The Woes of an American Drone Operator

[CuteOldGuy]

Excellent article on our drone operators.

From the article:

For more than five years, Brandon Bryant worked in an oblong, windowless container about the size of a trailer, where the air-conditioning was kept at 17 degrees Celsius (63 degrees Fahrenheit) and, for security reasons, the door couldn't be opened. Bryant and his coworkers sat in front of 14 computer monitors and four keyboards. When Bryant pressed a button in New Mexico, someone died on the other side of the world.

The container is filled with the humming of computers. It's the brain of a drone, known as a cockpit in Air Force parlance. But the pilots in the container aren't flying through the air. They're just sitting at the controls.
Bryant was one of them, and he remembers one incident very clearly when a Predator drone was circling in a figure-eight pattern in the sky above Afghanistan, more than 10,000 kilometers (6,250 miles) away. There was a flat-roofed house made of mud, with a shed used to hold goats in the crosshairs, as Bryant recalls. When he received the order to fire, he pressed a button with his left hand and marked the roof with a laser. The pilot sitting next to him pressed the trigger on a joystick, causing the drone to launch a Hellfire missile. There were 16 seconds left until impact.

"These moments are like in slow motion," he says today. Images taken with an infrared camera attached to the drone appeared on his monitor, transmitted by satellite, with a two-to-five-second time delay.

With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds. Bryant felt as if he had to count each individual pixel on the monitor. Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says.

Second zero was the moment in which Bryant's digital world collided with the real one in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif.

Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.

"Did we just kill a kid?" he asked the man sitting next to him.

"Yeah, I guess that was a kid," the pilot replied.

Read the rest of the heart wrenching story here:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-872726.html

[gnadfly]

Yep, Obama has killed more kids than that Connecticut nutcase. But Obama is Commander-In-Chief.

[Seedy]

Believe me i am not defending our cocksucker in chief, but my father flew B17's in WWII, he never talked very much about it, he flew missions over Dressden, Berlin, and others, he told me one time he knew they killed tens of thousands of innocent people, and it always bothered him, but they had to do it.

[CuteOldGuy]

And Seedman, those wars were declared by Congress. Obama is doing his "kill list" all on his own. And it's just too bad if kids or other innocents get in the way.

There is a big difference between a declared war, and a President's personal kill list.

[Seedy]

I will be honest COG, anyway we can get rid of the muslim extremists is pretty much ok with me. It would be nice with no collateral damage though. But at the same time we don't need to broadcast what we are doing, i'd keep it quiet.

[CuteOldGuy]

Well, thanks for your honesty. I just think before we go around killing innocents, and even American citizens in at least one case, there should be a declaration of war. For the President to do this on his own is reprehensible, IMHO.

[gnadfly]

Originally Posted by seedman55

Believe me i am not defending our cocksucker in chief, but my father flew B17's in WWII, he never talked very much about it, he flew missions over Dressden, Berlin, and others, he told me one time he knew they killed tens of thousands of innocent people, and it always bothered him, but they had to do it.

Those people weren't innocent. They freely elected a madman and sat in their living rooms while the scent of dead human beings wafted thru. Elections have consequences.

Hopefully your father found peace.