

A day in the life of an Air Force drone pilot - ilamont
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-drone-crews21-2010feb21,0,2614633.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29

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megaduck
I have incredibly mixed feelings about these technologies. On the one hand, it
is infinitely safer for our pilots to be in an air-conditioned control room
somewhere outside of Vegas. For saving the lives of american soldiers, this is
an amazing step forward. This is good.

On the other hand, it abstracts warfare to an uncomfortable degree. While the
drone pilots may grasp the full ramifications of their actions, it's a
certainty that the general public does not. We see no body bags and hear no
casualty reports. There are no lists of the fallen. Sending out a platoon of
18 year old kids is difficult. Sending out a squadron of MQ-9 reapers is easy.

War is horrific beyond imagining. The emotional toll has always been shared by
both sides to some degree, and I would like to believe that such costs act as
a deterrent. I worry about the decision-making of a society that has their
portion of that horror comfortably abstracted away.

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plinkplonk
"I have incredibly mixed feelings about these technologies. On the one hand,
it is infinitely safer for our pilots to be in an air-conditioned control room
somewhere outside of Vegas. For saving the lives of american soldiers, this is
an amazing step forward. This is good.

On the other hand, it abstracts warfare to an uncomfortable degree."

I wouldn't worry too much. Within five years, the "bad guys" will have drones
(or equally lethal weaponry) too. Then _their_ combatants would be safely
ensconced somewhere too while pursuing the destruction of the "good guys".
Technology is a great leveller, over time.

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Khroma
So drones fighting drones then?

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jonnycowboy
Probably more like enemy hackers trying to hack into coalition drones!

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kierank
PBS's Digital Nation -
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/> also had a segment
where they showed how drone pilots operate.

It's surreal how they "drive to work/war" then come home that night. Having
said that from the documentary you also get the impression that they do treat
it like they are at war.

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protomyth
Well, if they screw up, no matter where they are, friendly soldiers can be
killed. So, they treat it like they are at war.

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barrkel
It's only a matter of time before there will be drone soldiers, too. War will
be very expensive (or very profitable, depending on your perspective) with
minimal risk to friendly people, reducing the main reason democracies don't
like wars.

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megaduck
War will be casualty-free for societies with drone soldiers until both sides
have this technology.

Building an AUV is ridiculously cheap, and can be done with off-the-shelf
components. Moreover, other countries have learned from the success of our
drone programs, and are rapidly developing their own. It is almost a certainty
that we will have drones deployed against us in our next major conflict.

People tend to forget that there was a brief period where America was the sole
nuclear power, and we could destroy whole countries with negligible risk to
'friendlies'. We had very similar discussions then. However, that monopoly of
power didn't last, and the costs of deploying those weapons suddenly became
infinite.

I suspect that a similar symmetry will arise with robotic weapons. War will
get weirder, but it isn't going to get any less risky.

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nir
Perhaps one outcome of nuclear power (and other developments) is that the main
conflicts now are not nation vs. nation but nation vs. network - and in that
division it's only the nations that hold nuclear power, so far.

I doubt networks will respond by creating their own drones. Building a drone
may not be too hard, but building one that can be operated from the other side
of the world is much harder. Furthermore, it turns the conflict to an arms
race in which they will find it extremely hard to beat wealthier nations.

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jakarta
I have to think that the current/next generation of young gamers are going to
be well equipped for this kind of job. Games like Modern Warfare 2 already
incorporate things like drone strikes, and these kids are becoming experts at
multi-tasking while keeping up their in game reflexes.

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vdm
Do they have to know whether they are in a game or not?

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Khroma
Upvoted for Ender's Game reference.

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epochwolf
Single page: [http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-drone-
cre...](http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-drone-
crews21-2010feb21,0,5789185,full.story)

