Waging War with the Click of a Mouse
Der Spiegel reports:
The US has two drone programs operating out of two command centers. CIA drone pilots are located on the east coast, in the catacombs of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC. They are 11,000 kilometers (6,800 miles) away from Kabul. The US military’s drone pilots are even further west, at Creech Air Force Base in the deserts of Nevada, about an hour’s drive northwest of the gamblers’ paradise Las Vegas.
Both flight control centers look alike — they’re computer rooms that are sterile, insular and above all secure. Members of the Air Force’s 42nd Attack Squadron, who operate drones in Afghanistan from the base in Nevada and mostly live in Las Vegas, call themselves “combat commuters”. They perform their military duties for the day, then drive home.
“In the morning you carpool or you take a bus and drive into work, you operate for an eight-hour shift, and then you drive back home,” Air Force Major Bryan Callahan, 37, explained to SPIEGEL ONLINE. Callahan flew drones for four years in Nevada and now serves as assistant branch chief at the Air Combat Command Headquarters in Langley, sharing responsibility for all US drones worldwide. He is well acquainted with the somewhat bizarre lifestyle of a drone pilot.
“I do emails in the morning, rush to the airplane, come out, go to the BX (editor’s note: Base Exchange), get myself a hamburger, do some more email, do it again, drive home,” he relates.
No comments:
Post a Comment