
Confessions of a Drone Warrior - JanLaussmann
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201311/drone-uav-pilot-assassination
======
hooande
Drones are just like any other tools of war. The fact that the combatant is
sitting very far away from the battle doesn't make the killing any less real,
the stakes any lower or the human cost to the operator any cheaper. War is
hell because of the horrible decisions that have to be made. Distance doesn't
make it any easier.

Drones don't kill innocent non-combatants, people do. There are many cases of
civilians being killed by artillery shells or friendly fire by naval guns. I'm
sure there was even an errant trebuchet or two. Long distance warfare is ok as
long as there are people like Byrant on the other end of the weapon, people
who worry and struggle with the moral consequences of what they have done. I
feel for him and what he's had to go through, but at the same time I'm glad
that drone warfare hasn't become the video game that people thought it would
be.

Some of the commenters on this thread sound like the people who would throw
things at veterans returning from vietnam. Have we learned nothing? The blame
for the cost of war doesn't go to to the weapons or the people who pull the
triggers. We're all responsible for the things done in our names, and
responsible for changing them if we don't like the outcome.

~~~
jackpirate
_The blame for the cost of war doesn 't go to to ... the people who pull the
triggers._

Yes, it most certainly does. I used to be a submarine officer in the Navy, but
I was discharged 2 years ago as a conscientious objector [1]. I left because I
felt I had a moral responsibility to do so.

If your conscience says "don't kill someone," then you shouldn't kill them.
You can't absolve yourself of responsibility just because the president
ordered the killing.

[1]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/nyregion/23objector.html?p...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/nyregion/23objector.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&)

~~~
sillysaurus2
Would you help me understand something?

The doctrine of mutually assured destruction is what keeps countries from
launching nukes at each other. In order to have that doctrine in place, we
need people in the military who are willing to launch nukes, and that military
needs to be firmly under the control of the civilian government.

In that context, was your objection to fire any nuke a personal decision, i.e.
you personally wouldn't be comfortable with ending so many lives (who would?)
or was it a wider objection, i.e. you feel it's immoral for any military
personnel to be willing to launch nukes? If it's the former, then I totally
understand. But if it's the latter, would you help me understand how to
reconcile that belief with the necessity of mutually assured destruction? They
seem to be at odds.

~~~
jackpirate
I personally believe that Jesus calls us to "love our enemies" and that this
means not killing them for any reason whatsoever. My personal objection to war
goes far beyond the whole nuke thing to even self defense.

~~~
xmonkee
I fully agree with Jesus on this one, but sometimes I wonder what I would do
in a situation where this belief was really challenged. I hope I don't have to
find out.

~~~
jackpirate
My view is that how we act in these "crisis scenarios" isn't super important.
It's how we act in the everyday situations that matters.

So I ask myself, "What am I doing _right now_ to reduce war?" or "What am I
doing _right now_ to help the homeless living in my city?" This is how I
measure whether or not I'm following Jesus.

------
riggins
Considering Bryant is one of the only operators speaking out, his conscience
seems to bother him more than the average.

Here's a comparison (an IAMA thread from reddit).

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ghkm7/iama_drone_sens...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ghkm7/iama_drone_sensor_operator_i_have_flown_hundreds/)

 _Q: Have you ever had to strike a target that you were not comfortable with?

sensor_operator: No, I trust our JTACs 1000000% they really know their stuff._

While this was the top voted comment, I found it very dark. To me, what the
operator was implicitly saying was that he'd target whoever his superiors told
him too.

I don't get outraged. More than being outraged I think this shows a
fundamental truth about humans which is that they'll kill without losing too
much sleep. I'd put myself in the 'let him who is without sin cast the first
stone' camp.

~~~
jread
Keep in mind that the JTAC is usually an enlisted soldier embedded with a
ground unit. He is highly trained on ROE and positive ID, and generally has a
good first hand perspective on what is happening on the ground. He is
responsible for protecting the lives of the unit he is embedded with, and air
assets are tasked to support him. From my experience, these are not
warmongers, just guys doing their jobs, trying to protect lives.

~~~
riggins
I understand that. And this isn't about me trashing the operator.

But I also have a logical mind and I can't avoid the implication that if his
JTAC was a bad apple, he'd do what the JTAC said.

~~~
olympus
I don't want to get into an argument and you are certainly entitled to your
own opinion, but the military is a pretty old profession and has dealt with
this problem before.

JTACs are basically radio/telephone operators, and often aren't physically
with the unit calling in the fires because there are more platoons than there
are JTACs, so the JTAC sits at the company (or sometimes up to the brigade) HQ
and handles a whole bunch of platoons at once. He takes what the ground
commander says (via radio in the field), and passes that to a control center
via telephone, IRC (seriously), satcom, etc. The control center then routes a
plane overhead and facilitates direct contact between the pilot and JTAC (not
the ground commander). The real specialty of the JTAC is speaking in both Air
Force-isms and Army-isms and communicating clearly with both parties. Imagine
a weird game of telephone where adding another person in the chain actually
makes the message come out more clearly at the end.

So to wrap up a long story, there's a whole lot of communication being passed
around and it would be awfully difficult for a JTAC to just decide "I'm going
to get that family over there killed because I feel like it"

------
mtgx
"Daddy, when I grow up I want to be a drone _warrior_ , too!"

I assume this name came from the government/military itself, and GQ just used
it without putting much thought into it, or maybe they just wanted to be
sensationalist, but I'm becoming increasingly less patient and angry at these
sort of Orwellian names.

Why a warrior? Why not its true meaning like "drone assassin" or even "drone
terrorist". But if you really don't want to cause certain emotions (even they
would be the accurate reaction to it), then you can at least call it "drone
operator", I suppose, but I don't think that would do it justice. A drone
operator could be someone delivering pizza by drones in the future. I'd rather
they got a much more accurate, and less vague, name.

But _warrior_? What are they battling to deserve the honor of a _warrior_? The
buttons on their gamepad? What's next? Calling them "drone heroes"? Don't
laugh, they actually tried to give these drone assassins _medals_ , until
others in the military spoke out against it:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/15/us-usa-pentagon-
me...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/15/us-usa-pentagon-medal-
idUSBRE93E12V20130415)

I think this is a very important issue that shouldn't be downplayed, because
these are the sort of tools (just like the word "patriot") used to brainwash
people with little education and coming from poor families, to get them to
fight wars for them, and do even very immoral things, while making them _feel
good about themselves_ for doing it:

"Hey son, killing those men, their wives and children at the push of a button,
made you a _warrior_ , and you served your nation well, today!".

It disgusts me.

~~~
venomsnake
What is the difference between them and the pilots of the bombers over Serbia?
Or the battleships missile operators? Or the submarine crews?

------
coldcode
Killing distant people in a foreign country is most people's definition of a
terrorist attack. A declared war is one thing but this type of terror weapon
is likely to backfire some day, if it hasn't already.

~~~
bane
Congratulations, you've just described all warfare outside of civil conflicts
as terrorist attacks. All non-civil wars involved killing distant people in a
foreign country.

~~~
jafaku
You skipped the part where he said "declared war". We have international laws
and convention nowadays. But certain country is ignoring them just because it
can.

~~~
anologwintermut
What would fighting in a declared war against a non-nation state change with
drones? Sure, it might change the situation with gitmo and black sites, but
collateral damage when striking "military targets" isn't illegal.

------
enko
I couldn't finish this article. It just makes me too angry.

Warrior? How dare anyone involved in this dignify themselves with such an
honour-laden term. They're just murderers, and the fact they hide behind so
many layers of technology just makes it all the more cowardly and despicable.

~~~
grey-area
Before you get too angry, consider that this experience is common of soldiers
in war, not many of whom would after combat use terms like warrior. I doubt he
chose the headline himself or was even asked about it, and it is contradicted
by the tone of the article. There are far more important questions here than
which labels are used to describe the people who carry out the killings.

This one guy (part of the largest group ever inducted as drone pilots) killed
1,626 people, and that figure won't include the civilians near the targets,
who were often at home or travelling with their families. The real figure is
probably 2-3 times that.

 _“We’re gonna shoot and collapse the building. They’ve gotten intel that the
guy is inside.”...Bryant stared at the screen, frozen. “There’s this giant
flash, and all of a sudden there’s no person there.” He looked over at the
pilot and asked, “Did that look like a child to you?” They typed a chat
message to their screener, an intelligence observer who was watching the shot
from “somewhere in the world”—maybe Bagram, maybe the Pentagon, Bryant had no
idea—asking if a child had just run directly into the path of their shot. “And
he says, ‘Per the review, it’s a dog.’ ”Bryant and the pilot replayed the
shot, recorded on eight-millimeter tape. They watched it over and over, the
figure darting around the corner. Bryant was certain it wasn’t a dog._

What I find most troubling about this is that:

This program has been expanded to Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan already, and the
same legal justification given for killing in Pakistan with no trial or even
proper investigation could be given for a drone killing in Idaho. There is no
limit to this war in time or space.

Even if you are on a battlefield, killing of non-uniformed and unarmed
combatants is illegal under the Geneva conventions - you're supposed to avoid
civilian casualties - clearly targeting houses and markets etc doesn't do
that.

People who have not been positively identified as combattants and are away
from any battlefield are killed without trial, without counsel, without
charges and without official remorse if there was a mistake or they were
innocent.

The distance created by the drone and the lack of risk to US personnel gives a
very real risk that substantial abuse of this method of killing will occur.
What if the US withdraws from Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iraq, but continues to kill
from a distance? What if they expand the war to other countries and don't tell
anyone (JSOC is in 100 countries)? All this has been done without even
declaring war.

This drone pilot deserves to be recognised for at least having the courage to
speak up about what he was asked to do, about the mistakes made.

The book Dirty Wars is definitely worth reading if you are interested in
finding out more about US drone programs.

[http://dirtywars.org/](http://dirtywars.org/)

~~~
ams6110
_Before you get too angry, consider that this experience is common of soldiers
in war, not many of whom would after combat use terms like warrior._

Indeed, most of the people I hear glorifying war and the military in general
have never seen combat. Most of the people I know who have seen combat, don't
like to talk about it at all.

~~~
stockliasteroid
And pretty much all of the people who vehemently condemn anyone who has ever
been in combat (and in a sense being a drone operator qualifies, it carries
many of the same moral issues) equally have no experience with combat either.
Why does't that make their viewpoint equally invalid? They have no more
experience with it than the armchair GI Joe's... As you say, most who have
experienced combat directly (my wife's uncle is an ex-Delta Force operator, no
joke) don't talk about it.

------
pointernil
The historical trajectory of the "issue" of remote killing maybe starting with
the ancient catapults, maybe earlier with spears or event the first rock ever
thrown at an enemy; this development of increasingly "safer" ways to kill from
far away will follow the trajectory unless humanity decides this got out of
hand, is not tolerable, not in line with some higher moral understanding of
military conflict and decides to stop the progression of the trajectory.
Similar to the way ever mightier bombs and nuclear weapons were put under
quite heavy "restriction" and "control" in the end.

Also there is some bias in the representation of the way the "drone systems"
are perfectly working (they are not faultless obliviously) and they are
certainly NOT the uber-over-mega weapons the stories make them to appear. This
has implications:

1.) collateral damage is quite common

2.) the insurgents learn to "fight" them over time (this will not be reported
on)

Pure technocratic minds may wonder about the "latencies" and the
infrastructure involved...BUT just watch the skies at the next protest and
remember the first time "just" tear gas got very precisely administered to a
crowd.

The sad part as always: convincing the "political" circle in the US is not
enough, the huge weapons industry needs to be provided with some replacement
idea/product/contracts should the killing drones become banished or more
controlled.

ps: i'd love to see the good old RATM create a song out the first few
paragraphs of this gq text; proposed working title:

“missile off the rail”

/edit: typos

------
TomGullen
Watching countless documentaries about this war zone I can't help but recall
the numerous occasions that IED's are branded as cowardly weapons. Surely on
the same scale this sort of thing is the most cowardly weapon of all.

~~~
venomsnake
Better live coward with dead enemies than a brave corpse.

The problems is not the cowardly weapons but the ... I don't know how to
explain it precisely - the ease and recklessness with which the US army is
deployed outside of the US territory.

------
kayoone
This is the future of warfare, and i am afraid it will only get worse, much
worse.

In a decade or two tanks and soldiers might be remote controlled too, and
between nations fighting their playstation-wars there will still be innocent
civilians.

~~~
StavrosK
They just won't put their bases near civilians, because they won't need people
to operate them. Then we can pretty much just designate some spots to put each
other's base, defend those as well as we can, and war will be "whoever can
destroy the other guy's base first, wins".

Meanwhile, civilians are over there, just waiting for the game of Playstation
to end.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Nonsense. War is about coercion. I want you to do this. You don't want to do
it. So I hurt you until you change your mind.

If you care enough about an issue, you aren't going to let it be decided by a
formalized game ... well, if you lose the formalized game. You are going to
keep fighting at least until the cost outweighs the benefit.

------
ArikBe
> He was told that they were carrying rifles on their shoulders, but for all
> he knew, they were shepherd’s staffs. Still, the directive from somewhere
> above, a mysterious chain of command that led straight to his headset, was
> clear: confirmed weapons.

Can someone elaborate on how these decisions are made?

~~~
jws
Remote targeting has been a part of modern warfare for a century now. Forward
observers identify targets, a command procedure is followed, and artillery men
fire shells at targets they can not see over distances of hundreds of meters
to tens of kilometers.

See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indirect_fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indirect_fire)
for a typical decision making process.

The significant change here isn't that the distance is three orders of
magnitude greater, or the required number of projectiles two orders of
magnitude fewer. The sensor operator sees what he is doing and the effect. He
is not in danger, he is not in a kill or be killed situation, but is called on
to kill and observe the results. It is different psychological territory from
where most combat soldiers operate.

~~~
PeterisP
Also, there is a huge psychological difference between a plane pilot dropping
a bomb on an 'anonymous' target and observing a hit/explosion, versus the
original article drone pilot observing the targets in a non-combat-action
situation, dropping the bomb, and then monitoring the aftermath - not only the
actual explosion, but the scared/suffering behavior of nearby people.

The result of the explosion is the same, but the impact on the soldier is
vastly different. In general, a standard healthy homo sapiens isn't really
psychologically suited for killing others and handling it well, and thus most
of the article is not about the killing but about living with your conscience
afterwards.

------
rayiner
This is the future of warfare and it's a good thing. Way better than back when
you would firebomb an industrial city or lob cruise missiles at poorly defined
targets. No boots on the ground means none of _our_ people at risk and drones
are much more precise than bombs.

The reactions in this thread demonstrate the classic uneasiness with killing a
few people while being okay with killing lots of people. The people
complaining about drones likely had nothing to say about Clinton lobbing
cruise missiles into downtown Belgrade.

~~~
saljam
It's not a good thing. Only a handful of nations are capable of producing
weaponized drones, and that's not likely to change anytime soon. This is very
susceptible to abuse. The numbers here show my point exactly:
[http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drone...](http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/monthly-
updates/)

~~~
timsally
> It's not a good thing. Only a handful of nations are capable of producing
> weaponized drones

A nation spends money on defense for _precisely_ this reason, to produce an
asymmetry in that's nation's capabilities compared to all others. It's an
explicit design goal! Your argument can be applied to all new technology being
developed for defense in all countries-- consequently, I don't think you'll
find much support for this line of argument.

------
networked
From the article:

>And yet the very idea of drones unsettles. They’re too easy a placeholder or
avatar for all of our technological anxieties—the creeping sense that screens
and cameras have taken some piece of our souls, that we’ve slipped into a
dystopia of disconnection. Maybe it’s too soon to know what drones mean, what
unconsidered moral and ethical burdens they carry. Even their shape is
sinister: the blunt and featureless nose cone, like some eyeless creature that
has evolved in darkness.

I'm not sure how to feel about drone warfare myself but I think the media
spinning narratives like the above (note that this comes from the author and
not the subject of the article) only serves to legitimize disliking drone
warfare on emotional grounds. That is an undesirable thing, if only because it
discourages people from even considering the downsides to the alternatives.

This satirical piece titled _What if drone warfare had come first?_ might
serve as a counterpoint:
[https://squid314.livejournal.com/338607.html](https://squid314.livejournal.com/338607.html)
(scroll down to the italicized description the scene). It may seem way over
the top, especially in contrast with the OP article, but I think it gets the
point across pretty well.

------
tudorconstantin
i wonder how come they're not psychologycally trained(brainwashed) to be
immune to this. after 1-3 months of constantly telling them how cruel the
terrorists are, showing them images of the attrocities that their future
targets perform, i believe the operators will begin to feel like heroes for
taking them out. I guess US is not that good at propaganda afterall

------
alcuadrado
Which is the latency of Nevada-Afghanistan? I'd always thought that this
drones were operated from a relative short distance.

~~~
hughlomas
I don't think that they are latency sensitive operations. I can't think of
roles they fulfill that even a 1 second latency would affect.

~~~
alcuadrado
Missiles? What if in that 1-second latency a car full of innocent people
appear and they get killed?

~~~
noir_lord
Then that would be "collateral damage" which is such a lovely euphemism for
"we blew a bunch of innocent civilians to chowder but hey we are the good
guys".

------
yk
When I hear drone warfare, I always wonder what would happen if someone puts
on his uniform and guns down a drone operator in a crowded shopping mall.
Obviously he distinguished himself as a combatant and engaged in a act of war.

------
D9u

        military drones, a projection of American power that won’t risk American lives.
    

Yet burning some Muslim books places Americans at risk?

I'd say that the collateral damage caused by "Signature Strikes" is as an
effective terrorist recruiting agent as is burning some old religious books.

~~~
myko
> I'd say that the collateral damage caused by "Signature Strikes" is as an
> effective terrorist recruiting agent as is burning some old religious books.

This is your opinion, but I think you are wrong. The most tense times as a
coalition soldier in the Middle East for me were shortly after some idiot
burned Korans (in Florida?). This pissed every civilian off.

When a lone soldier went off his rocker and heinously killed a bunch of
civilians the only civilians that were upset were those related to the dead
and some who lived in the same area.

This is anecdotal but I really got the impression that burning 'old religious
books' was a much bigger deal to far more people (at least in Afghanistan)
than even randomly, purposefully, killing of someone of another tribe.

------
mcpherson
Horrible

------
wfunction
_" Most Americans—61 percent in the latest Pew survey—support the idea of
military drones, a projection of American power that won’t risk American
lives."_

I sincerely hope this survey is wrong, though something tells me it isn't...

------
Nux
That's not a warrior, that's a serial murderer hiding behind a screen.

It's disgusting. Then again, it's for "defence" so it's OK.

If a nuclear holocaust is coming, we more than deserve it, some more than
others.

------
proksoup
The worst human beings on the planet are the ones:

1) Building the guns/drones 2) Pulling the trigger of the guns/drones 3)
Telling others to pull the trigger.

No one in that chain is less responsible than the other.

~~~
ansgri
You forgot those who develop technology to enable building better guns and
drones.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
and the people who grew the coffee beans that help keep focused the people who
developed the technology to enable...

------
Sagat
Sorry, if you are not putting your life on the line, you do not deserve to
call yourself a "warrior" or any other term which implies duty and honor.

~~~
stockliasteroid
Seems he put his mental health on the line... As someone else here so nicely
pointed out, being a drone op isn't an "it's him or me" situation, you're
clearly aware that it's just the other guy that's at risk. So if you do have a
conscience, this could be a lot harder to deal with than popping a guy who's
shooting at you with an AK, at least in a sense in that case you were
defending yourself. This guy seems painfully aware of the fact that he bore no
risk and he feels guilty for that. It's not shell-shock, but it's the moral
equivalent.

------
JabavuAdams
What happens the first time an autonomous weapon refuses to fire because the
target is not positively identified, or because non-combatants would be
harmed?

