9 Things We Learned from Pissed Off Drone Operators
In “The Untold Casualties of the Drone War,” Rolling Stone profiled four former members of the drone program who publicly criticized America’s use of unmanned aircraft strikes in an open letter to President Barack Obama. “This administration and its predecessors have built a drone program that is one of the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilizations around the world,” they wrote. With the release of Eye in the Sky — starring Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul and Alan Rickman — where a moral debate on drone warfare roils between military elites, we decided to revisit what these four vets told us about the bizarre and sometimes horrifying nature of remote control warfare.
The Air Force Pumps Up New Recruits with Metallica
When former drone sensor operators Brandon Bryant and Michael Haas first arrived at Creech Air Force base outside Las Vegas, where much of America’s drone war is conducted, they were ushered into a large assembly hall along with dozens of other new officers. The lights went down and the first five power chords of Metallica’s “Creeping Death” blasted out from the speakers. A large screen in front flickered to life with images of massive explosions. Cars, buildings and people were swallowed up in sweeping crosshairs, as whoops and cheers rose from the audience in the auditorium. Haas and Bryant looked at each other. A tall, heavyset officer with a large square jaw switched off the screen. “Gentlemen!” the officer boomed. “Welcome to Creech. While here, it will be your job to blow shit up and kill people!”
Drone Operators conduct surveillance on more than combat
A day shift at Creech starts at 7:30 a.m. After a morning briefing and short safety quiz, pilots and sensor operators head off to their ground control station, which is little more than a shack with two seats and a bunch of screens. Most shifts are uneventful, spent watching a drone circle a featureless landscape. “You knew you were in for a shitty shift when you saw the chairs already reclined,” says Haas. “That meant you were probably going to be spending the day watching nothing on the screen. Or if you came in when it was morning in Afghanistan you basically got to sit there and watch as guys went into their backyards to take a dump. I must have watched 400 guys take shits.”
Numbers on drone strikes are largely unknown
According to the most recent numbers released by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), 245 strikes were launched in 2012. Between 2004 and 2016, the CIA’s drone program claimed between 2,000 and 4,000 lives in Pakistan, as many as 965 of them thought to be civilians, according to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The U.S. has also killed several of its own citizens with drones, most notably American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, taken out in Yemen in 2011, along with his 16-year-old son, who died in a drone attack two weeks later. Last year, a CIA “signature strike” in Pakistan accidentally killed Warren Weinstein, an American aid worker held captive by Al Qaeda.
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