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."

Comments

maybe robots can fly the drones

[turkeydance]

maybe they already are.

Re: maybe robots can fly the drones

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Penguinisto]

Consider that unlike a video game, these guys are killing actual human beings on a daily basis.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[bkr1_2k]

Go sit a mission sometime. It's not what you think it is. Mostly it's monotonous, boring work. When there is an actual strike, it's a big deal. It's not like a video game at all, though. I promise you that.

I have sat these missions (not as a pilot) and I don't really understand the "stress" they are talking about. Other than the shift work, which can take a toll on family life, most of the folks I know doing these missions don't feel especially stressed about it.

I suspect this is a political push to change the AF standards of training required to do the job. The Army gives their UAS pilots ground training only. The AF, as far as I know, still requires full flight training. Big time and commitment difference. The AF also requires officers to do this while the Army allows enlisted, which means you get them younger, cheaper, and typically can hold onto them better because they don't have the same civilian opportunities by getting out.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[ShanghaiBill]

I'd have no compunction about blowing up bad guys on TV thousands of miles away.

Then you are not a normal person. There is no logical reason than distance should make any difference, and psychologically it makes no difference. The people in your crosshairs are just as real.

What's the problem?

There are plenty of problems. I served six years in the Marine Infantry. I never pulled trigger and directly killed someone. But I was involved in planning and coordinating actions that killed people. I never thought of the people on the other side as "bad guys". I thought of them as fellow grunts with whom I had a lot in common. They just happened to be born on the other side of a political boundary, raised in a different culture, and taught different values. That doesn't make them evil. There is also always a big level of uncertainty. Sure, the target may be carrying a rifle, but maybe he is hunting, or protecting his livestock, or part of an ad hoc village security team that we don't know about. It may be clear cut in a video game, but real life isn't like that.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Penguinisto]

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.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider that unlike a video game, these guys are killing actual human beings on a daily basis.

This, plus the fact that with any combat exercise mistakes can and will be made. That village you just bombed with your UAV turns out, after the fact, to be nothing. You just killed a bunch of men, women and children for nothing. You now have to live with that and can't even talk about it with your wife, gf, or whatever. Then you have to go back the next day and do it again knowing that you might be killing people that didn't do anything.

Tell me again how this is no big deal, no stress and you don't see the problem. Granted, I *hope* that doesn't happen too much but it does happen or at least you worry that it *WILL* happen to you. I don't know if I could handle that kind of stress continuously day after day for years. You hope that command gets it right and doesn't put you in that position but it is ALWAYS in the back of your mind.

Personally I served in the Marines as Artillery. We kill people 10-20km away. We never see them at all. Are you going to tell me that there is no stress in that either? Let me clue you all in on something. Unless you are ground infantry/tank no one ever sees the enemy. It is all pictures on a computer screen if you even see that at all.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[dskoll]

I have a friend who was a drone operator. He suffers PTSD because of intense guilt. He says he knows for sure he was responsible for killing innocent civilians in Iraq, either because of bad luck, faulty intelligence or technical problems.

I'm not saying my friend should feel guilty. Civilian casualties are an unavoidable part of war. But it's easy for me to say that because I'm not the one who pulled the trigger.

I can't believe the posters who think that people can go around killing others, even if remotely, without it having psychological consequences.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[pnutjam]

You should definitely read this book, Forever Peace, by Joe Halderman. It deals with a similar situation.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[pnutjam]

They should recruit young children, put them through simulations. Then they could pick the best and let them keep thinking they are playing a simulation... wait..

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[aaronb1138]

I've talked to a couple of guys trained to fly military drones. There isn't a big stress issue going on. The real challenge is that with their training there are very high paying private sector and DoD consultancy jobs.

Not being boots on the ground and such is leaving these guys with less sense of camaraderie than other soldiers. They don't feel compelled to re-up to fight alongside their brethren the way grunts and conventional pilots do.

The stress discussion is just a smokescreen for the fact that they can't keep people in the jobs at the moment.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to love to play with flight simulators. As the years passed, they got more realistic. Finally I had to opportunity to land at a different airport than I used to take off. Buy then I could reliably land, and was learning about the navigation equipment.

That was the longest, most boring thing I did on a computer in the name of (not received) fun. It's too realistic, and I don't have a few hours to kill for the pleasure of watching the scenery crawl by. I can easily see how the job would be less-than exciting for most drone pilots, it's not like they have the thrill of being up there, and there's likely just enough need for intervention to not make the process fully automatic.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[SumDog]

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.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[dunkelfalke]

Then you are not a normal person.

He is not. cayenne8 has mentioned several times that he is
a borderline alcoholic, has a definitive lack of empathy and is proud of both. Psychopaths aren't normal people, and that is a good thing.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[cyberchondriac]

Agreed. If that alone isn't enough to provide a sense of stress, regardless of personal danger or lack thereof, then there's something not right.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Anonymous Coward]

Um quit then. We haven't had conscription in a long time here.

That's exactly what they're doing. In droves wide enough that the USAF doesn't have enough pilots to fly all of the desired missions. This whole story is about the problem that stress, guilt, or other working conditions are driving good people out of drone service faster than they can sign up volunteers, and the Air Force's attempts to make the job more palatable.

You put a guy in a foxhole and drop mortar rounds on him every night, and no one's surprised when he says his job is stressful. You put a guy in a comfortable chair with air conditioning and free coffee, and ask him to kill anonymous humans on the other side of the globe, and the source of discomfort is less clear.

Re: maybe robots can fly the drones

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have no compunction about blowing up "bad guys" either.

I would, however, be a bit more hesitant to blow up an unidentified group of human beings based on someone else's interpretation of Metadata.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss the part about it's not always bad guys? Children being killed, and some of these pilots are parents themselves? Double-tap strikes killing first responders?

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Penguinisto]

Hate to be the wet blanket on your hypothesis here, but there is a vast difference between *saying* you'd have no problems with killing someone, and actually doing it.

If you want a civilian parallel, go hunting sometime. Something like 75-80% of first-time hunters freeze the hell up when it comes time to take the shot... and that's considered to be normal.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[tnk1]

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.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[mspohr]

The willingness of soldiers to fire on the enemy has been long debated. There is good evidence that most soldiers, even when they are in danger of being overrun by the enemy, don't fire their rifles (only about 30% fired against enemy in WWII). We are raised to value human life and it's really difficult to overcome that prohibition.
Interesting article here:
http://www.historynet.com/men-...

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[blue9steel]

I can't see what the stress is all about.

No, I've not been in the military

I have been in the military, though not as a pilot, and I can tell you that working in an environment where your job is to kill people is never stress free. Even if you're not in any personal danger, your body doesn't know that and will produce the exact same chemical responses. Additionally the mental stress both from being constantly alert and pulling the trigger is high. Flying an armed drone is not the same as playing Halo, no matter how superficially similar they seem.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[cfalcon]

You sound like a psychopath.

Literally, I mean. You literally sound like a psychopath.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[martas]

Are you seriously not allowed to deny having had alien encounters..? I mean, if she'd asked you if you'd ever seen Genghis Khan flying around in a superman costume, could you at least have denied that?

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[recharged95]

Maybe it's because NYT is a newspaper, which sells ads...
And there's a movie about a stressed out drone pilot that released last month. There's always a tie-in to some sell....

====

Really, drone pilots are just that, extensions of a drone, hence are forced to act like drones during missions and need to basically fly the 'entire plane'. And that's stress by boredom--just look at airline pilots... same routine, same times, same crew, same daily grind, and usually ends with something that has to do with drugs & alcohol.

Sure today's autopilots can really carry out an entire mission and allow a pilot to really be a supervisor (and not a pilot), but that creates a whole new set of problems. Problems that the military can't, nor doesn't want to handle. Most aircraft are piloted & manned, hence our entire infrastructure, regulations, training, O&M and essentially development approach is currently pilot centric, hence R/C of UAS is the closest DoD will every get to 'real' drones.

Autonomous UAS or even full-supervisory UAS (no pilot training, no real 'pilot') is just scratching the surface. No organization knows how to handle that aspect at scale-- I can surely tell you (since I'm one of the guys building such as system).

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[TWX]

The willingness of soldiers to fire on the enemy has been long debated. There is good evidence that most soldiers, even when they are in danger of being overrun by the enemy, don't fire their rifles (only about 30% fired against enemy in WWII). We are raised to value human life and it's really difficult to overcome that prohibition. Interesting article here: http://www.historynet.com/men-...

It's interesting thinking about that kind of statistic when applied to someone that's not in-danger themselves and is under the scrutiny of someone that expects on-the-job performance who's also not in-danger themselves but isn't obligated to push the button to kill. I expect it's actually easier to justify, in the stress of a firefight, not taking life as it can be blamed on the stressful situation, compared to being in an environment without that kind of external stress.

Maybe it would make sense to shorten their shifts an hour or a half-hour and mandate that they either go work-out, or go to the pistol range and get in some target practice, or something else to help the nerves a bit that doesn't involve killing people.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you seriously not allowed to deny having had alien encounters..? I mean, if she'd asked you if you'd ever seen Genghis Khan flying around in a superman costume, could you at least have denied that?

Are you telling him he should lie to his wife?

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[StikyPad]

Not really daily, these days, but I'm sort of glad they're burning out. Battles should be fought by people, not avatars. When we remove the cost of war in human terms, then we've removed the fundamental disincentive against war, and that's a terrible thing for nation that claims to be peaceful. At least, that's what we used claim before 9/11. Since then it's been all war, all the time.

To be fair, I don't necessarily have a problem with drones as part of a larger strategy, but in the past few years, they've supplanted a larger strategy instead of augmenting it. It's like filling a battlefield full of snipers and nothing else. It's not a recipe for success.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

> 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.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Penguinisto]

Well...

1) Denials can more often than not be just as revealing as confirmations.
2) It's a simpler thing for the typical grunt to keep in mind and perform than "confirm nothing, but deny only this stuff {gets handed a list-o-stuff}"
3) A flat non-committal "I can neither confirm or deny" routine (and variations thereof) tells absolutely nothing, which is how the folks running a top-secret project wants it.
4) Nope - I'm not going to lie -or- tell the truth about those days to the missus; Ft. Leavenworth is a lousy place to be at any time of the year.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Penguinisto]

An interesting philosophical point of view, but speaking as someone who wore a uniform? If there's a chance to prosecute a war without my being exposed to personal danger/gunfire, I'll take it. Pretty sure that all but an ate-up/tiny minority of the military think the same way.

That said, I do agree with your point: you don't own contested ground until there are a pair of your boots standing on it. It's simple, yet true.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[StikyPad]

In my experience, most people actually talk to their SO's about what they do or did. It's not something they *never* do, but discretion is required. That said, the paranoid ones are untrustworthy anyway, so you were right to keep your mouth shut, and you are better off without them.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[gfxguy]

That doesn't make any sense... if we were attacking robots, or other drones, with our drones, you'd have a point that there'd be no incentive to stop, it would just go on forever while the military industrial complex raked in the taxpayer dollars - but the idea is to force the OTHER side into submission, and they are suffering human casualties while we can carry on "forever" without human loss. It's absurd to think we should risk "our" lives if we don't have to. There's no "fairness" here, there's no concept of equal risk... if you believe you're on the right side, then you must do what you need to in order to win, not be "fair."

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[gfxguy]

No... because then people ask questions closer and closer to the truth, and when the denying finally starts, the questioners know they are close to the truth.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[TheCastro1689]

Most jobs in the US military never involve carrying a weapon. The US army is a huge organization where many never get deployed or see combat.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[TheCastro1689]

They also don't get promoted as quickly as their counterparts flying inside of planes.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[neoritter]

Part of the stress seems to be the long hours too; and it sounds like the cause is too much demand, not enough supply (of pilots).

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[StikyPad]

but the idea is to force the OTHER side into submission

Glad you mentioned that. Airstrikes in general, and drones in particular, are notably ineffective at forcing the other side into submission. As I mentioned, they're fine as part of a larger strategy with boots on the ground, but nobody ever surrendered to a drone, which means they're not a viable alternative. Drones are the poster children for recruiting.

If there's a conflict where we don't want boots on the ground, then it's a conflict where we shouldn't have drones in the air. There might be exceptions, where it's one person or a small group of people that can be dealt with in one or a handful of strikes, but you can't beat an army with air strikes. Or at least, no one's demonstrated how that might be accomplished yet.

Also, we'll have to agree to disagree vis a vis the absurdity of risking our own lives. Do you think the military is training its soldiers and Marines that it's "absurd" to risk their lives? They're not. The tree of liberty is refreshed with the blood of patriots, not the oil of unmanned aircraft. If it's not worth risking our own lives, then, on principle, we shouldn't be involved. Drone strikes, like patriot missiles before them, and carpet bombing before them, have shown themselves to be a political expediency to "do something" without any cost in human life, which is trying to have your cake and eat it too. And worse, it's not a viable method of winning a war.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Dragonslicer]

When I do a Google search for "Pacifist Enlistment Options" I get nothing back. Please help me out and point me to where I can enlist but specify that I don't want to be subject to orders that will help kill people.

If by "enlist" you mean becoming an enlisted soldier, then you probably don't have much choice in the matter. If you just mean joining the military, then if you have a college degree in some science or engineering field, you can become an officer and work at someplace like a Navy research lab. There probably isn't much need for computer scientists or physicists in Afghanistan, so you most likely won't be deployed to a combat zone.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[dcw3]

Even smart weapons kill innocent bystanders. Do you think that is lost on the people doing this?...rhetorical question.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[StikyPad]

I'm a fellow veteran. My point is more that it's not really a war unless there are risks, not that anyone should lust after battle. Of course you try to manage those risks, but you recognize that it exists as well. No risk, no reward, as they say.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Noble713]

Newsflash: the Army and Marine Corps in particular rarely place people in career fields that match their educational backgrounds/civilian skillsets.

Newly-commissioned Junior Officer: "I have a CS degree! You should put me in a research lab!"
Monitor: "Whatever. I have a quota to meet for Logistics Officers. Go drive convoys in Afghanistan."

^That's closer to the reality of it.

I'm former Army enlisted --> Marine Corps officer, so I've seen this first-hand.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Whorhay]

I wouldn't bet on it. I had a friend who was enlisted as a computer programmer in the AF. When the Army was having trouble finding enough people to fill all the deployment slots they had to fill they started sucking up Air Force people to fill those slots. So my friend who's computer programming job ostensibly fell under the Communications umbrella got sent to some outpost in Afghanistan to be a radio operator and because he was a Sergeant was expected to know how to run a Comms center supporting all kinds of patrols out in the field that were taking fire, as well as go on those patrols and act as their radio man. To me that demonstrated just the kind of idiocy that you can get when it isn't your own ass on the line. Some moron decided that Army communications troops and Air Force communications trooops were identical and was perfectly content to endanger a couple hundred folks by using them as such.

They also deploy lots of people to work outside of their trained fields of expertise doing everything from escorting third country nationals to driving trucks on convoys. You should absolutely not join any branch of the military, including the Coast Guard, if you don't want to be potentially sent to whatever hell hole the government decides we need to wage war in. You may not be forced to take up arms and shoot at people but once you are in they own you and will send you wherever they want regardless of logic or principle.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop saying "bad guys". You sound like a toddler. These are human beings, not cartoons.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[thedavidcathey]

Nah, any program running a game like that would be a dead-ender.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[gfxguy]

Risk our lives if we don't have to (to accomplish the goal). I completely disagree with your reasoning, as drones simply haven't been around long enough to state they are ineffectual at forcing anyone into submission. No, you can't surrender to a drone, but we're not talking about surrendering and being taken as a prisoner of war, we're talking about the other side picking up the phone (or using whatever means of communication) to capitulate. A general doesn't go up to a private from the other army to surrender - they communicate with the general of the opposing army.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Type44Q]

Thanks for your post, Bill; I appreciate the effort you put into articulating this and I suspect many others will, as well.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[KGIII]

It is funny that you say that when you have never fired at anyone in any situation. What makes you think you will have no problem with it? Are we supposed to believe you are somehow "tougher" than these folks?

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[DarkOx]

Exactly this. The only just war is one your fight to win. A war of half measures and changing objectives isn't a war its as arbitrary and capricious as any murder.

A cause is either worth fighting for, ie you are willing to kill, maim and destroy property as required to see your objective met; or you have no business killing maiming and destroying things.

Its like the ISIS conflict. I really sincerely believe we should stop fighting them as long as they stay in the what our maps call the middle east. They won't be stopped unless we are willing to march a few hundred thousand troops in there, sweep every building and cave, shoot anyone who looks like a combatant; and accept all the collateral damage that entails.

We are not willing to do that; not politically and not morally. The fact is what we are doing is just as bad. Its a never ending meat grinder. We knock a few heads from the hydra new ones grow up. There is no drone striking our way to victory. The guilty and innocent will continue to die for nothing alike, the conflict locked in perpetual stalemate (hint it basically has been for 30 years now). We will only be continuing to invest countless billions of our treasure to keep the horror show going.

War should be a question of "Go big" or "Go home", no justice lay in the middle.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[KGIII]

What color are the head's floor tiles in the candidates barracks at OCS?

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[KGIII]

I get a kick out of people who think that wars will be fought with machines battling against one another. That would be dumb. In fact, it is one of the dumbest ideas I have ever heard anyone espouse and mean it. No, wars will involve dead people. Destroying some machine does not have the same value. Somebody is going to skip destroying the machine so that they can kill the operators, designers, or builders.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[KGIII]

I was pondering this after I posted. Wars might be fought with machines if the enemy is not also fielding machines. Otherwise, if they are, what is the point of machines destroying each other? I suppose it is as nonsensical as humans killing each other but, we are humans, it is what we do.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[cayenne8]

If you want a civilian parallel, go hunting sometime. Something like 75-80% of first-time hunters freeze the hell up when it comes time to take the shot... and that's considered to be normal.

No problems with hunting or fishing. Kill'em, prepare them, eat them.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Luckyo]

Drones can largely fly themselves. Automation is there. The reason why they need operators is decision making. I.e. unless you pre-program a full mission, which is very difficult you are better off with the organic brain capable of directing the machine through it. And making a call on who to follow with the camera or who to shoot at is something machines aren't going to really be able to for a while at least - as it would require comprehending the criteria why we as people choose to track and kill those other people.

Drone designers are most definitely working on the issue however, which is why there is a very significant discussion going on about who is responsible if a fully automated drone that can make decisions due to extremely complex algorithms allowing it to does make decisions that are incorrect.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Luckyo]

Here's a hint for you: IS operates in territory where they enjoy wide popular support. That means drones kill a lot of women and children in addition to "enemy combatants" which is a classification used to anyone killed who happens to have a pair of balls that already dropped. Especially children since due to high mortality and no social security, people are effectively forced to produce a lot of children to be able to survive their senior years in those regions.

And with drones having to stick around to see what happened, you get to see those shredded or burning children. Often while they're still alive and burning or bleeding to death. Something rational human mind that isn't completely psychopathic generally finds very hard to do because of emotion known as empathy, even when it happens to other men. Children are even worse. Either people crack and do become psychopaths devoid of empathy, or they get extremely stressed as their mind attempts to comprehend, justify and generally just try to process that they have killed a lot of people, often in an extremely gruesome way such as burning them alive or blowing them to pieces. All while they have to watch and document exactly what happens after the strike.

Essentially the only way to act like you suggest is to be a psychopath. Considering your arguments, it's quite likely you are one.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Luckyo]

Thing is, those guys apparently have it worse than most soldiers. In modern warfare, most soldiers rarely if ever see the immediate consequences of them firing on the enemy. You shoot at targets far away, and you rarely get to see the consequences until much later. Specialist roles like artillery, support crews, bomber pilots and so on don't really ever get to see it. They just perform actions they're trained to perform without ever seeing the consequences directly. This allows mind to abstract "death" from "my performing actions" to a great degree, protecting the mind from empathic reaction toward the enemy.

The only ones that really get to see most of the actual death as a result of their actions in modern warfare are snipers, medics and now drone pilots.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[dave420]

But we know the targets are frequently not bad guys. I'd get pretty stressed if my job was killing people I'm told are bad, but which often turn out to also include lots of innocent people. You'd be fine with that?

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[dave420]

So you'd save yourself before you saved your loved ones. You are a grade-A piece of work, that's for sure. Wow. The fact you proffered that titbit without a second thought speaks volumes about your character, and it's really not good.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[RuffMasterD]

My mother asked me in all seriousness if I ever saw any aliens or their technology while in the army. I told her I got probed and I don't want to talk about it ;-)

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[david_thornley]

Or earlier. Fatality rates on musket-swept battlefields were far less than you'd expect by looking at the effects of a musket volley at a board fence of the appropriate height at the appropriate distance. In a musket volley, you fire. You don't necessarily fire at the right elevation to hit.

Re: maybe robots can fly the drones

[david_thornley]

The stress of battle isn't just the fear of being hurt. There's lots of dangerous jobs out there. It appears to be the stress of having to kill people. (See "On Killing", David Grossman.)

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[david_thornley]

I think you've hit on something there. If you're in the combat zone, you're with a lot of people who understand what you're doing. I don't know how much you would talk about it, but people do understand.

If you go home to your wife and children at night, just having wiped out a family, you can't talk about it at all, and you know that nobody there understands how you feel.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[david_thornley]

Wars are a matter of pitting whatever you've got against whatever the enemy's got. If it turns out that putting humans anywhere near the front line is a waste of their abilities, wars will be fought by machines. Otherwise, there will be front-line human soldiers in some capacity.

It will still be war, and will still have the same effects. If my tankbots destroy all your tankbots, you really don't have options other than surrendering or being conquered.

In the meantime, if you divert resources from fighting my tankbots to attack my rear-area humans, you're leaving yourself at a tactical disadvantage, and when I defeat you because I'm hitting your tankbots hard I'm not going to be in a good mood. Expect war crimes trials with unfriendly judges.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[david_thornley]

One of the more or less apocryphal court stories:

"Did you have sex with this man in Philadelphia?"
"No, I didn't."
"Did you have sex with this man in Pittsburgh?"
"No."
"Did you have sex with this man in Harrisburg?"
"I refuse to answer that question."

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[david_thornley]

Somebody made the decision to send that drone out on that pre-programmed mission with those algorithms. If that person hadn't made the decision, that family would still be alive. That works for a start. Somebody else came to the conclusion that that area was all enemy, and told our first person. Somebody else cleared that version of the drone for use.

Look, we have totally autonomous weapons that use sometimes sophisticated algorithms. Are you telling me nobody is responsible when a land mine kills a civilian?

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[stoatwblr]

"If it were one or more of those fine ISIS chaps I was targeting, no, I'd not have a problem killing them without a second thought."

That mindset is exactly what created ISIS in the first place.

That 'fine ISIS chap' has a family. You might think he's a bad guy but they probably don't.

He's also mixed amongst civilians - who also have families.

Killing him will irritate his friends and family, possibly recruiting more members for revenge.
Killing civilians who don't want to be in the line of fire in the first place will also recruit more members wanting revenge.

And finally splatting people like bugs from 7000 miles away (or even just 20,000 feet up) is a sure-fire way of pissing off the locals enough for some of them to take up arms on the general principle of "don't tread on me" (try it in the USA and you'd see exactly the same response).

This isn't a video game. There are ALWAYS consequences and the raw fact is that every time the USA has gone into a region to try and solve a problem with war it's resulted in things being made significantly worse.

Things in the middle east have been ratcheting up since the end of the Ottoman empire 100 years ago. The division of areas into countries along lines which split up ethnic/tribal groups and put other ethnic/tribal groups in conflict for leadership was pretty much guaranteed to give a harvest of blood in the long term (this is also happening in Africa), but having done that it's now virtually impossible to redraw the lines in the way that T.E Lawrence (of arabia) proposed after the first world war in order to ensure prolonged peace in the region.

If the amount of money the USA has pissed up against the wall was carpetbombed across the middle east as cash instead, the area would be better off, there'd be few enemies and the US would probably have spent about half as much as it has to date.

It's arguable that the middle east mess is a direct result of the USA military system finding itself at a loose end after the end of the cold war and starting to look around for new missions instead of doing the sensible thing and winding itself down to a lower level. This theory has some legs because one of the consequences of stepping off a federal war footing is that Washington DC would be required to delegate most of its power back to the individual states and after a 70-year long power grab most of those now in control would only see that happen over their dead bodies.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Luckyo]

That is actually correct. Land mines kill and maim a lot of civilians to this date in many states, including for example Vietnam, where most mines were airdropped from US bombers.

How many commanders, bomber crews, or really any US military have you heard of being held responsible for this?

This isn't limited to US either by any stretch of imagination. Russians did the same thing in Afghanistan (as did US) for example. Not much responsibility there either.

Mines killing and maiming people are a huge problem across the world. Look it up.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[minstrelmike]

Actually, the drone operators are going to end up with more PTSD than regular pilots. There was a really good article on Wired a few months ago by a pilot who flew in WWII and Korea and other places. You drop your bombs and you land back home.

Drone operators follow a man for months. He's a real person. They see his wife and kids and see him shopping and whatever.
Then they kill him.
Then they keep watching. See his wife come out and cry over the body. See the ambulance pick him up while his children are crying.
Then they monitor his funeral to look for other targets.

If that doesn't affect you deeply, you're probably a psychopath.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[david_thornley]

I know it's a really big problem, and lots of people are in favor of banning land mines. Last I heard, the US said that it was going to use self-deactivating mines and was therefore claiming to avoid the really harmful stuff.

As far as being held responsible, I am unaware of any convention banning land mines that the Soviet Union or the United States had agreed to at the time. (I'm not at all familiar with post-WWII laws of war, so please correct me if I'm wrong.)

This doesn't mean there's no moral responsibility for using land mines. If it became a war crime to deploy them, it wouldn't be hard to figure out who to prosecute.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Noble713]

I was in Bravo Company in 2008, the largest OCS summer (up to that time). We were in the container barracks out past the PT field, not in the permanent buildings where Charlie company was. The containers had off-white floors. Two platoons to a building, with the squad bays running parallel to each other.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[balbus000]

Sounds like the Air Force should release a video game. Congratulations Ender, you got a high score!

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[KGIII]

LOL I was there in '88 or so. I left in '90 to go play nice with the UN and help security in what was left of Yugoslavia. At OCS, I was on the other side as an E5 - 3505 and I have no recollection what the color of the bathroom tiles were on the other side though I did get to traipse through once in a while. One gets to meander about a bit in motor pool. I have the utmost respect of officers, really - I do. I am not even chuckling when I type this. Their training is 10x worse than mine was. I used to like to stand outside graduation and make 'em salute me and collect my shiny half-dollar. I assume that tradition is still alive? Anyhow, my first bout of insanity was an 0311 (the entire time, thanks) from '77 to '81. I spent most of my time drinking and all in relative security. The reason for my return was some more of that GI Bill loving. I was reasonably well behaved, a bit of an alcoholic by then, but I was not misbehaved.

They had plenty of room at OCS while I was there. It was also rather beneficial to be the guy with the keys when you folks were out bivouacking. Yes, I had to spell-check that. Anyhow, being the guy who was able to get out and get beer was very useful and I met some interesting folks. Chances are very good you know some of them. The Marines have expanded a lot but not that much so as you would not know any of them. You ever get out to Tun's to go to a get-together?

I get a little tired of there is no such thing as an ex-Marine or former Marine (except DD) and the horah stuff. I managed to get my head squared away and have happily had an excellent life since. I still have pride but, honestly, I am far less a cheerleader today. I suppose it is theoretically possible to throw enough grunts at a nuke before it has the chance to explode but, well, that is kind of the reason I am not a cheerleader too. I am not sure how much sense that makes. Meh... Maybe you get it.

Re:maybe robots can fly the drones

[Luckyo]

"Moral responsibility" in a war is an oxymoron.

Case to point: current drone assassination program which kills and maims women and children en masse..

I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[butchersong]

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.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[drinkypoo]

That's why we're seeing an article on this in the news now. The military doesn't like to admit when it's having trouble recruiting. But this article is ammunition when someone goes to say "we need more money for more drone autonomy". And conveniently, the big drone manufacturers surely will have something expensive ready to sell them! What a coincidence!

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[AmiMoJo]

Some artists have been helping people in areas being targeted by US drones to create large canvas images of some of the victims and lay them flat on the ground. That way as the drone flies over and targets the area the operator will see the face of a child who was previously murdered in a similar scenario. The idea came about because drone pilots describe their targets as "bug splats", and this is a way to hopefully connect them to their potential victims in the way soldiers deployed on the ground are forced to.

Maybe that and other efforts to make pilots aware of what they are doing and how it really isn't a game, that they are killing real people when they push those buttons, is having an effort. Of course they would never admit that, hence the excuse.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[Richard_at_work]

Why are drones singled out as the big evil in this regard? How many faces do you think F-16 or B-1B pilots see before and after they drop their bombs on the designated target? Drones haven't changed that, they just move the pilot out of harms way.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[dunkelfalke]

There was an old (I think from the 1950ies) short story by the late Robert Sheckley, called "Watchbird" which describes exactly what you have written about.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[Anonymous Coward]

That way as the drone flies over and targets the area the operator will see the face of a child who was previously murdered in a similar scenario.

If I were trying to cause regret in the drone pilots, it wouldn't matter whether any children were killed - only whether I could persuade the drone pilots that they were.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[ScentCone]

Pilots are not removed from it though like drone pilots are. Pilots stay in the area and can see the aftermath, they feel the impact more.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

A bomber pilot may let loose with similar guided weapons from miles away, or from 30,000 feet. He may never fly over that spot again, and may have no need to hang around doing bomb damage assessment. The drone operator may spend a month flying over the same area, gathering intelligence on individual people, vehicles, buildings ... many of them know the ground in some insurgent-run village in Iraq better than you know the ground a few blocks from where you live. And it's the drone operators and satellite imaging people who usually do the remote BDA, not traditional pilots. Traditional pilots don't "feel the impact" more, but it does cost a great deal more, and introduce a lot mroe risk, to operate an aircraft with them on board. You seem to prefer that, for some reason. Strange.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[drinkypoo]

Why are drones singled out as the big evil in this regard?

Because they are another kind of force multiplier that increases the number of people that one person can kill effectively. Anything like that will be singled out for the same kind of criticism. Unless you think killing is something which should be promoted, this seems reasonable.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[thrillseeker]

The vast majority of people in the US get all they know - about war and everything else - from Hollywood.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[wbr1]

"We've always been at war with Eastasia"

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[Richard_at_work]

I think engaging in a modern war when there is a legal basis for said war is something that is acceptable, and if that is acceptable, then whatever can be done to remove our sides people from harms way is also acceptable.

Therefore drones are a natural, acceptable progression from manned aircraft, whether they are conducting reconnaissance or dropping ordnance. A drone doesn't increase the number of people that one person can kill effectively, in-fact the current crop of drones are a reduction in offensive capability when compared with a pilot in a modern fighter jet such as the F-16 or Eurofighter. What the drone does is remove the pilot from potential harm.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of people in the US get all they know - about war and everything else - from Hollywood.

Which is a principal reason the US is so screwed up now.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[rickb928]

"Then we can wage "war" 24x7, 365 days a year -forever."

As if we DON"T ALREADY DO THIS.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[rickb928]

You didn't RTFA, did you?

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[rickb928]

F-16 pilots don't see much of their ground strikes. Too fast.

B-1B pilots etc don;t see much of their targets. Too fast.

What was your point again?

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[rickb928]

Too bad you're an AC. This deserves mod points, which are wasted on AC posts.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[GTRacer]

Did you see 1992's Toys, starring Robin Williams? They teased just such an idea about 2 years before the MQ-1 Predator went operational.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[Anonymous Coward]

Amusing Ourselves to Death should be required reading for every human being.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[AmiMoJo]

Drones put an extra layer of abstraction between the pilot and murdering they are doing, hence the term "bug splat". It's just an image on a screen, like you see on TV. The high number of civilian casualties attributed to drone strikes is thought to be partially due to this disconnect, where as a pilot sitting in the aircraft in the actual country and seeing live human beings with his own eyes (maybe at the AF base, if not from the air) seems to be more restrained.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[bkr1_2k]

Bomber pilots and F-16 pilots don't have high resolution video of every strike. (They do with some missile strikes but not all) and usually get "visual confirmation" from other sources. Drone pilots have video the whole time and watch every second of it during strikes. Other drone pilots have to "confirm" but the shooter does see every bit of detail. Just because they aren't flying in the airspace themselves doesn't mean they don't get the impact of their actions.

As someone who grew up with an AF pilot father who flew both fighters and bombers and who now works with drone pilots regularly, I guarantee you drone pilots see far more of the damage they cause "close up" than bomber and most fighter pilots ever will.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[ShanghaiBill]

Pilots are not removed from it though like drone pilots are. Pilots stay in the area and can see the aftermath, they feel the impact more.

This is completely backwards. Drones are quiet. They can loiter on station for hours while the controller watches and evaluates the target. They also stay and BDA the target. Piloted jets are loud. They move fast and release their bombs with a large horizontal velocity before they can even see the target, so the bombs arrive before their sonic signature. Then they are gone, usually even faster than they arrived. They generally have no idea what the target was, or even if they hit it. The BDA, including counting the body parts, is done by ... a drone.

BDA = Bomb damage assessment.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[flink]

Traditional pilots don't "feel the impact" more, but it does cost a great deal more, and introduce a lot mroe risk, to operate an aircraft with them on board. You seem to prefer that, for some reason. Strange.

It's not that strange. More risk means there is a higher threshold for committing violence.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[dryeo]

Mod points are for making good posts more visible and it is even more important and less of a waste to give them to a good AC post as they start at zero. They are not for rewarding people with karma. I often use most of my mod points making good AC posts more visible to people reading at +1 or higher.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[DerekLyons]

Next, they need to hire GAMERS who are used to strapping on a war face for 10 hours at a time every day.

They think they are. They aren't.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[ArhcAngel]

whether I could persuade the drone pilots that they were.

Or weren't...A La Ender's Game. Make the drone pilot believe he is playing a training video game.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[tlhIngan]

Drones put an extra layer of abstraction between the pilot and murdering they are doing, hence the term "bug splat". It's just an image on a screen, like you see on TV. The high number of civilian casualties attributed to drone strikes is thought to be partially due to this disconnect, where as a pilot sitting in the aircraft in the actual country and seeing live human beings with his own eyes (maybe at the AF base, if not from the air) seems to be more restrained.

More correctly, there's a physicality to being there and experiencing it "live". I mean, people go to concerts, despite being able to just watch a YouTube clip of the same. They go to sporting events with all the overpriced tickets and all that, when they could just save the time and money by watching it on their 60" flat screen TV.

There's a difference to "being there" versus "watching it on TV" The fighter pilot is "there" (even from those isolated away from the action - think stealth bombers and such which base in the US, and fly day-long missions to theatre, drop the bombs, then fly back to the US), while the drone pilot is like the guy watching football on TV.

The other thing is, well, drone pilots are often recruited from the gaming population because well, flying a drone is a lot like playing a video game. The controller might be more advanced (as in military drones, though the lighter weight drones often use standard PlayStation or Xbox controllers). I mean, we argue games like Call of Duty and all that are all fake - you're just killing images on a screen and numbers in some computer. Well a drone is the same - except the people you're potentially killing aren't just pixels on a screen, but real humans. (Another reason why they like gamers - most are able to think that everything on screen is fake and it's not real - when you're killing, dehumanizing the enemy is a very powerful tool that lets a soldier be able to pull the trigger. Likening the pixels generated by Call of Duty or Battlefield to the pixels you see on the drone video monitor makes it much easier.

Watch some videos on the drones sometimes - you'll see it referred to video games a lot. There's a very good reason for that - they want it to be like a video game - you're not killing people, you're killing pixels.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[Cederic]

Working how? Antagonising a whole new generation of potential terrorists who see people sat in comfort 7000 miles away killing their relatives at a wedding is working to what fucking objectives?

Just because Americans aren't dying doesn't mean it's working.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[russotto]

As if we DON"T ALREADY DO THIS.

It's pretty much necessary, seeing as the other side can wage "war" 24/7/365 as well. I'd prefer a way to achieve a lasting peace, but I don't see how; there's no one on the other side with the authority to negotiate one (even if you could make peace with one group, as soon as you do so six others will splinter off to do more terrorism), and we can't kill them all without unacceptable collateral damage.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[gfxguy]

So what's your answer to ISIS? Just let them be?

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[plover]

whether I could persuade the drone pilots that they were.

Or weren't...A La Ender's Game. Make the drone pilot believe he is playing a training video game.

Are you absolutely sure Halo 5 is just a game? How do you know?

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[rvw14]

Or weren't...A La Ender's Game. Make the drone pilot believe he is playing a training video game.

Unfortunately the drone pilots kept crashing the drones. When asked they replied, "The gate is always down".

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[rvw14]

Next, they need to hire GAMERS who are used to strapping on a war face for 10 hours at a time every day.

What happens when the first gamer to miss a target rage quits, allowing the drone to crash into the orphanage filled with children?

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[bledri]

So what's your answer to ISIS? Just let them be?

Yes. ISIS is not a serious threat to the US. For all their saber waving and demonizing of the US, they are part of an Islamic/political civil war that we are (once again) sticking our nose into. It's not like we care about the brutality of Sharia Law. Saudi Arabia officially sanctions beheading their own citizens, as do many of our "friends" in the region. So we're there for oil. But the Saudi's and many other fortunes rely on being able to sell oil. We should let them take responsibility for "stability in the middle east" and stop meddling. We're bad at it and it's time to face the fact.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[Applehu Akbar]

We already antagonize them by our very existence. Our objective now is to make them fear us as much as they hate us. There is not much we can - or should - do about the regional hatreds that have required Saddam-style dictatorships just to keep the lid on, but we would like to prevent them from operating internationally.

Becoming totally energy independent would be a major advance. Fracking and oil drilling carry a certain amount of risk, but it's the technical kind we can dealt with before. Independence would make all that worthwhile.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[Cederic]

ISIS aren't operating in Pakistan or Africa. Drones aren't dropping laser guided 500kg bombs in Iraq. Your question evades my point so I shall evade your question.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[KGIII]

Technical difficulties dropped the drone. They will look into that. The pilot will be black bagged, stuffed into an ammo box, and dropped out of a C-130 over the South Pacific. "No, ma'am, your son disappeared and we have no idea where to find him, sometimes kids just run away. He will probably turn up though."

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[drinkypoo]

A drone doesn't increase the number of people that one person can kill effectively,

of course it does, because

What the drone does is remove the pilot from potential harm

Yes. Drone gets shot down, the pilot switches to another drone. And continues killing, instead of falling out of the sky and dying.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[dave420]

Because drones are easier and less risky to use. No "good guys" are put in harm's way. The armed forces are far more likely to use something which doesn't endanger their guys, even if it means increasing the likelihood of innocent people dying.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[dave420]

I see you've started letting others do your thinking for you. How very sad.

Re:I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for long

[david_thornley]

Right now, Muslims are killing, raping, torturing, and generally not being nice to one another in the Middle East. Assuming that one faction wins and consolidates power, what are they going to do?

Sure, a lot of them want to impose Sharia law on the US. Why should I worry about it? They have nowhere near the capability to do so. If they try any military attacks against the US, we sink their ships, defeat any soldiers that happen to make it to shore, destroy their aircraft, and bomb their warmaking capability. They're not going to gain enough warmaking power as long as they're more interested in imposing Sharia law by force than figuring out how the Universe works and allowing people freedom.

There's a tradition of militaristic countries thinking peaceful democracies are weak. Since the Industrial Revolution, it's generally been a very big mistake. The US and EU are very capable of defending their cultures against Islamist subversion. Don't be fooled by the occasional concession. Those can be actions from strength, not weakness.

In the meantime, we're giving an unfortunate number of them personal reasons to hate us, rather than just ideological reasons, and I don't think that's a good idea in the long run. If Muslims do form something like a modern democracy, we don't want too many of them remembering relatives we killed by mistake.

The USAF should do what the oil companies do

[Nutria]

in manning off-shore oil rigs: two weeks on, then two weeks off.

It might not be perfect, but it's better than the current situation.

Re:The USAF should do what the oil companies do

[DerekLyons]

First they have to have enough bodies - which is actually a more complicated problem than you might think. First you have to have the manpower, which is both a recruiting problem and an allocation problem (Congress only authorizes the services to have so many personnel). You've also increased the load on your training and support facilities, the latter includes everything from barracks to the gym to the clerks over in Personnel (if the base is big enough, it may be able to absorb this load without undue stress though). Etc... etc...

I'm not saying it's impossible (after all, the SSBN force and prairie dogs have been doing it for fifty plus years) mind you, just that it's not a "just add water" solution.

Double Taps...

[Esteanil]

I can imagine the "double taps" where they first attack a target and then hit it again when rescuers move in adds a certain level of stress to the soldiers...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/outrage-at-cias-deadly-double-tap-drone-attacks-8174771.html

Re:Double Taps...

[Whorhay]

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.

Re:Double Taps...

[Moof123]

It is about as awful of a job as I can imagine. There have been some awful stories of having a nice night vision view of resulting body parts, and not quite dead targets. Similarly there have been tails of "dogs" that look like a small humans coming into view just after firing, only to have you commander insist it was just a "dog". Try going home feeling proud and patriotic after being that guy.

Outsource!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed that drone piloting hasn't been outsourced to India already. You don't need to be a Real American Hero (TM) to fly an RC plane via satellite, so it's a waste of taxpayer's money to not get this job done in the cheapest way posible. I mean, it sounds like they've got a drone-piloting sweatshop going, in the USA, but if you want a sweatshop, the USA is not the place for it.

Re:Outsource!

[Shados]

Except burning taxpayer money and getting as much budget as possible to do it is one of the hidden goals here. Cost cutting need not apply.

Re:Response Time?

[Entropius]

What sort of mission do these drones fly where even a 2000msec latency would matter?

Re:Response Time?

[XxtraLarGe]

What sort of mission do these drones fly where even a 2000msec latency would matter?

Seems like 2 seconds would be a significant delay if you're firing guns or shooting missiles. I'm guessing that computers probably help to compensate for the difference as long as you tagged your targets in advance.

Not a moral conundrum

[rmdingler]

My first take is there's no shortage of borderline sociopaths or rabid patriots, but I digress...

Buried several paragraphs into the link is the real reason for faltering numbers of UAV pilots:

...noting that military drone operators can make four times their salary working for private security contractors.

Re:Not a moral conundrum

[TheCarp]

I don't know about that. People do change over time. I remember being a teenager and talking with my grandfather about the videos he brought back from Korea. He showed a bunch of videos of the camps and the guys hanging around.... so I asked "Did you take any footage of the fighting" "Yes I took some, I used to mount the camera on the gun sometimes" "Why don't you ever show those?"....

The look of absolute horror on his face when he asked "Why would you want to see that?" is something I have not forgotten.

The similarity is a bit striking in terms of technological overpowering, here is what he told me about the battles (never did seek out his footage), he was in a half track, relaying information from the radio.

"We would be at one side a hill. You would hear a bugle call come over the hillside and then, on the radio 'they are coming over the hill', and a few seconds later, there would be men coming over the hill right at our machine guns, and we would just mow them all down" That is really all he ever has to say about it.

People generally don't like war too much who actually have to see it. Viet Nam wasn't a shit storm domestically because it was particularly bad compared to other justifications for conflict. The Gulf of Tonkin lie is about par for the course on how wars get started. The real difference was the journalists actually showing people war directly.

Now all footage is carefully coreographed and any gore avoided like the plague because, the truth doesn't drum up support. However, you can't hide the truth from the people you ask to fight.

Re:Not a moral conundrum

[sycodon]

Meh...pretty much the same for any skilled technology position in the armed forces.

You don't join the armed forces to become rich. That's what Politics is for.

Re:Not a moral conundrum

[voss]

video is slang, Im sure it was 8mm film. A lot of 8mm film has been converted to video.

Re:Not a moral conundrum

[TheCarp]

You are indeed correct, it was film. On reels, in fact, its still on reels. Hell, he didn't show any of them for years because the motor on his projector burned out and when he got a new one it was the wrong speed, and he and I had to figure out how to get it to play at the right speed.

I grew up in the 80s/90s man, its all video to me.

Re:Not a moral conundrum

[hey!]

...noting that military drone operators can make four times their salary working for private security contractors.

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.

Re:Not a moral conundrum

[k6mfw]

The look of absolute horror on his face when he asked "Why would you want to see that?" is something I have not forgotten.

I've noticed veterans that have been in combat rarely talk about it. When they do, a common theme is how chaotic it was. And those who talk a lot about battles and firefights were never in one.

Re:Not a moral conundrum

[TheCarp]

> So, what was the Camera? Kodak? Bolex? Did Gramps get the film developed locally, or did he save
> the reels for Stateside? If there is a good collection, have you contacted the Library Of Congress?
> They love that sort of stuff.

Honestly, I have considered once or twice that I should find a better home for them than the lock box in the basement where he kept them. The camera was long gone (or put away, it might still be in the house stashed somewhere, I imagine if it is we will find it after my grandmother passes and we finally have no choice but to go through everything). For some reason I want to say Kodak.

I still have the projector and well... I hate to admit this but the rheostat I gave him to slow down the motor with. It um, "worked" but, knowing what I do now, I probably wont use it like that again.

Re:Not a moral conundrum

[KGIII]

The archivist at an un-named museum took film that I had (oddly, also of Korea) and restored it and put it in on DVD. They also returned the original film.

I do not discuss it much but I was unfortunate enough to be in combat (Marine, twice - I had to pay for school somehow) and I did not take any pictures during it. I did take some afterwards. They were carefully taken and are not gore but I still do not show them to people normally. I can not imagine being a combat photographer - I have the utmost respect for them, almost as much as I have for a corpsman. In the Marines they are, at least, all riflemen. Anyhow, no, I did not kill anyone during combat or anything like that, at least I do not believe I did... The movies it is not - nor is it the range. I had no exact idea of where my rounds were going to end up. I sure as hell was not sticking my head out to sight in either.

Another interesting tidbit... You may not like this? No, I did not fire my weapon on your behalf. Nobody did. We do not care about you or your freedom. I fired my weapon because the Marine next to me was firing his - it was for him that I was willing to kill or die. It is laughable that folks (the patriotic ones with the yellow ribbons on their SUV) thank me (and others) for fighting on their behalf. You kind of chuckle and smile. It is not worth the effort to explain it to them and they would not understand even if you did.

Do not get me wrong, I am proud of my service. Had I been in a position to kill I would have done so. I would have regretted it. Maybe I did harm someone? I will never know but I am really good at telling myself that I did not. Either way, this is about as much detail as I get into. It should be obvious why - I would rather not think about much/all of it and would really like to not know some things. The biggest thing I can say is that it is not like the movies. The other is that it is a farce, I think, when people say you can not understand if you were not there. No, I can communicate it well enough. You can understand. However, chances are good that you do not want to.

To tie this up, sometimes I wish footage was available. We did not have cell phones then but many of us had cameras. There was no combat photographer present. Other times I am glad that there was no video made. I do not want to see that shit. Obviously I flip-flop on this. I suspect this is why none of the WWII or Korean vets watched the documentaries. I do not know of many normal Viet Nam vets that watch movies or documentaries either. (I do know two that dwell on the documentaries and watch movies where they complain about how they are inaccurate. Then they get more drunk and sometimes agitated. They are not normal.)

0311 and 3505 respectively.

Re:Not a moral conundrum

[KGIII]

I wish I had scrolled down a bit and read your post. I would have linked to it. There is nothing glorious or rewarding about killing people. Those who think combatants are typically desensitized to the enemy do not know better. Combatants often have empathy for one another. Harming someone who is there to do a job, just like you, is not something you look forward to. The cliché about not talking about it because they won't understand is bullshit. Humans are smart. They can understand. I have found it goes undiscussed because you do not want them to understand or you do not want to have a greater understanding of it yourself. I do recommend talking about it with an SO and, as importantly, a therapist. The therapist needn't be licensed. A chaplain is good - even if you are an atheist. A friend who was there, has been in similar, or just has a good ability to listen and to keep your information private is also a good option. Discussing it drunk is never a good idea.

Re:Not a moral conundrum

[TheCarp]

Honestly that is about what I expected. I have no illusions about why soldiers fight, its one of the reasons I have come to be so anti-military because I realize what a pack of lies it is kids are pumped full of and then asked to fight and kill for. Honestly, I see recruiters as child abusers.

The funny thing is, this pisses off a lot of people but, when I talk to some veterans and hear what they have to say, its just, wow. The people who actually were in the shit they know the truth. There is a reason fraternizing with the enemy is a crime....because the low level soldiers on both sides almost always have more in common with each other than the people who want them to kill each other.

In fact, I dare say there is no situation in all of history where war was necessary but for the actions of a few wealthy politicians who made it so with their dealings. Setting up their petty alliances, brokering with each other over the lives of others....then duping those people into fighting for them. That is the entire history of war back to before people started writing it down.

But I am 35, I remember being 18, I woke up politically a bit early, and even I had only been paying attention for what, 2-3 years at that time. The more I have come to understand people, I think I understand why we fight and why we war and, I honestly hate it and think its stupid.

Yet I still play Battlefield 4. Aspects of war are fun, the "laser tag" aspects, the competition, the excitement. I can see why a person like myself who has never seen the real thing and doesn't connect it with deep loss can be attracted to it....thats the danger. The allure of excitement.

Its like I was talking with a friend of mine, we can pretend ISIS is a bunch of evil people who hate us for our freedoms and Al Queda attacked us with no provokation but, look who "our" allies are. Our own "best buddies" the Saudis need international pressure heaped on them to not stone women to death as punishment for being gang raped. They are mad at us because people like the Bushes have been over there wheeling and dealing for oil and making enemies for a century now. Wealthy profiteers of ours went over there, made deals with truely terrible tyrants, and then ran for the flag the moment they saw resistance; and its any wonder people over there associate their actions with us....but of course now at this point, that shit is all so entrenched its official and it is us.

And what really gets me is, I hear the other stories too. I read the posts by the soldiers who are like "fuck you, we build schools" and I get that. That's the worst part, we do wrap up a lot of good in some dishonest lies, and package them together with the same naked profiteering that created the whole mess to begin with.

Maybe if the government didn't have such a reputation for being corrupt and siphoning so much money into the military industrial complex for so long, we could have an honest debate about building a school for someone else, but there is so much distrust it can't happen, and much of that distrust is....entirely warranted.

You know this is the nuance that gets lost in so much argument. I couldn't be so mad if there wasn't something I once looked up to and loved. I tell people every day I see the flag I think of torture, because they told me we are a nation of laws and I believed in that once. But over and over I just saw we were a nation of lies. Law is for the people who can't afford a lawyer, or aren't following orders. We are only against torture when other people do it. That isn't a nation of laws at all. I can't love that.

And don't get me wrong, its like you say, you shoot because the guy next to you is. I understand people do terrible things out of rage, or in the moment. Certainly if I was in a dark room with a man who had hurt my wife you can believe terrible things might happen; or put my life in danger, see how much of a pacifist I am then; but.... the cold methodical organization of a plan? It gives me shivers just thinking about it and, we let

This same kind of effect

[Sqreater]

This same kind of psychological effect came during the Vietnam war when soldiers would be fighting one day and a few days later, back home in the States. This created great stress on returning vets. The human mind is not made for such rapid context shifts. They don't often occur in nature. Television is doing it more, and more rapidly too. No wonder people are beginning to pull away.

Re:This same kind of effect

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> came during the Vietnam war when soldiers would be fighting one day and a few days later, back home

It also happened during the first World War, when men would be regularly rotated from the static lines of trenches out back to civilization using a super-efficient system of trains and ships. See http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/... etc.

Re:Amazon

[wodencafe]

The USAF should contract Amazon to just "deliver" the bombs and missiles through Amazon's new drone delivery program ;)

I forgot to log in >:/

Re:How does "drone time" look like on your logbook

[Whorhay]

It definitely counts as logged flight hours. When this whole thing started all of those pilots were officers, and trust me an officer pilot would never let a flight hour go uncounted because it directly affects their pay.

Flying drones actually does teach a pretty valuable skill in that it requires being able to fly purely via instrumentation. That said I don't know if it is still an issue but I knew a man who was a commercial airline pilot and it didn't really seem like that great of a gig. He was making somewhere around $35k a year flying out of a major metropolitan hub. Low wages usually indicates plenty of supply.

Re:Response Time?

[rmdingler]

My son plays a real-time first person shooter game with friends on two continents,

so I have a sneaking suspicion the military has also worked this one out.

Re:How does "drone time" look like on your logbook

[swb]

I think it's only the pilots of big planes at major carriers that make the giant salaries. I knew a guy flying for one of the turboprop "puddlejumper" affiliates of a major carrier who was making like $19k a year.

It seems kind of ironic to me that pilots who arguably have to do more hands-on aviation in smaller planes (and often flying into smaller airports) get paid less than pilots who fly highly automated planes into major airports, even if the larger planes carry more people.

Re:Response Time?

[ShanghaiBill]

Seems like 2 seconds would be a significant delay if you're firing guns or shooting missiles.

The drones don't have guns. The missles/bombs are GPS guided. You set the coordinates to those of the target. The latency doesn't matter much.

It is far less expensive to station a serviceman in Nevada than in Khandahar.

Lords of Secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

is an interesting book. http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Se... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... One of the things the author talks about is how drones have made a permanent state of war politically palatable in democracies. You get all the benefits of war without soldiers coming home in body bags. We see in this article some of those soldiers still pay a price. It is inevitable our scientists will take the man out of the loop and let machines do all our fighting for us.

It's not a recruiting problem

[MikeRT]

It's a leadership problem, as shown by this:

sapped by alternating day and night shifts with little chance for academic breaks or promotion

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.

Re:It's not a recruiting problem

[turbidostato]

"I can't believe any other part of the military would push people in combat"

Exactly that. Others have said this is a pre to press for more drone autonomy when this is a basic military people management. The probably drinked the cool-aid and thought flying drones was indeed a good non-stressful 9-to-5 work. Well, there's no other problem but that they were wrong, just adjust and go ahead.

1) Stress going in and out "soldier mood"? Make the duty periods longer, just like even other non-militar professionals like firefigthers, oil platform workers etc. Somewhere between a week and two~three monts service (i.e. submarine staff) after a study to find what's the sweet spot.
2) The above plus properly staffing will not only relieve stress but also will allow for training, promotions, etc. through the non-servicing periods.
3) What was the problem, again?

Re:It's not a recruiting problem

[Talderas]

They knew about the effects of stress on soldiers who flew on combat missions into a combat zone and returned to a safe place after each mission. There's plenty of evidence for this if you look psychological assessments of the US Eight Air Force back in WW2. It looks like the lesson they drew from those experiences was that it was the exposure to combat that was the culprit and not necessarily stresses caused by participating in combat.

What needs to be identified is whether the primary contributor to stress is being able to go home each day or simply being able to go to safety after the mission. If it's the latter, which I'd be more inclined to suspect, then restricting the guys to base isn't going to help the problem and in fact may make the problem worse since the comforts they were once provided are no longer available.

Re:It's not a recruiting problem

[Type44Q]

Ironic how that flying armored tractor is still as modern as they come, in terms of capability...

Re:It's not a recruiting problem

[KGIII]

You do know that the people in physical combat are there for *days* at a time sometimes, yes? As in days - no sleep. No drugs to keep you awake. No smoking (most of the time). No relief until it gets there. No promotions either, no general comes stomping down to pin a medal on your chest three days later either. (Such does happen, it is just not the norm.) At worst you get to spend a few sleepless, dangerous, days functioning as platoon leader because your SSgt is dead, you do not get to keep that rank. You do not even respawn. Never mind the noise or smells.

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.

That is what I am addressing. No academic breaks or promotional opportunities really. You might, if you are lucky and alive, come out an E4. You might. Any academic time is spent gearing up for your potential next conflict, upgrading your education for your MOS, weapons training, and additional education in H2H combat training.

Chair Force

[12WTF$]

There. I said it.

Does this mean Texas is safe?

[AntronArgaiv]

No pilots for the drones means Obama's JADE HELM 15 invasion of Texas is postponed?

Re:Does this mean Texas is safe?

[hey!]

He has to finish confiscating everyone's guns before the invasion can start.

Re:How does "drone time" look like on your logbook

[AntronArgaiv]

I think it's only the pilots of big planes at major carriers that make the giant salaries. I knew a guy flying for one of the turboprop "puddlejumper" affiliates of a major carrier who was making like $19k a year.

$19k? Recently? I'm pretty sure that's below the poverty line. And $35k isn't much above it. That's not very much for all the responsibility and training required.

Re:How does "drone time" look like on your logbook

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a pilot is one of those jobs where you have to really love what you do because the pay is too low to be in it just for the money. It's cheaper though that owning and flying your own plane all the time.

As an unemployed

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

This is perfectly adequate job description for person like me who have no goals, no prospects and no desire. Cleaning up offices or flying drones and killing people I don't care about, it would be all the same. MacDonald's wouldn't even consider me to flip their burgers just for my inherent dislike of people. The military has been requiting from the wrong pool of people, namely social, caring, good, responsible people and citizens.

Re:As an unemployed

[Anonymous Coward]

You raise a valid point. What if the US (or any other nation) took all of it's sociopaths, criminals, and other assorted "unpleasant people", armed them, and dropped them off with the guidance of "do what you want"? A "no rules" modern day horde like would raise havoc. Of course, getting them to stop raising havoc would be a problem, so maybe a fresh batch of sociopaths would be used.

Re:As an unemployed

[TheDarkener]

...all of it's sociopaths, criminals, and other assorted "unpleasant people"

That would be a LOT of people.

Which raises the question, why are do many people in the U.S. turn out to fit this description? And how can it be reversed so maybe they can concentrate on defending their home turf instead of policing the rest of the world?

The Drone Channel

[MrKaos]

I just realized, the drone streaming video is reality TV for the military and it's a hit!!

Imagine the commercial breaks!!

Take a lesson ...

[PPH]

... From Ender's Game. Don't tell them that its real.

USAF Drone Pilot Simulator 2015

[RevWaldo]

"It's just a game... isn't it?"

.

I don't blame them

[AndyKron]

I don't blame anyone for not wanting to be in the US military right now. Anyone joining now has questionable moral character IMO.

Re:I don't blame them

[sudon't]

Now? I don't see what's changed, aside from public opinion.
Of course, most join because they cannot afford education, or simply don't know what else to do at eighteen, and some have bought into the Terrorism Scare.

Hi, honey! Kill anyone today?

[RogueWarrior65]

Day ain't over yet.

Seriously, though. I wonder why they don't to the drone equivalent of radiologists Nighthawk service. Set up a control base in Australia and run ops there for half the day.

What about drone squadron commanders?

[RandCraw]

Are the drone squadron commanding officers burning out too? It seems likely that they share the same high stress and poor prospects for promotion as their pilots. You have to wonder then, how far up the chain of command does this problem extend? And therefore, will we have to auotmate not only the pilots, but the next two higher levels of command as well, perhaps up to base commander?

Of course, if we do, the command to take each kill shot will have to be fully automated, since no colonel-level commander will have enough time to call all the shots across multiple squadrons and dozens of drones.

How far up the chain will robots go?

Re: I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for lon

[Anonymous Coward]

You really don't know what you're talking about. Please don't talk about things you obviously have no first hand knowledge of. Real war is not Call of Duty.

Bomber WSO.

Re:How does "drone time" look like on your logbook

[Moof123]

The aviation industry is kind of a Ponzi scheme. New pilots become instructors as soon as they can for barely minimum wage just so they can rack up flight hours on someone else's dime. Similarly they will have to pay to get multi-engine trained, then will turn around and work for nothing just to rack up enough multi-engine hours at some backwater commuter service as soon as they are able. Soon you see the "opportunity" to fly for a regional and get to rack up hours on a real plane. Making it big at a real airline is the light at the end of the tunnel, but countless others drop out due to overwhelming debt and impoverishment.

It takes thousands and thousands of flight hours to even be considered as a pilot for any airline you have actually heard of, and those hours would cost hundreds or even thousand per hour if you bought them yourself. So you offer up your labor for almost free just to get the flight hours on each successive rung of the ladder.

A lot of this hit the fan about 10 years ago when a crash was partially blamed on the pilot working two jobs, being overtired and overstressed, and then crashing with a load of passengers. People were shocked at an airline pilot would have trouble feeding himself on just one job. I don't think much has changed since then.

Re:wait, what? work and family all in the same day

[bobbied]

You are right, they just need a longer commute to be able to de-stress from the day a bit more before getting home to the wife and kiddies..

You think THEY have it bad...

[bobbied]

What do you think the guys manning the nuclear missiles are going though when they sit in the underground bunker for 24 hours straight waiting for the half functioning phone to ring so they can end the world?

Being in the USAF is a lousy job for a lot of people. Flying drones has got to be one of the worst I can think of. Yea you are a pilot, but you literally fly a desk in a shipping container chained to the apron at some military base in the USA. All the "action" takes place at odd hours compared to your local time because that's when the sun is up where the drone is operating so shifts are ALWAYS at bad times. You'd never get enough sleep.... It's like endless shift work with no end in sight, with hours that start before 3am and don't end until about 5 pm locally.

Maybe the solution is to move these guys and gals to "forward" operating areas which are at least in the same general time zone? At least moving them to a location where the action takes place between noon and midnight would be helpful... People are more comfortable with late mornings and late evening shifts. It's this starting before the sun comes up that really sucks..

Re:You think THEY have it bad...

[dave420]

So it's not about the drone pilots seeing the possibly-innocent people they're killing (and the subsequent stains on the landscape after they're done), but simply because they have to get up early?

Re:You think THEY have it bad...

[bobbied]

You think they actually SEE anything more than the A10 pilot does? I'm not discounting the effect of witnessing combat, even from afar, but if the USAF is having issues specifically with drone pilots over other pilots flying close air support missions there has to be some additional issue. So, It's about that yes, but there is more...

Re:You think THEY have it bad...

[dave420]

Yes - A10s will fire and go, with other units confirming the destruction of the target. Drone pilots do this themselves, and so witness what they've done from beginning to end.

Re:You think THEY have it bad...

[bobbied]

Huh? You've got to be kidding me.. The A-10 has a huge GUN on it which is aimed by sight and where they do drop gravity bombs, the action is pretty darn up close and personal. The Drone pilot, if the drone is armed (which is NOT true in most cases) is going to shoot a missile from a long distance and view the result though a pretty low definition video feed. An A-10 pilot is at point blank range in comparison.

They just need to hire more sociopaths

[wcrowe]

This should be no problem. They just need to hire more sociopaths and psychopaths. Corporate America is filled with such people, most of whom are middle managers. Other areas to mine are collection agencies, repo agencies, and Audi drivers. A lot of those people would be perfectly content to spend all day killing humans remotely, then going home to the wife and kids. The military just needs to lower their physical standards a bit.

Re:How does "drone time" look like on your logbook

[brambus]

an officer pilot would never let a flight hour go uncounted because it directly affects their pay

I mean in the civilian sector. You can't log simulator hours (except maybe the absolute top-tier type 7 ones) into your logbook as full value flight hours, so how would this crap count?

Flying drones actually does teach a pretty valuable skill in that it requires being able to fly purely via instrumentation.

Which is in no way different to your standard IR, which all airline pilots are required to have anyway. Moreover, first thing they teach you in IR training is "don't trust your sense of motion". If anything, these static control stations are even worse, because they don't teach you to ignore conflicting motion sensations.

I knew a man who was a commercial airline pilot and it didn't really seem like that great of a gig

That is quite true. Pilots are paid atrociously, yet the training demands and responsibilities are as high as they've ever been.

Outsourcing an option?

[luttapi]

Is the option of outsourcing this task to teams in India being considered?

Likely more stressed out

[TheDarkener]

Are the people in the areas that drones are constantly flying over, monitoring, and bombing.

I'm sure the innocents that have lost a mother, a child or a friend can understand the drone pilots' stress too, though.

Hey I know, how about we go back a few steps and realize that killing, no matter how you do it, is stressful? Why should it matter how you do it? The psychological impact that knowing you have killed someone, especially an innocent(s), probably doesn't differ *that* much. You still have to go to sleep with that thought in your head every night.

Good

[responsibleusername]

I don't want anyone to have to endure these kind of stresses, but as the emphasis on the long term affects of war on soldiers, their families, and society as whole increases, hopefully these kinds of strain will come into play in the cost/benefit analysis of conflicts. I'm sure being miss-characterized and demonized doesn't help the retention rate any. I think I'm more anti than pro drone warfare, but I don't think its fair to have these individuals dehumanized the way they are (though, its more fair than how we've dehumanized the people they kill doing their duty admittedly).

Re:How does "drone time" look like on your logbook

[StikyPad]

The aviation industry is kind of a Ponzi scheme.

Yeah, I took an introductory flight lesson last week, and sort of figured that out when they started explaining how I could easily be an instructor and make my money back! It reminded me of when I got PADI certified.

Personally, I just wanted to do it as a hobby, and be able to buy or rent a small plane and make short trips, because I go out of town almost every weekend, but it turned out that small planes are too slow, and the ranges are too small. And of course I would still have to drive to the nearest airfield, which is an hour away. I might still get my private pilot's license just because it's fun, and for bragging rights, but now that I realize that I won't get any utility out of it whatsoever, I'm less motivated.

movie "Good Kill" about this with Ethan Hawke

[peter303]

Its been doing the Indie cirucit and I hope has general release this year.

Easy

[Charliemopps]

The oldest and easiest employment problem there ever was. If your people are leaving, and you can't others to replace them, the answer is simple: You're not paying them enough.

They can be exhausted

[jean-guy69]

As they did a lot of work

Drone war: every attack in Pakistan visualised

41 men targeted but 1,147 people killed

Warriors they are not.. They are more like executioners..with dirtier hands..

And people giving them orders, from the POV of the population affected by drone strikes.. How are they different from terrorists ?

Re:Found your problem

[KGIII]

I returned to the top to point out that this is a novella. I do not think it is an uninteresting novella. If one is curious then it may well be worth reading. I can think of no TL;DR version except maybe, "Pipe Dream."

Do they make a combat flight simulator that is as accurate as the regular flight simulators? If so then someone should make a drone and have them fly missions in that game. I have no idea if they make combat flight simulators in the same level of quality that they make the regular ones. I do know, from watching - I have not played one in many years, that they make some very fantastically real simulations that require a whole bunch of complexity to play. From what I have witnessed (I am not certain) you can change the complexity and have many of the tasks go unautomated (Is that even a word? Spell check seems to indicate that it is not.) in the simulation. It would actually be kind of neat to learn one. A combat aircraft would be even more entertaining, to me. I would love to try refueling with the basket system or with the nozzle.

It would be awesome to first-person the whole HOTAS of an F-18 carrier launch! It would be neat to be on a scheduled mission and then get a broken arrow and have to manage fuel (and drop tanks) while avoiding AAA and an equivalent enemy plane. I think I would learn a lot. It would be even more impressive if these tied into history as well as being open enough to allow the fantastic. Even more entertaining might be an open engine that enables users to create maps, missions, enemies, and aircraft - like TSR taken to the next level. I think it may even work as a full fledged online game - even better if people can opt to play as things other than pilots. I imagine the size and compute power make this a rather advanced proposition though.

Hmm... Some sort of chair - with touch screens in the appropriate places so the "pilot" could actually change switches, have a peripheral view, and (of course) a variety of hydraulics to move the chair. Pedals and stick, as well as a steering wheel, should be included. A helmet that functions much like a real pilot's helmet would be nice. I see no need for the G-suit. Of course this should also allow, be open enough for, peaceful missions such as a regular flight simulator would offer.

This would be expensive, obviously, but I suspect it would be less expensive than we might think. It is not a full blown flight sim but is close enough. The price of these types of components has dropped a great deal. Online processing of some of the data may help but compute power is definitely an issue but I think we have computers, in homes, that could likely handle this well enough. Being open, but not free as in cost, would be ideal - perhaps the money can be made with the hardware and online access though provisioning the capacity to run one's own server should be there. I suppose that could be charged for as well as charging for hosted "worlds." Each hosted world could be professionally designed as well as allowing teams or persons to roll their own. It could be rolled into a giant sim that was able to allow one to game many aspects of a war environment. There could even be simultaneous ground actions taking place that impact the overall game results. Those rolls can be entirely or partially fulfilled by a player or a computer as could various aircraft as needed to complete the scenario.

I would buy into a game like that. I would even buy a copy (and likely the equipment) for a game like that. If someone has the chops and wants to seriously explore this then I would certainly be approachable for *some* financial backing (I suspect it would cost more to develop than I will ever be able to afford - even if I sell all my worldly goods and my ex-wife.) and I know a few others who may invest in something like that. This is not where I was originally intending this post to go but it seems that my head has decided that is where it should go. Seriously, open source the game and the engine and allow people to build on it. It should be un

Re:How does "drone time" look like on your logbook

[Stickasylum]

Well, it's not a simulator for one. You're flying the drone just as much as you would fly a plane. Hell, it's probably harder if you're not getting tactile feedback. Who cares where your ass is sitting?

Re:How does "drone time" look like on your logbook

[evilviper]

A lot of this hit the fan about 10 years ago when a crash was partially blamed on the pilot working two jobs, being overtired and overstressed, and then crashing with a load of passengers. People were shocked at an airline pilot would have trouble feeding himself on just one job. I don't think much has changed since then.

There have been changes. Standards for pilots of the tiny airlines have been raised a bit, extra restrictions were put on their schedules, and loopholes that allowed reducing pilot pay have been closed.

But most importantly, the big airlines are now held responsible for those tiny regional/commuter airlines they're contracting with. The big guys no longer get to take your money and book you on a tiny turboprop (with their logo on the side) while washing their hands of the poor safety record of those "regional" airlines. Their own big pockets will be the target of any future lawsuits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

However, the practice has continued:

"A government study recently found 61% of all advertised flights for American, Delta, United and US Airways (now merging with American) were operated by regionals in 2011, up from 40% in 2000." http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

If you're smart, you avoid regional airlines. The accident rates are dramatically higher, and you're saving little, if any, money booking flights on them.

Re:How does "drone time" look like on your logbook

[stoatwblr]

"Flying drones actually does teach a pretty valuable skill in that it requires being able to fly purely via instrumentation."

Civil transport outfits don't want military pilots. The training they receive and the attitudes they subsequently bring with them are diametrically opposed to the need for safe, _conservative_ pilots who don't put passengers at risk by attempting landings when everyone else has given up and turned back, etc.

Civil transport has a lot more in common with bus driving than military flying (I'd say that bus driving is probably less boring and more exciting). Military pilots are not a good fit in the modern cockpit and haven't been for a while - airlines noticed the problem a long time ago and for the past 30 years have generally preferred to recruit people who've come through training schools.

Re:How does "drone time" look like on your logbook

[stoatwblr]

Puddlejumper pilots graduate to the larger birds as they go on, or so the theory goes.

The reality is that a lot of pilots barely make enough to pay off their training debts and far more end up finding jobs which don't keep them away from home for days on end than ever end up flying the big birds.

I doubt that anyone would take drone time any more seriously than simulator hours.

Re: I wouldn't expect this to be a problem for lo

[rickb928]

True. I had the misfortune of working with fighter pilots.