Photo Credit: Gregory Ripps/U.S. Army
C4ISRNet: The hard truth: an intelligence analysts' everyday life, revealed
In a telling glimpse into the lives of military intelligence analysts, Courtney, staff sergeant and intelligence analyst for the Air Force, recently was joined for a day by a Washington Post reporter. She and many others in her position are first in a chain running from her base in Virginia to air operations in Qatar all the way to the drone pilots scattered across the United States. In her position, Courtney is expected to witness killings or take part in strikes every two to three weeks — a difficult burden to comprehend and deal with, but essential nonetheless.
“We’re at war. We don’t experience bullets flying, but our decisions have direct impacts on people’s lives,” Courtney said.
And this realization is the hardest part of the job. Separating job operations from home life without second-guessing decisions made on the job can take a toll on the intelligence analyst, a toll that has resulted in the rates of suicide and suicidal thoughts being “way higher than the Air Force average; they were even higher than for those people who had deployed,” Col. Jason Brown, commander of the 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing, told the Post.
Read more ....
WNU editor: The Washington Post's story on the life of a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer can be read here .... The watchers: Airmen who surveil the Islamic State never get to look away (Washington Post).
