Behind the Scenes With America's Drone Pilots

An anonymous reader writes "As President Obama meets with advisors on an Afghanistan strategy today (who are now leaning more toward Joe Biden's more-drones policy), and even as Al Qaeda claims it's not all that scared of drones, the new issue of Esquire takes the first real in-depth look at the American military's UAV build-up. Defense geek Brian Mockenhaupt spends some time on the ground in Afghanistan, as well as back at the Pentagon, where the pilots ('more like snipers than fighter pilots') are playing a kind of role-playing game, getting to know terrorists' daily ins and outs. Looks like these Reaper drones are the real wave of the future, eh?"

I hate to say this...

[Anonymous Coward]

...given the serious topic, but this is IMHO another typical case of American fantasy: a war without casualties. I mean, without American casualties, of course. Wishful thinking, whatever technologies you throw at the problem.

Re:infernal machines

[YrWrstNtmr]

USA is still the only country that has used nuclear weapons against other nation,

Fighting a war is bad. Very bad.
Losing a war is worse.

and while on that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Compared to the *millions* killed by the other participants in that war.

Re:infernal machines

[czarangelus]

What people refuse to understand is that our lives are no more important to our benevolent government than the lives of the ragheads in the mountains of Waziristan. Do you really think Obama cares about YOU? he doesn't care about human life in Pakistan or Iraq, why should he care about human life in Detriot or San Diego? The moment it becomes more profitable to have you dead than alive from the view of the US gov't, they will find a justification to be rid of you. At Waco they used army equipment against people who had committed NO CRIMES. If we do not speak out about the lives of civilians in these far-flung nations these drones will be used against us next.

Re:ChAir Force

[Anonymous Coward]

How is killing enemies from the safety of a lazy-boy cowardice? With that line of thinking it would be cowardice to use guns that give you an advantage during war. With that line of thinking all leaders are cowards because they commit others to fighting in their place. Better make everyone drop their tools of destruction and whip out the good ole knuckles and settle all disputes with a quick round of pugilism so everything can be fair in love and war! If you have superior technology that allows you to protect your personnel while laying waste to your foe, then it's moste likely a good idea to use it.

Being a coward means not doing something because someone has psycologically cratered you, not because someone has found a method to terminate you without risk to themself.

why drones are so BAD

[Anonymous Coward]

They're bad because one of the reasons people, soldiers included, don't like war is due to the risk of being killed. If you remove that you also remove the only motivation to stop a war or just not start it. The geek in me loves the tech involved in drones development (minus the weaponry) but my human half is scaried as hell because they represent one more step towards an endless war scenario.

Re:I hate to say this...

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't really a fantasy. Assuming other unmanned vehicles are developed such as tanks, or robots that can replace infantry it's reasonable to think that within a few decades America could conduct a war without casualties against a sufficiently undeveloped nation.

Re:Another Benefit of Traditional Planes

[jollyreaper]

After reading this I realize the not-so-obvious benefit of real planes flying around patrolling and bombing the enemy... The fear factor. As stated in the summary " Al Qaeda claims it's not all that scared of drones", which makes sense, a little spec in the sky orbiting quietly does not put the fear of God, oh sorry Allah, into the enemy. Get a couple of F35s, A10s or Apaches cruising about voila, fear is back. Intimidation is back factor in warfare. Never really thought about that aspect of an all-drone airforce...

I've been under an F-15 at an air show and it sounds like God just got home, especially when the afterburners light up. I can only imagine what it's like when there's no concern about popping the eardrums of those on the ground.

That being said, operationally they keep the aircraft above 20k feet specifically to avoid small arms fire. The level required to act as a psychological weapon makes them great for target practice.

Incidentally, if they're not intimidated by having antitank missiles and precision-guided bombs falling on their heads, I doubt flying any lower will do much to wilt their spirits.

Air power never wins wars

[Nidi62]

Air power never wins wars, and that is what drones are. It is important to have boots on the ground, especially in a counterinsurgency campaign. For most insurgencies, the recruitment pool is the citizenry within the country who are unsatisfied and discontented. If a counterinsurgent force is relying primarily on impersonal methods such as drones or air power, the local populace will never see or interact with the foot soldiers of the counterinsurgency. The only way you can beat an insurgency is by interacting with the populace within the country, to galvanize support for the counterinsurgency campaign. If all you do is bomb people from the air you are going to get eh exact opposite effect. Without boots on the ground, you will not get proper intel. As such, there is a higher likelihood of collateral damage. When surprise attacks indiscriminately kill both combatants and civilians, you lose what little support you may have had. You have to go out there into the bush at the squad or platoon level and interact with local leaders, repair damage from both insurgent and counterinsurgent attacks, give little kids food/medical attention. You build up a rapport with people, and they will work with you. Otherwise, they are more likely to see you as the enemy instead of the insurgents. It may not be the newest, sexiest piece of technology, but it works. And you cant be afraid to have people out in harm's way. You have to have men getting in firefights, so the locals see you actually taking an interest in protecting their towns, their fields, their families. If this doesn't happen, you will lose.

Re:infernal machines

[czarangelus]

The American people were the goose who laid the golden egg. We created so much technological innovation and such fine products at such low prices that the parasite of government couldn't resist. They bled us slowly, little by little. Income tax, social security (which my generation won't see a dime of,) state income tax, sales tax, property tax, emissions tax, tax and fees on everything. They drained the productivity of the American worker for decades, but we were so strong that we could feed the parasite and ourselves. But now we are drained dry and dying, the government is throttling the golden goose screaming for more money. There is no more money. I fear that soon the government will openly attack and beat the golden goose, using violence to try to coerce us into producing even more for their use when we are tapped out. The use of LRAD on protestors and tasers on lippy grandmothers will become even more widespread, mark my words.

Re:Another Benefit of Traditional Planes

[Nidi62]

The fear factor isn't from noise. It's from never seeing what platform delivered the munition. You sit a drone up at 25-30k feet, the target wont ever hear it or see it. The survivors of an attack only know that the hand of God came down upon them without any warning, no sound, and their buddies got vaporized. THIS is where you get the fear factor. The knowledge that it could come at any time, and there is no way to know when. In fact, you almost have to assume that there is a drone over you at all times, and that all it would take is the push of a button to wipe you out.

Re:ChAir Force

[thrillseeker]

It's a flight sim "game" with real death for someone at the end of the day, not "pretend death and go post my frag score on slashdot". They receive flight hours towards their career gates because the training and experience to perform this mission is specialized and expensive to generate, so that providing a solid incentive path to bring and keep high quality personnel in the career field is important.

a war without casualties

[rs232]

"...given the serious topic, but this is IMHO another typical case of American fantasy: a war without casualties. I mean, without American casualties, of course. Wishful thinking, whatever technologies you throw at the problem"

This bares similarity to another war where they tried to fight it from the safely of helicopters, and similar to this one they will also lose it. But then again it isn't really about fighting some tribesmen in Afghanistan, but about extending the boundaries of the US empire and spending lots of money on the military budget. Especially since there is no longer some Soviet bogeyman around to save us all from. What's wrong with these Islamo-fascists that they don't want the sex-&-drugs-&-rock-&-roll and porn American life style.

Re:infernal machines

[czarangelus]

You're mistaken. The American people don't object to the killing or abuse of their OWN people either. It is well known that American prisons are full of non-violent druggies subjected to rape, torture, and all forms of sexual violence. Instead of a national outcry against this, it is treated as a subject for late-night humor. When blacks in Oakland protest against a black boy having been murdered, shot point blank in the back while restrained on the BART - most Americans were angry at the PROTESTORS and cheered when the police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse them. Americans will only become angry when it is a friend, neighbor, or family member who is abused. Anyone else and it becomes ENTERTAINMENT. The show "Cops" exists as a voyeuristic corruption of the justice system which is obviously based on the court room in Idiocracy.

Re: Air power never wins wars

[Black Parrot]

Air power never wins wars

That's the one lesson that nations can't seem to learn.

Without boots on the ground, you will not get proper intel. As such, there is a higher likelihood of collateral damage. When surprise attacks indiscriminately kill both combatants and civilians, you lose what little support you may have had.

This is the key. As long as we keep blowing up women and children, we're making more enemies than we kill.

The West (including Israel) have a blind spot, thinking "collateral casualties don't count". But to the people on the receiving end, their family is just as dead as if we had deliberately blown up their skyscrapers.

Whatever else our new strategy entails, "no civilian casualties" needs to be the cornerstone, or we're never going to win.

\rant

Re:I hate to say this...

[vertinox]

...given the serious topic, but this is IMHO another typical case of American fantasy: a war without casualties.

I'm pretty sure that was the intent of all inventions developed for wartime use.

From the spear, the longbow, musket, and machine gun... The intent and purpose was to give your side the benefit of being able to put the enema at "arms length" (so to say) and put you on the side less likely to die.

I mean having people kamikaze their aircraft into targets might be more cost effective in the short term, but the point of making weapons was to kill the other side more effectively by putting your side at less risk.

Just a note...

Its really been the US doctrine since WWII whereas the Russians, Japanese, and Germans generals would still order suicidal attacks on targets for bravery where the US forces would just bomb the crap out of it, shell it with more artillery than needed, call in more air strikes, and then have the infantry move in forward with tanks in front of them. The tactics work.

Re:Another Benefit of Traditional Planes

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same fear a sniper can have on enemy morale. What happened to Frank? Where did that come from? Wait what happened to Tom?

Re:Not that bad

[Whorhay]

It'd never work because people and nations don't go to war over things they think are trivial. And if it's not trivial they are likely to fight tooth and nail for whatever their cause. This is already evident in that the terrorists have resorted to being terrorists because they do not have the resources to fight in a more traditional way on a field of battle. Even we, in the USA, did this during the Revolutionary War.

We didn't necessarily fall to the same level as the terrorists of today. But at the time shooting from any available cover, specifically targeting officers, and not forming up in ranks to exchange volleys was considered very dishonorable and unsavory by the British.

Re:infernal machines

[CorporateSuit]

Tell me, what are the intentions of the people who those drones are targetting? How many innocents have those men killed this year? How many weddings, funerals, markets, and religious services have they bombed in service to their god of hate and blood? The patriotism of Americans is small potatoes compared to the fervor of these extremists. It's even smaller potatoes compared to =any= country's imperialism over 70 years ago.

The modern state of the US is easy for cowards to criticize. They don't realize that staying in Afghanistan and Iraq keeps the war in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and SURPRISE, Americans would prefer Iraqis, Pakistanis, and Afghanistanis to die to these insane fiends than American civilians -- but we're also risking American soldiers to die in the place of these people. If any other country, 150 years ago, had the power that America has now, the entire middle east would be a glass parking lot. It isn't, because America has far more compassion in its short history than those bloodthirsty, "progressive" European states ever had until their militaries were completely destroyed in the first half of the last century. So we have soldiers on the ground with rifles, and remote-controlled drones, because we can guide their missiles more accurately than just dropping a few million bombs on the unstable regions.

You probably can't figure that out, though, because you got some "America Sucks, GRRR! Every other country in the world has good intentions until America comes along and try to kill their leaders!" in your eye. You're ignoring 6,000 years of history and human nature to make your blind-eyed claims against one of the gentlest giants to ever sit on the Earth.

Re:I hate to say this...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

And lose. You can't *hold* ground with robots or avatars. You can't win hearts and minds. You can't accomplish significant political objectives.

Re:Air power never wins wars

[MarkvW]

Saying airpower doesn't win wars is probably false. I would suggest that the thermonuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki played a war-winning role.

You have to qualify your statement to read "airpower ALONE doesn't win wars"--that statement has been generally true in the past. On the other hand, any person would be a moron to assume that the statement will continue to be true in the future. Generals usually start the next war off by fighting it just like the previous war. They are oftentimes not the brightest bulbs in the hardware store. They often fail to timely recognize, that certain technologies are game-changers. Think aircraft carriers in WWII and machine guns in WWI, for example.

But all this stuff misses the mark, in my opinion. Everybody has to agree that airpower provides a vital and irreplaceable role in the projection of power.

But this "boots on the ground" idea is simply stupid when it is applied in the abstract.

Before you can EVER begin to determine the proper role and scope of airpower in any kind of violent conflict, you MUST figure out just what "winning" is. Only when you've determined your victory conditions, can you determine the role that airpower will play in meeting those conditions.

Our big problem now in Afghanistan is that we are not defining winning. This is like super-Vietnam deja vu. We're somewhere between creating a US-friendly country with a US-friendly power structure (neocolonialism) and going in there, bashing the hell out of the Taliban and Al Quaeda, and getting out.

We can't make the Vietnam mistake of blindly trusting that our leaders' goals are appropriate and achievable. Our leaders are no brighter or more insightful than we are. There needs to be a public dialog about victory conditions . . . But I digress.

To get back on topic: You can't determine the proper scope of airpower until you define appropriate victory conditions. Jabbering back and forth about grunts versus pilots is meaningless, because in almost all of the common scenarios, each is vitally interdependent upon the other.

Re:why drones are so BAD

[WhiplashII]

Unfortunately, no matter what we do this will happen. Better us than them. They target civilians. We accidentally hit civilians.

Re:Not that bad

[rleibman]

Reminds me of a SF short story I read a while back (where did I put that anthology book???) of a time in which the only thing left are robots fighting each other, defending two opposing non existent civilizations.

Re:ChAir Force

[Shakrai]

The man who straps a bomb to his chest and dies killing his enemies, or the man who kills from a lazy-boy with no risk to himself whatsoever.

They aren't cowards for strapping bombs to their chest. They are cowards because they tend to go after relatively undefended civilian targets. Driving a truck bomb into a barracks filled with Marines represents a legitimate act of war. Blowing up a pizzeria filled with civilians that had no military value is the coward's way out.

Re:Interesting...

[Shakrai]

One's right to life, liberty, property, speech, press, freedom of worship and assembly may not be submitted to vote

You forgot one [wikipedia.org].....

Re:infernal machines

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Tell me, what are the intentions of the people who those drones are targetting? How many innocents have those men killed this year? How many weddings, funerals, markets, and religious services have they bombed in service to their god of hate and blood?

Simple answer: no one has any idea. The people targeted by the drones for extra-judicial assassinations are always and without exception "suspected" "militants" - i.e. people who might militantly oppose US interests, or interests of US sponsored warlords in some way or another. Some might be mass murderers, some merely opposed to their US-appointed "government" or simply enemies of some US informants. Or random bystanders. There is no way to tell.

But one thing can be known for certain, the hordes of children killed by the drones were definitely not "targeting" anyone.

So the bottom line is this: when you choose to descend to the levels of the atrocities that you accuse your "evil" opponents of ... you yourself have become the very evil you claim to fight. Which is clearly the case with the US of A, and which all rational observer have pointed out a long time ago.

Re:infernal machines

[Shakrai]

Truth hurts and US-ians want *absolutely nothing* to do with it.

It's funny that someone who says the truth hurts can't bring himself to use the accepted and proper noun for a citizen of the United States: American.

In fact, very much like Ancient Rome where the citizens were a different breed from the conquered and the "ungrateful" slaves outnumbered them 3:1

We are nothing like Ancient Rome. If we behaved like the Romans we would have killed every single male of military age in Afghanistan a long time ago. Say what you will about the Romans but they knew how to keep the enemies of civilization in line. We've long since forgotten how to do that. More's the pity.

everyone outside of the US should by now know quite well how they are used: to assassinate, remotely (with no regard for bystanders, due process or any of that "coddling" stuff)

I wasn't aware that enemies on the battlefield were entitled to due process before being killed. Could you point out this nugget of international law for me?

Re:infernal machines

[Jeian]

Wikipedia lists the total death count from BOTH bombings by the end of 1945 at 220,000.

The Department of War estimated at the time that an invasion of Japan would result in 400,000 to 800,000 American and five to ten million Japanese fatalities.

There weren't really any good options.

Re:why drones are so BAD

[JerryLove]

Soldiers don't start wars. Politicians start wars. Politicians and their families rarely get killed in wars.

Re:ChAir Force

[pcolaman]

Yeah and pilots back in the day didn't have air conditioning in their planes, auto pilot to relax for a few minutes on a straight path, or advanced radar and AWACS support to know what was coming miles before it got to them. What's your fucking point? It's called technological advances. By your reasoning, anyone after the Wright Brothers was a fucking pussy.

Re:ChAir Force

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>Muslims do not revere Muhammed. They simply believe he delivered the word of God.

However, large numbers of them will happily kill you for insulting him and vastly larger numbers will riot over same. You seem to be using a rather non-standard definition of "revere."

Re:ChAir Force

[RightSaidFred99]

Bullshit. They're evil for killing civilians, not cowards. Attacking the enemy where he is strong isn't bravery, it's fucking stupidity. Sometimes killing civilians is justified either as collateral damage or intentionally. e.g. had German families started settling in France during WWII occupation you can bet your ass they would have been fair targets.

In the case of blowing up some random people in a bazaar for some obscure religious difference then it's evil - but it's not cowardly. Giving your life for something intentionally is the very opposite of cowardly. But if you think dramatic terms like "coward's way out" make it sound worse, go for it.

Re:infernal machines

[Anonymous Coward]

Admiral Nimitz and General Eisenhower were actually critical of its use because they believed the war had already been one in Japan as Japan had no navy as the suicidal attack of the Yamato and that 6 months into 1946 Japan would be critical of food supplies and would simply surrender due to the naval embargo.

Fair point, but how many Japanese would have starved to death while waiting for their leadership to swallow its pride and surrender? Obviously nobody can say for sure, but if a reasonable informed estimate brings it in at a higher number than died from the a-bomb attacks, then the bomb was still the right way to go.

Re:Why hire remote pilots?

[Lord_Dweomer]

Unfortunately, all our best players will have a high ping as they come from some rather distant countries. kekekekeke

On the flip side, isn't buying "gold" from China what got our country into the debt fiasco we're in now with them? Fucking gold farmers.

Re:Sex with sheep

[Sinical]

Why don't we just buy a television transmitter and have it broadcast this kind of video 24 hours a day? I dunno how well sheepfucking plays with the locals, but if there's any kind of personally identifiable info, maybe we can ridicule some of these guys to death. Uhm, if there're TVs. Otherwise we could distribute leaflets with choice video stills on them.

Or not. Mostly I just thought the title of "Afghanistan's Funniest Home Sheepfucking Videos" was really catchy.

Re:A U. S. monopoly? for how long?

[Anonymous Coward]

You misunderstand. Any first-world country could make these. But that's not what they're used for. The drones-with-bombs come *after* the conventional war. They work against the Taliban and Al Qaeda because the Taliban can't detect, jam, or shoot them down. But they'd be trivial for the US, Russia, EU, China, etc to detect, jam, or shoot down. No magical fleet of armed drones is going to come across the ocean and bomb anyone without a full scale conventional war preceding it.

Re:ChAir Force

[selven]

What part of the GP's post is bigotry? People kill over religious figures, that's true for every religion (and every other ideology while we're at it). But Christians, even ones transported 800 years forward from the Crusades, are not going to kill you for insulting Job, because they don't revere him like they do God, Jesus and Moses.

Re:ChAir Force

[selven]

I hate use of the word "coward" in a military context. Two thousand people use guerrilla tactics against your army of forty thousand? Cowards. Many of your men are killed while sleeping in an ambush? Cowards. A gunman refuses to fight your sword-based army from melee range and keeps firing and running away? Coward. When you're doing it, it's good strategy. When the bad guys do it, it's cowardice.

Re:infernal machines

[Achromatic1978]

Good. If injecting our values and culture onto the Middle East is what's required to get them to behave by the rules of the civilized world then I'm all for it.

LMAO. Just LMAO. "Civilized world" as defined by who? People who think nothing of executing people after refusing appeals based on new evidence exonerating them? Or executing mentally defective people, and juveniles?

Or perhaps a civilized world where a country that has the largest percentage of its populace in the world incarcerated, and 1/4 to 1/3 of those incarcerated for crimes 65% of the population don't even believe should be a crime?

Or a civilized world where Supreme Court justices appointed by the administration of a political party rule that in the elections to determine the leader of that nation, that to recount votes to ensure accuracy would be to "undermine" the system?

Or a civilized world where following lobbying by unrelated interest groups, the President signs into law legislation to keep a person alive, despite their wishes, and that of the guardian they made an informed and aware decision to put in place to honor their wishes?

Or a civilized world where it is considered de jure for a medical insurance company to collect up to and over a thousand dollars a month for "health insurance", and then deny coverage for abdominal cancer in a patients 40s, on the grounds that they had failed to disclose they had their tonsils removed at age 9?

That civilized world, you mean?

Re:ChAir Force

[mi]

had German families started settling in France during WWII occupation you can bet your ass they would have been fair targets.

No, actually, they would not have been...

Re:infernal machines

[CAIMLAS]

"Civilized" is not an absolute. A civilized culture is one which fights natural behavior inclinations for the betterment of all. It's not a fucking utopia, because there are people involved.

Do you care to mention a more "civilized" world than the West, per chance? We're not trying to push our taboos (and lack thereof) on them. We're trying to get them to treat each other like people - in essence "the golden rule". That's fucking it.