A chilling new post-traumatic stress disorder: Why drone pilots are quitting in record numbers
A raft of data suggest our remote-controlled war games are taking a steep psychological toll on their players
Salon
PRATAP CHATTERJEE,
TOMDISPATCH.COM
FRIDAY, MAR 6, 2015
The U.S. drone war across much of the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa is in crisis and not because civilians are dying or the target list for that war or the right to wage it just about anywhere on the planet are in question in Washington. Something far more basic is at stake: drone pilots are quitting in record numbers.
There are roughly 1,000 such drone pilots, known in the trade as “18Xs,” working for the U.S. Air Force today. Another 180 pilots graduate annually from a training program that takes about a year to complete at Holloman and Randolph Air Force bases in, respectively, New Mexico and Texas. As it happens, in those same 12 months, about 240 trained pilots quit and the Air Force is at a loss to explain the phenomenon.
On January 4, 2015, the Daily Beast revealed an undated internal memo to Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh from General Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle stating that pilot “outflow increases will damage the readiness and combat capability of the MQ-1/9 [Predator and Reaper] enterprise for years to come” and added that he was “extremely concerned.” Eleven days later, the issue got top billing at a special high-level briefing on the state of the Air Force. Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James joined Welsh to address the matter. “This is a force that is under significant stress — significant stress from what is an unrelenting pace of operations,” she told the media.
In theory, drone pilots have a cushy life. Unlike soldiers on duty in “war zones,” they can continue to live with their families here in the United States. No muddy foxholes or sandstorm-swept desert barracks under threat of enemy attack for them. Instead, these new techno-warriors commute to work like any office employees and sit in front of computer screens wielding joysticks, playing what most people would consider a glorified video game.
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Not new and not improved. I checked the posts on Wounded Times for the drone pilots. Here's how far back the reports go. The link to the original source is up.
Remote warfare ushers new kind of stress
July 2009 CNN
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Robotic warfare allows pilots to control armed vehicles without risk to themselves
Military experts are now looking at the psychological impact this may have on pilots
Pilots now transition from battlefield to home environment in less than an hour
Some pilots welcome operating from the U.S. rather than being deployed overseas
Stress of combat reaches drone crews
By David Zucchino
Los Angeles Times
Published: March 18, 2012
Reporting from Washington — Drone crews protect U.S. ground troops by watching over them 24 hours a day from high above. Sitting before video screens thousands of miles from their remote-controlled aircraft, the crews scan for enemy ambushes and possible roadside bombs, while also monitoring what the military calls "patterns of life."
Only rarely do drone crews fire on the enemy. The rest of the time, they sit and watch. For hours on end. Day after day.
It can get monotonous and, yes, boring.
It can also be gut-wrenching.
Crews sometimes see ground troops take casualties or come under attack. They zoom in on enemy dead to confirm casualties. Psychologically, they're in the middle of combat. But physically most of them are on another continent, which can lead to a sense of helplessness.
"That lack of control is one of the main features of producing stress," said Air Force Col. Hernando Ortega, who discussed results of a survey of Predator and Reaper crews at a recent conference in Washington, D.C. They ask themselves, he said: "Could I have done better? Did I make the right choices?"
The Air Force is only now becoming aware of the toll — which Air Force psychologists call combat stress — posed by drone crews' job, even as the drone workload is growing.
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