Life As A Drone Operator

Drone operators at Holloman Air Force Base in the southwestern state of New Mexico: Modern warfare is as invisible as a thought, deprived of its meaning by distance. Gilles Mingasson/ DER SPIEGEL

The Guardian: Life as a drone operator: 'Ever step on ants and never give it another thought?'

In a secluded room at an airbase in Nevada, young men hold the power of life and death over people thousands of miles away. Former servicemen tell their story.

When Michael Haas, a former senior airman with the US air force, looks back on the missions he flew over Afghanistan and other conflict zones in a six-year career operating military drones, one of the things he remembers most vividly is the colorful language airmen would use to describe their targets. A team of three would be sitting, he recalls, in a ground control station in Creech air force base outside Las Vegas, staring at computer screens on to which images would be beamed back from high-powered sensors on Predator drones thousands of miles away.

The aim of the missions was to track, and when the conditions were deemed right, kill suspected insurgents. That’s not how they put it, though. They would talk about “cutting the grass before it grows out of control”, or “pulling the weeds before they overrun the lawn”.

WNU Editor: The technology on waging war is changing .... and how it impacts soldiers who are waging it is also changing. The surprising thing (to me) is that you do not need to be in a war-zone to be impacted by a war .... that distance does not make a difference .... that even though you may be 8,000 miles away .... it will still scar you in the same manner if you were "over there".