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USAF Cuts Drone Flights As Stress Drives Off Operators
HughPickens.com writes: The NY Times reports that the U.S. is being forced to cut back on drone flights as America's drone operators are burning out. The Air Force is losing more drone pilots than they can train. "We're at an inflection point right now," says Col. James Cluff, the commander of the Air Force's 432nd Wing. Drone missions increased tenfold in the past decade, relentlessly pushing the operators in an effort to meet the insatiable demand for streaming video of insurgent activities in Iraq, Afghanistan and other war zones, including Somalia, Libya and now Syria. The biggest problem is that a significant number of the 1,200 pilots are completing their obligation to the Air Force and are opting to leave. Colonel Cluff says many feel "undermanned and overworked," sapped by alternating day and night shifts with little chance for academic breaks or promotion.
What had seemed to be a benefit of the job, the novel way the crews could fly Predator and Reaper drones via satellite links while living safely in the United States with their families, has created new types of stresses as they constantly shift back and forth between war and family activities and become, in effect, perpetually deployed. "Having our folks make that mental shift every day, driving into the gate and thinking, 'All right, I've got my war face on, and I'm going to the fight,' and then driving out of the gate and stopping at Walmart to pick up a carton of milk or going to the soccer game on the way home — and the fact that you can't talk about most of what you do at home — all those stressors together are what is putting pressure on the family, putting pressure on the airman," says Cruff. The colonel says the stress on the operators belied a complaint by some critics that flying drones was like playing a video game or that pressing the missile fire button 7,000 miles from the battlefield made it psychologically easier for them to kill. "Everyone else thinks that the whole program or the people behind it are a joke," says Brandon Bryant, a former drone camera operator who worked at Nellis Air Force Base, "that we are video-game warriors, that we're Nintendo warriors."
What had seemed to be a benefit of the job, the novel way the crews could fly Predator and Reaper drones via satellite links while living safely in the United States with their families, has created new types of stresses as they constantly shift back and forth between war and family activities and become, in effect, perpetually deployed. "Having our folks make that mental shift every day, driving into the gate and thinking, 'All right, I've got my war face on, and I'm going to the fight,' and then driving out of the gate and stopping at Walmart to pick up a carton of milk or going to the soccer game on the way home — and the fact that you can't talk about most of what you do at home — all those stressors together are what is putting pressure on the family, putting pressure on the airman," says Cruff. The colonel says the stress on the operators belied a complaint by some critics that flying drones was like playing a video game or that pressing the missile fire button 7,000 miles from the battlefield made it psychologically easier for them to kill. "Everyone else thinks that the whole program or the people behind it are a joke," says Brandon Bryant, a former drone camera operator who worked at Nellis Air Force Base, "that we are video-game warriors, that we're Nintendo warriors."
Soon we will have intelligent drones and just a few people monitoring them all as they go about their missions. Then we can wage "war" 24x7, 365 days a year -forever.
As the article you cite says, that was/is a practice of the CIA. The same is true for "Signature Strikes", or missling people that match your demographic target profile but haven't necessarily been observed doing insurgent things.
That said I'd wager that the stress of killing innocents, even if extremely rarely and by accident, weighs heavily on most of the USAF drone pilots. When you are actually in harms way it is a lot easier to justify your actions to yourself. But as a remote pilot thousands of miles from any threat I imagine that takes a toll.
It's a leadership problem, as shown by this:
I can't believe any other part of the military would push people in combat arms that hard with so little chance of academic breaks or promotion opportunities. Especially promotions. This is part of a general rot in the US Air Force that has been documented in various places, such as strategic forces being considered a loser's job and the antagonism to flying the A-10 warthog to provide close air support for ground units instead of sexy modern aircraft.
Since you don't actually kill people for a living, you shouldn't comment on the effects of it. It is not a video game and it isn't something you take lightly.
Bomber WSO.
If killing another human being is "easy peasy" for you, and doesn't impart any stress into your life than you would be classified as a sociopath.
The sheer amount of ignorance in these replies is staggering. Surely you're able to understand that despite the fact that this person is viewing a screen they know the events are still real.
At this point I suppose it's wildly beyond your ability to understand why it might be a compounding factor to show up to work, kill a dozen people, and then go home to your kids every night.
PS: the whole secrecy thing can indeed wear on a relationship.
Years ago, when I did the "Cannot confirm or deny" thing, I spent 4 days a week working on Project Senior Trend, and 3 days in Nellis AFB in Vegas. I've lost count of the number of girlfriends I'd lost to the phenomenon of:
"So how was your week?"
"Oh, normal."
"Did you do anything fun or interesting?"
"Nothing out of the ordinary"
"C'mon, don't be so closed-up... how was your week?"
"Babe, you know I can't talk about it"
"Don't give me that shit - I saw those cuties you got on the plane with! You're fucking one of them, aren't you!?"
"No, no! It's not like that - I just can't talk about what I do up there is all!"
{heated argument ensues...}
I finally got past that by dating a chick who also worked up there as an SP (Security Police), which made things much more relaxed.
Even my wife (who I met *long* after I became a civilian) seriously asked me, point-blank, if I saw or worked with any aliens up there, and got mad when I refused to talk about it. I eventually defused it by joking about a dude named José, but it illustrates that such a job really tends to intrude on one's personal life.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Sure, but that just restates the problem: drone operator is a low-status, dead-end job within the military. It's not that the huge, lucrative, civilian drone operator market is sucking the ranks dry, it's that the job offers career prospects and job satisfaction that aren't in line with the abilities it demands.
This in turn suggests there is something broken with the leadership of the Air Force -- which should come as no surprising given that we've heard exactly the same kind of stories of career burnout in officers who man nuclear missile launch sites. They're not paying attention to vital but non-glamorous missions.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't know, maybe it might be a moral thing because they're executing people they don't know, for crimes they're not even aware of simply because they're given an order by a government that doesn't even follow its own rules and in answerable to no one?! Jesus man! They're killing people! They're killing A LOT of people, without trails. There are lots of innocents the die. Kids. Fathers. Mothers. Drone strikes aren't as precise as they have you believe.
That's why they're leaving. They're probably having nightmares at night about the people they killed who they never met; never even looked into their eyes.
Believe it or not, people do understand that the targets of their "gameplay" are actual people, and not computer generated opponents.
Its hard to understand that because people who only play video games, we know that we're not killing real people, so we assume the feeling is similar. It's not. You know full well that those are real people, and you know from the news that some of them are quite possibly innocent. It may not be as visceral, but it still has an impact, especially when the technology lets you stay in action for long shifts while you loiter over an operational zone.
> If killing another human being is "easy peasy" for you, and doesn't impart any stress
> into your life than you would be classified as a sociopath.
^^^^^ This.
I feel the same way, it's appalling that half the people replying are casually stating that they'd have "no problem" killing people. People who express those kinds of sentiments are the LAST people you'd want to have the power of life and death, ESPECIALLY if it's being done remotely.
I wish I could mod you up, but alas, I cannot.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...