Drone Warriors Of The US Air Force

In the past, soldiers went off to war and left their families behind. But drone pilots commute to work, and to war, each day. Vin Ray was given rare access to the only US Air Force base devoted entirely to flying drones, where he discovered the pilots' strange double life.

If you're a drone pilot, there's a strong possibility you live in Las Vegas and your commute to work is against the traffic.

We were told to drive northwest out of the city on Interstate-95. The road stretches out through the barren, inhospitable scrub of the Nevada desert.

Pay attention, we were told, because the signpost is small. In fact, it's very small. But we eventually arrived at our destination: Creech US Air Force Base, a small, flat, city in the desert. And the only air base devoted to flying drones.

Inside the base, comparisons with science fiction are hard to avoid. A drone looks like a conflation of a giant insect and a light aircraft. It's unmanned.

Standing by a runway, we watch a drone land and pass right in front of us. The camera underneath its chin, swivels quickly sideways and looks right at us, someone, somewhere on the base, is watching us. We are escorted through a non-descript door in the side of what looks like a beige metal shipping container. It's cramped inside. At the far end there's a pilot seated on the left, who flies the drone and fires the missiles.

The sensor operator sits on the right, they operate the camera and fix the laser on the target for the missile to hit. They're focused on a bank of screens, switches and buttons. This is today's kind of cockpit. But it doesn't feel like a battleground.
For a start, there's a sensory deficiency. From my experience on the ground, you can taste war, you can smell it and you can certainly hear it. In here there's a just a mute video.

But that's not the only difference. Traditionally, soldiers in a war zone are based together. They have each other’s camaraderie, and they're separated from their families. But it's not the same if you're commuting to work every day.

Obviously, the drive itself is simple. But the psychological journey is altogether different. Imagine. Between six in the evening and six in the morning you might collect your kids from school, pick up some groceries on the way home and help make dinner.

But between 6am and 6pm you have a licence to kill.

These drone pilots can sit in Nevada and watch a potential target 8,000 miles (12,000km) away for months on end, building up what they call "patterns of life", building what's been called a "remote intimacy" with their prey, all in the knowledge that, one day, they may kill them.

A conventional fighter pilot will fire missiles and then head back to base. But drone pilots are required to circle for some hours afterwards, to assess the damage. The picture they're looking at is extraordinarily clear - and the damage is often in the form of body parts.

Small wonder that Creech now employs a psychologist for drone pilots suffering stress. Drones are globalising the battlefield, blurring the boundaries between war and home.

Image: Predator sensor operator

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