I've read that those at the bottom of their flight school class are the ones who become drone pilots. They're not stressed, they're just stupid.

It's tough work...

As someone who works on the operational side of military drones i can say that this is somewhat accurate I had eye surgery 3 years ago and my eyes are worse than what they were before the surgery. We work 12 hours shifts, 6 days straight with 1 day off. You are locked in a box with no windows staring at a black and white screen. It's like watching the Wal-Mart security cameras waiting for someone to do somethign nefarious. We are so min manned at this point i havent been able to take leave in two years. I havent had any holidays off and the one day i do get off is a weekday, unless you are lucky enough to have a family in which case you get hooked up with the weekend.

Since the military is fairly good at screening for sociopaths I imagine killing people is very stressful for them. On the one hand it's somewhat easier to dehumanize pixels on the screen, on the other hand you're not going to get the blind hatred that months or years of contact with the enemy can bring.

ThisNameSux 2011-12-19 03:10:27 AM

I've read that those at the bottom of their flight school class are the ones who become drone pilots. They're not stressed, they're just stupid.

You believe everythign you read eh?

Why not open the drone program to enlisted personnel? You shouldn't need to be an officer with flight school training to pilot a RC aircraft.

7-4. PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS
Killing with a drone is completely different than killing an enemy soldier while engaged in a firefight. It is a cold and calculated attack on a specific target. After observing a target for hours, watching him eat or look at his wife's photo, an attachment is made between the drone pilot and the target. Nonetheless, the pilot must accomplish his task efficiently and brutally. At such close quarters, the pilot literally watches the target fight for his life. The sights and sounds of this act are imprinted in the pilot's mind; it is an intensely personal experience. A pilot who has removed an individual target should be observed for signs of unusual behavior for four to seven days after the act.

Link (new window)

Sounds like working IT (been doing Unix/Linux admin/arch/perf for 17 years). Welcome to Hell pull up a chair and sit down in front of your monitor(s).

Gdalescrboz: You believe everythign you read eh?

Prove me wrong.

Not to be a grammar Nazi, but unless you're talking armored bear cavalry, that word would be "grisly".

And from what I hear, the work load's bad enough that you pretty much have to strap on a condom cath and a leg bag.

/oderint dum metuant, I guess

I wonder if they will award purple hearts for carpal tunnel syndrome?

What did you do at work today honey?

I blew up a car with four young men it. My boss said they were terrorists.

Oh, that's interesting. Could you collect little Johnny from chess club?

The Army uses enlisted people to fly their UAV's. Guess enlisted people in the Chair Force aren't as bright.

Gdalescrboz: We work 12 hours shifts, 6 days straight with 1 day off. ... We are so min manned at this point i havent been able to take leave in two years.

Let enlisteds sit the position and your problem will be solved. It's pretty stupid to require full-fledged pilot training (including SERE school, lol) and have you guys sitting pos in flame-resistant nomex flight suits like you were actually in the air.

AverageAmericanGuy: 7-4. PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS
Killing with a drone is completely different than killing an enemy soldier while engaged in a firefight. It is a cold and calculated attack on a specific target. After observing a target for hours, watching him eat or look at his wife's photo, an attachment is made between the drone pilot and the target. Nonetheless, the pilot must accomplish his task efficiently and brutally. At such close quarters, the pilot literally watches the target fight for his life. The sights and sounds of this act are imprinted in the pilot's mind; it is an intensely personal experience. A pilot who has removed an individual target should be observed for signs of unusual behavior for four to seven days after the act.


He gets to GO HOME to his wife, and he's NOT GETTING SHOT at, nor FEARING FOR HIS LIFE andf THOSE AROUND HIM.


Really? This BS again?

Army used enlisted Soldiers to fluy drones, and most of them are in theater. Drones have tremenndous value, but these USAF "pilots" needs to stop whining, and be greatful for not working in 120 heat, with people shooting at you.

Fark them and the stupid flight suits they wear...yet nowhere near a real aircraft. Tell me, USAF farkers, why are so many of you out hrere wearing flight suits...and don't fly didly-squat?

/Army. Three combat tours.
//Yeah, I know, our football team isn't doing so well.

Alien Robot: Gdalescrboz: We work 12 hours shifts, 6 days straight with 1 day off. ... We are so min manned at this point i havent been able to take leave in two years.

Let enlisteds sit the position and your problem will be solved. It's pretty stupid to require full-fledged pilot training (including SERE school, lol) and have you guys sitting pos in flame-resistant nomex flight suits like you were actually in the air.

The flight suits allow the desk pilots to maintain that special air of superiority that the other pilots have.

erewhon: Not to be a grammar Nazi, but unless you're talking armored bear cavalry, that word would be "grisly".

And from what I hear, the work load's bad enough that you pretty much have to strap on a condom cath and a leg bag.

/oderint dum metuant, I guess

Although combat was not reported to be one of the main "stressers" for any of those surveyed, it had affected some drone crews -- who witnessed, and maybe even participated in, some of the most grizzly aspects of war from afar.

I wonder if Phil Stewart of Reuters actually wrote it as grizzly and his editor didn't catch it, or if Phil has posting capabilities. Maybe he just got mixed up between the four different languages he speaks.

"Phil Stewart has worked for Reuters since 1998 and reported from more than 30 countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and Egypt. Before becoming a Washington D.C.-based military affairs and intelligence reporter, Phil covered terrorism, foreign affairs and the Vatican from Rome from 2004 until mid-2009. He has also previously been based in Colombia and Brazil as a foreign correspondent. Before joining Reuters, Phil covered U.S. politics out of Washington D.C. for States News Service. He earned his BS in international relations from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. He speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. ..."

TommyymmoT: If they want to avoid carpal tunnel, they might try paying more attention to the screen with the drone on it, instead of the screen showing porno.

Or being 6-mile-high voyeurs.. Best vantage point for spying on neighbors' wives in a neighboring county.

Why don't we specifically look for those types of people that don't feel empathy or compassion? Not the well rounded family man, they have too much of a heart.

ThisNameSux: Why not open the drone program to enlisted personnel? You shouldn't need to be an officer with flight school training to pilot a RC aircraft.

Better yet, just get some 15 year old boys to do it. They spend 16 hours a day playing Xbox and don't seemed to stressed out about it.

ReapTheChaos: ThisNameSux: Why not open the drone program to enlisted personnel? You shouldn't need to be an officer with flight school training to pilot a RC aircraft.

Better yet, just get some 15 year old boys to do it. They spend 16 hours a day playing Xbox and don't seemed to stressed out about it.
Orson Scott Card see's what you did there =)

namatad: Gdalescrboz: As someone who works on the operational side of military drones i can say that this is somewhat accurate I had eye surgery 3 years ago and my eyes are worse than what they were before the surgery. We work 12 hours shifts, 6 days straight with 1 day off. You are locked in a box with no windows staring at a black and white screen. It's like watching the Wal-Mart security cameras waiting for someone to do somethign nefarious. We are so min manned at this point i havent been able to take leave in two years. I havent had any holidays off and the one day i do get off is a weekday, unless you are lucky enough to have a family in which case you get hooked up with the weekend.

so the system was designed by cretins ??
and how hard would it be to train, say, 10000 more kids to do what you did?

If only there were 100 million men with experience playing flight games that you could draft to increase the number of trained pilots.

um wait a second
why the fark do any of these people need to be pilots in the first place?
DERP DERP DERP

FFS, hire a bunch of kids to do this

cheetos, MTDEW and you wouldnt need to worry about stress


clearly the design interface was built by cretins and they should be locked in the boxes until they improve everything ....

black and white ??? for love of god
did none of these tards play flight sim ??

Sending a B&W video signal halfway around the world is a lot quicker an easier than a full HD color video signal. Oh, and it gives you about the same amount of information. These systems were designed, approved and constructed long, long ago when technical limitations wouldn't allow for a lot of things we take for granted.

Even so, I'm with the "just hire some 15 year olds" people. Talk about a part time job you can get in to after school is out. Hell, I did it for free when I was a kid and they weren't even real people I was shooting at. Might even be able to charge kids to do it. $100 for a week of drone pilot duty. $200 for actual combat missions (non-recon).

/Watch that defense budget swell in no time.
//Volunteer military is so last century. Pay 2 Play military is where it's at.
///Build us mecha and you can do the same for the army, too.
////Sorry, Navy, no one likes driving slow boats around.

namatad 2011-12-19 05:25:09 AM

Gdalescrboz: As someone who works on the operational side of military drones i can say that this is somewhat accurate I had eye surgery 3 years ago and my eyes are worse than what they were before the surgery. We work 12 hours shifts, 6 days straight with 1 day off. You are locked in a box with no windows staring at a black and white screen. It's like watching the Wal-Mart security cameras waiting for someone to do somethign nefarious. We are so min manned at this point i havent been able to take leave in two years. I havent had any holidays off and the one day i do get off is a weekday, unless you are lucky enough to have a family in which case you get hooked up with the weekend.

so the system was designed by cretins ??
and how hard would it be to train, say, 10000 more kids to do what you did?

If only there were 100 million men with experience playing flight games that you could draft to increase the number of trained pilots.

um wait a second
why the fark do any of these people need to be pilots in the first place?
DERP DERP DERP

FFS, hire a bunch of kids to do this

cheetos, MTDEW and you wouldnt need to worry about stress

I kinda think this is a troll but i'll go ahead and explain since it's about as much as anyone on Fark knows about RPAs. First off, im not a pilot, so I have no dog in this fight. Even though the pilot isn't in the air, he is still flying an aircraft the size of an A-10 (I work with Reapers) carrying GBU-12s and Hellfires costing about $15million, is that something you want to hand over to a bunch of kids? This is not like a flight sim where you only have to worry about where your crosshairs are pointed. You are actually flying an aircraft and all of the dynamics of flying an aircraft are still in play, of which only a pilot can handle. I understand how, to the untrained eye, flying an RPA is exactly like flying Aces High, but it's not

Gdalescrboz: namatad 2011-12-19 05:25:09 AM

Gdalescrboz: As someone who works on the operational side of military drones i can say that this is somewhat accurate I had eye surgery 3 years ago and my eyes are worse than what they were before the surgery. We work 12 hours shifts, 6 days straight with 1 day off. You are locked in a box with no windows staring at a black and white screen. It's like watching the Wal-Mart security cameras waiting for someone to do somethign nefarious. We are so min manned at this point i havent been able to take leave in two years. I havent had any holidays off and the one day i do get off is a weekday, unless you are lucky enough to have a family in which case you get hooked up with the weekend.

so the system was designed by cretins ??
and how hard would it be to train, say, 10000 more kids to do what you did?

If only there were 100 million men with experience playing flight games that you could draft to increase the number of trained pilots.

um wait a second
why the fark do any of these people need to be pilots in the first place?
DERP DERP DERP

FFS, hire a bunch of kids to do this

cheetos, MTDEW and you wouldnt need to worry about stress

I kinda think this is a troll but i'll go ahead and explain since it's about as much as anyone on Fark knows about RPAs. First off, im not a pilot, so I have no dog in this fight. Even though the pilot isn't in the air, he is still flying an aircraft the size of an A-10 (I work with Reapers) carrying GBU-12s and Hellfires costing about $15million, is that something you want to hand over to a bunch of kids? This is not like a flight sim where you only have to worry about where your crosshairs are pointed. You are actually flying an aircraft and all of the dynamics of flying an aircraft are still in play, of which only a pilot can handle. I understand how, to the untrained eye, flying an RPA is exactly like flying Aces High, but it's not

Yes, it's much more like MS Flight Simulator.

Gdalescrboz: As someone who works on the operational side of military drones i can say that this is somewhat accurate I had eye surgery 3 years ago and my eyes are worse than what they were before the surgery...

...unless you are lucky enough to have a family in which case you get hooked up with the weekend.

And this is different from cubicle-life how?

People who say that it's unethical for us to kill enemy combatants using drones instead of soldiers either don't realize or don't care that the only way to kill the enemy with soldiers requires putting those soldiers in a spot where the enemy can kill them.

HAMMERTOE 2011-12-19 06:34:45 AM

Gdalescrboz: As someone who works on the operational side of military drones i can say that this is somewhat accurate I had eye surgery 3 years ago and my eyes are worse than what they were before the surgery...

...unless you are lucky enough to have a family in which case you get hooked up with the weekend.

And this is different from cubicle-life how?

You've never shiat your pants because you weren't allowed to leave your cubicle until someone took over your computer. Nor do you get to blow up your copy machine with a hellfire

Give the drone pilots a medal for flying 25 missions.

HAMMERTOE: And this is different from cubicle-life how?

I work in corporate IT support, so I'm getting a kick out of your reply. Our cube farm is actually a thing of wonder.

Which is worse - staring at a COD/video game console for 12 hours straight while essentially playing a flight sim or trying to coach someone from the shoe department on the correct way to re-seat a RAID drive?

Tough call...

/"No, no...TOP left..TOP left...not BOTTOM left...listen, is there a small child in the store somewhere?"
//Don't even get me started on power supplies...

This is how Goose dies in Top Gun II.

12 hours? Somebody get these guys a copy of Skyrim, stat. That'll fix the bladder control right up.

Cloudchaser Sakonige the Red Wolf: People who say that it's unethical for us to kill enemy combatants using drones instead of soldiers either don't realize or don't care that the only way to kill the enemy with soldiers requires putting those soldiers in a spot where the enemy can kill them.

You may have just explained the "unethical" argument in question.

Many of these people to whom you refer would also like to see the warhawks and chickenhawks screaming for war with Iran (I'm looking at you now, republican presidential contenders -- but it's a long, more-inclusive list) leading the charge at the tip of the spear (with their of-age sons and daughters in tow).

FTA:

"And when they have to kill someone, and when they're involved with missions when they're observing people over long periods of time, and then they either kill them or see them killed, it does cause them to re-think aspects of their life and it can be bothersome."

Imagine that. Bothersome? Seriously? That's how you'd describe it? Was annoying too strong of a word? What about mis-identified targets dead? What about collateral damage? Go talk to some Viet Nam vets at an AA meeting about this kind of "bothersome". Geeeez.

For the military to be surprised that these guys are starting to exhibit some of the same feelings, fatigue, and doubts that the guys on the ground have makes me wonder about the people in charge.

On another note, I feel terrible for our soldiers coming home and trying to re-assimilate. For many, it's nearly impossible. During Viet Nam, if you served two tours, generally, it was because you volunteered for the second (and so on). And there was a reason for that. Some of the guys coming back now have served several (or more). I get the sense that it may be more than just cumulative, too (the math, I mean). We lost a guy across the street to suicide last year. A guy two blocks away a couple of years ago to suicide by cop. A close friend of mine (PhD) works as a mental health care provider for returning veterans and says, to both put it bluntly and euphemize, we ain't seen nothing yet. And I suspect it's not going to be much different for these drone guys. I'm guessing worse, in some cases. Doesn't seem to affect the sociopaths much, though...

Gdalescrboz: As someone who works on the operational side of military drones i can say that this is somewhat accurate I had eye surgery 3 years ago and my eyes are worse than what they were before the surgery. We work 12 hours shifts, 6 days straight with 1 day off. You are locked in a box with no windows staring at a black and white screen. It's like watching the Wal-Mart security cameras waiting for someone to do somethign nefarious. We are so min manned at this point i havent been able to take leave in two years. I havent had any holidays off and the one day i do get off is a weekday, unless you are lucky enough to have a family in which case you get hooked up with the weekend.

Man up, Nancy.

Imagine pretty much the same conditions, except that instead of getting to pretend you are in the Junior Birdmen of America club, you get to copy Morse code for hours. And when there isn't a target up, you're searching for one, straining through the static, all in the hope of preventing the next Pearl Harbor-type sneak attack, except that in this case, the opponents have nuclear weapons.

We all have/had our crosses to bear. Do what we used to do: Drink heavily, and pull pranks on each other.

Hiro Nakamura 2011-12-19 07:21:27 AM

As an actual military pilot almost nothing offends me. One thing that does offend me is R/C plane pilots that wear flight suits, call themselves pilots, and put themselves in for combat awards.

In fact, that would offend me if I was a civil pilot with just a PPL.

To be fair, R/C drivers are fighting the "war on terror" more than "actual military pilots." You guys are just glorified UPS drivers.

Hiro Nakamura: As an actual military pilot almost nothing offends me.

How about this?

dittybopper
Man up, Nancy.

Imagine pretty much the same conditions, except that instead of getting to pretend you are in the Junior Birdmen of America club, you get to copy Morse code for hours. And when there isn't a target up, you're searching for one, straining through the static, all in the hope of preventing the next Pearl Harbor-type sneak attack, except that in this case, the opponents have nuclear weapons.

We all have/had our crosses to bear. Do what we used to do: Drink heavily, and pull pranks on each other.

Im in Clovis, New Mexico, there is nothing to do here except drink and pull pranks on each other

altrocks: ////Sorry, Navy, no one likes driving slow boats around.

That's not *ENTIRELY* accurate. Hell, I learned how to use a slide rule, and reviewed my high school geometry, just so that I could do manual torpedo targeting.

Gdalescrboz: dittybopper
Man up, Nancy.

Imagine pretty much the same conditions, except that instead of getting to pretend you are in the Junior Birdmen of America club, you get to copy Morse code for hours. And when there isn't a target up, you're searching for one, straining through the static, all in the hope of preventing the next Pearl Harbor-type sneak attack, except that in this case, the opponents have nuclear weapons.

We all have/had our crosses to bear. Do what we used to do: Drink heavily, and pull pranks on each other.

Im in Clovis, New Mexico, there is nothing to do here except drink and pull pranks on each other

That, and flute projectile points.

/Haven't gotten good enough to attempt a Clovis or Folsom point yet.

dittybopper 2011-12-19 07:38:15 AM

Gdalescrboz: dittybopper
Man up, Nancy.

Imagine pretty much the same conditions, except that instead of getting to pretend you are in the Junior Birdmen of America club, you get to copy Morse code for hours. And when there isn't a target up, you're searching for one, straining through the static, all in the hope of preventing the next Pearl Harbor-type sneak attack, except that in this case, the opponents have nuclear weapons.

We all have/had our crosses to bear. Do what we used to do: Drink heavily, and pull pranks on each other.

Im in Clovis, New Mexico, there is nothing to do here except drink and pull pranks on each other

That, and flute projectile points.

/Haven't gotten good enough to attempt a Clovis or Folsom point yet.

If not coming to Clovis means not getting good enough, then stay not good enough

Gdalescrboz: If not coming to Clovis means not getting good enough, then stay not good enough

You think you got it bad? At least you are CONUS, and not stationed in some backwards-ass nominal 'democracy' which is actually dominated by a single political party, and where the indigenous population hates you even though you support a large fraction of their local economy, and saved their ass in WWII.

/United States Army Field Station Kunia, Hawaii.

Gdalescrboz: Hiro Nakamura 2011-12-19 07:21:27 AM

As an actual military pilot almost nothing offends me. One thing that does offend me is R/C plane pilots that wear flight suits, call themselves pilots, and put themselves in for combat awards.

In fact, that would offend me if I was a civil pilot with just a PPL.

To be fair, R/C drivers are fighting the "war on terror" more than "actual military pilots." You guys are just glorified UPS drivers.

UPS drivers don't get shto at last I checked or deliver CAS.

Fact is a UPS driver have a tougher job than drone controllers.