation of terrorists who are growing up to fear and hate the drones, controlled by none other than the United States of America.

Re:Chilling

[shutdown -p now]

For the pilot of the drone, it's just a matter of pushing a red button on a dreary Monday morning. What we don't see is the brother, mother, husband, or son whose flesh was blown to bits by the drone.

You don't see that from a B-52 or an A-10, either. All you see is smoke and fire.

Bombing someone with a high tech manned aircraft is one thing, but the moment we abstract ourselves further and further from the hell that is war, we become the very monsters we're supposedly out to stop.

Do we? Or do we rather just turn war from an adrenaline fest to a cold, calculated application of force - resulting in fewer casualties, not more?

Re:Chilling

[Foxhoundz]

Or do we rather just turn war from an adrenaline fest to a cold, calculated application of force

Yes, let's gamify war. That's just what need in the military.

You don't see that from a B-52 or an A-10, either. All you see is smoke and fire.

It's a lot easier for a drone pilot to push a button that would likely kill people thousands of miles away. You've overlooked the entire point of my response, which was to highlight the fact that drones are making it a lot easier for pilots and the military to brush aside civilian causalities, which is currently hovering at 400-800 according to Wikipedia.

A tip goes out about a possible Al-Qaeda target somewhere in Pakistan, and a few days/weeks later, a village is reduced to rubble. The U.S. can wash its hands clean of the incident and no Americans were harmed during the operation, which is the *most* important part, right?

Meanwhile, some kid who has witnessed all this is just loving the democracy and freedom that the U.S. raining down on his village. I'm sure he'll grow up to love the United States and perhaps even become a productive member of society because of it.

/sarcasm

Re:Chilling

[shutdown -p now]

Yes, let's gamify war. That's just what need in the military.

I was not talking about "gamefying" war. Drones are not that, unless you deliberately make them so.

It's a lot easier for a drone pilot to push a button that would likely kill people thousands of miles away.

Why would it be any easier? Be it a drone or a bomber, its pilot doesn't see human figures - it sees dots on a landscape.

You've overlooked the entire point of my response, which was to highlight the fact that drones are making it a lot easier for pilots and the military to brush aside civilian causalities

You'll have to explain how, precisely, drones make it easier than hundreds of other means of delivering death and destruction at great distances that are available to us today, from artillery to bombers to cruise missiles.

A tip goes out about a possible Al-Qaeda target somewhere in Pakistan, and a few days/weeks later, a village is reduced to rubble. The U.S. can wash its hands clean of the incident and no Americans were harmed during the operation, which is the *most* important part, right?
Meanwhile, some kid who has witnessed all this is just loving the democracy and freedom that the U.S. raining down on his village. I'm sure he'll grow up to love the United States and perhaps even become a productive member of society because of it.

Your hypothetical situation has nothing to do with drones, however. It could just as well happen if you send a squad of Marines to the village. In fact, here's a more realistic sequence of events in that case: soldiers approach the village, and get heavy sniper and MG fire from it. They call in air and/or artillery support at coordinates where the fire seems to be coming from, but those are necessarily imprecise due to the urgent need of support under fire. The strike reduces a large part of the village to rubble. Digging through it, they find a couple of dead insurgents, and a lot of dead civilians.

So, to conclude. The important things about wars is to fight them for the right reasons, and against the right enemies. If you get either or both parts wrong, it doesn't matter if you use drones or not, you're going to screw up either way. But if you get both right, then drones are a more precise - and hence better - instrument.

Re:No Motivation to End the War

[Anonymous Coward]

That may have something to do with the fact that one of the wars has already ended under the current administration and the other is on schedule to end within two years. It's a bit harder to justify taking to the streets in protest when half your demands have already been met and the other half are being met in the near future.

Why should flying a drone be different?

[DaveAtFraud]

A common quote of combat pilots goes something like, "Combat flying is hours of boredom punctuated with a few seconds of complete terror." I've read something like this quote from several sources but most commonly from WWII pilots (and crew). Why should drone pilots expect it to be different?

At least the drone pilots get to go home even if the drone itself crashes, gets shot down, etc. I can imagine what a ball turret gunner from a B-17 or B-24 would say about the drone pilots being bored when they spent hours in a cramped, unpressurized, freezing cold turret scanning the airspace below the plane for approaching enemy interceptors; trying to stay alert and alive.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Why should flying a drone be different?

[Rob the Bold]

I can imagine what a ball turret gunner from a B-17 or B-24 would say about the drone pilots being bored when they spent hours in a cramped, unpressurized, freezing cold turret scanning the airspace below the plane for approaching enemy interceptors; trying to stay alert and alive.

Something like this . . .

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner -- Randall Jarrell

Probably cheaper to crowd source

[mathew42]

I wonder how hard it would be to feed the input into an existing game engine? Gamers could identify potential targets and based on reputation / number of ids the target could be investigated further. You could use something like Amzon mechanical Turk to set challenges.

With the Army's Blimp providing more data, analysis will become increasingly more challenging.

get people like beavis and butthead to fly them

[Joe_Dragon]

get people like beavis and butthead to fly them but give them some training first.

http://vimeo.com/44875392

Re:maybe it's time to replace the drone pilots, to

[drkim]

Just crank the AI up to max setting.

Oh, please don't.

You know there will just be a big stack of drones hopping up and down, all trying to get out the closed hanger door.

How can you shoot innocent women...

[hemp]

Pvt. Joker: How can you shoot innocent women and children like that?
Helicopter gunner: It's easy. You just don't lead them as much. You see, anyone that runs, is V.C. Anyone that stands still is well disciplined V.C. Ain't war hell?

Re:Yes!

[tverbeek]

You also get to shoot and blow things up a lot more in video games, not just when there's a confirmed Bad Guy on the screen once in a while.

Re:No Motivation to End the War

[tverbeek]

Apparently ST:TOS reruns aren't quite as ubiquitous as they used to be. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

Re:Yes!

[viperidaenz]

When was the last time someone played GTA without killing a civilian?

Re:maybe it's time to replace the drone pilots, to

[shutdown -p now]

You can't - campaigns in this game have hardcoded difficulty settings. So if you're bored by the Afghanistan one, you have no choice but to switch to something else - say, China or Russia.

Points

[Captain_Chaos]

How many points would you lose if you accidentally hit a wedding or a children's playground?

Re:No Motivation to End the War

[sysrammer]

Thanks, I was going to bring up that old episode, but then I thought "certainly someone else has...let's read a bit further", and here you are.

"a surprisingly similar activity"

[Larry_Dillon]

Surprisingly to whom? I do not find it surprising at all that the gaming industry feeds into the military/industrial complex.

boredom

[axd1967]

maybe the problem of boredom is that too experienced pilots are tasked for drone piloting. maybe drone pilots should be recruited separately, and be given an adapted training. a real pilot is trained all day long to try to save his own life, while a drone pilot can step away and hand over to someone else while going for lunch. -alex-