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Killing and the Drone Warrior

November 6, 2013

My friend Steve took a great video of it.

You can’t see much, just a tree line with AK fire for background noise. In the distance, a Hellfire comes off the rails and the slow freight train of ordinance plows through the sky. Seconds perch upon seconds until the low dud and black cloud erupt from the earth.

It is 2010 and Rampage the Reaper just killed two Taliban fighters from an air-conditioned trailer in Nevada and I’m swatting at two fat flies that won’t stay off my upper lip in the IED ridden town of Marjah, Afghanistan.

War made new, they said.

The guy driving that Reaper from Nevada could have been Airman First Class Brandon Bryant, who GQ just profiled in a feature called “Confessions of a Drone Warrior.”

I won’t pretend that I know what it’s like to operate a drone. However, where Bryant and I intersect is in the business of killing. Although killing from Nevada and killing from two hundred yards away are two distinctly different flavors—it’s something neither of us are strangers to.

Killing—no matter what way you skin it, see it, feel it, hear it, and smell it—is killing. The end result is always physically the same, but the moral weight tends to be ambiguous depending on the method used. Whether it is the bayonet or the guided missile, different methods carry different moral ramifications.

Every factor in ground combat, whether it is physical or mental feeds into how killing is perceived and digested. Am I in danger? Are my men in danger? Does this person need to die so I may live? The gear you wear grounds you and the feel of a rifle reminds you of the authenticity of the situation. Combat can be an alternate universe ensconced in layers that give a participant the feeling of a much different reality.  Many veterans talk of combat like an out of body experience, and upon returning home, readjust to society by rectifying their two selves: the one who fought and the one who changes diapers and does the grocery shopping. In this regard, the infantryman is given a luxury of sorts—his killing is immediate, but through the deployment cycle he can distance himself after combat operations are completed and he returns home.

On the flipside, the drone pilot’s killing is done distally, but it is more morally immediate because it is carried out in the midst of a daily routine that involves the sights and sounds of a normal American life. Wake up, go to work, kill, shutdown the monitor, sleep, etc.  Bryant’s dilemma is born from this environment. The trailer from which he kills has no risk; he has no skin in the game. While the infantryman has the physical act of combat and the “luxury” of the morally righteous “kill or be killed” scenario, Bryant has to use abstraction to kill from a computer. The man in the seat to his left or right has the option to view and justify his job in a completely different manner than Bryant does because there is no shared sacrifice or common thread to unite them. Bryant kills alone, and bares the weight accordingly.

Bryant signed up to be like “the guys that give James Bond all the information that he needs to get the mission done.” GQ author Matthew Power writes, “the airmen in his intel class were funneled into the drone program…His sensor-operator course took ten weeks and led into ‘green flag’ exercises, during which airmen piloted Predators and launched dummy Hellfires at a cardboard town mocked up in the middle of the desert.” After ten weeks of shooting cardboard boxes, Bryant went off to start killing real people.

He didn’t train with a unit, and why should he? He’s pushing a button and guiding a missile at a target. He doesn’t feel the heat of the desert sun, the smell of the cordite, the recoil of a rifle. His comrades are not beside him bleeding and yelling. There is no struggle, nothing anchoring him to the reality of war. There is only the killing.

Then he drives home and sleeps in his own bed.

When an infantry unit deploys, it goes through distinct stages of preparation. There is the pre-deployment work-up where you begin at the individual level: “This your rifle…”, etc. From there, squad tactics give birth to platoon attacks, platoon attacks transform to the company level, and so on. The final exercises are as realistic as possible at the battalion level. They include live artillery, mass casualty exercises, coordinated air support, and more. If war is a symphony, then these battalion level exercises are the final rehearsal.

Then, it’s off to war and real-life combat, but you’ve trained for it. You’ve crawled, walked and run as a unit, and the first time a real silhouette fills your crosshairs, you know that you have arrived at the moment you’ve been honed to execute.

That moment will be etched both in an individual infantryman’s memory and the collective memory of a unit. Every platoon remembers its first firefight, its first casualty, and its first round of beers upon redeployment. Yet in Bryant’s realm he only has himself. The memories of his actions are his and his alone.

“No one talked about how they felt after anything. It was like an unspoken agreement that you wouldn’t talk about your experiences.” Bryant told GQ.  And for Bryant it seems his inability to discuss these events with others who shared the experiences and memories only ended up propelling him further into a realm where his job was so morally ambiguous that he was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

If the Air Force wants to avoid more morally damaged drone pilots, it should consider incorporating facets of infantry training into its work-up cycle. Ground training would give much needed perspective and insight for pilots supporting infantry units remotely and the shared sweat in training could help foster a greater sense of camaraderie amongst the pilots themselves, as well as a potentially shared perspective. If an organization is going to ask people to kill, they need to be trained properly and emotionally prepared. Bryant probably isn’t the first soldier to be mentally incapacitated by remote killing, but there’s no reason that he can’t be the last.

 

Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a columnist at War on the Rocks. He served as an infantryman with 1st Battalion 6th Marines from 2007-2011 and participated in two deployments to Afghanistan. He is a student at Georgetown University and a deputy editor at The Hoya.

 

Photo credit: Fg Off Owen Cheverton/MOD

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9 thoughts on “Killing and the Drone Warrior”

  1. Excellent article. I read the GQ article on Bryant with mixed emotions. While I don’t don’t doubt his sincerity or emotions and tribulations, I feel there was something missing to the article.

    Having served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004/05 as an assault helicopter pilot, reading these articles brings back a lot of good and bad memories. As a Marine, I feel all the “infantry” oriented training I received prior to stepping foot in an aircraft cockpit paid huge didvidens when they day came I was despoyed to a combat zone in support of the guys on the ground.

    One of the worst mental aspects from my perspective was dealing with the numerous IDF attacks when I was either back in “garrison” at the base or sitting in a FOB loading/unloading people and supplies (yes, I got mortared a couple times while sitting on deck in that big fat noisy helicopter). Often the helpless feeling the crept over you as you withered the attack turned to “I wish I was a grunt because at least they get to shoot back”. Being on the ground and witness to the sounds, smells and sights of combat are a completely a different experience than sitting up high or afar from the battlefield.

  2. Great article!

    But it is interesting to weigh what is more important, the team building concept around the drone pilot community or the exposure to and identifying with the ground combat experience? I don’t know.

    I think there is a balance that can be attained, but when placed in the context of the DOD budgetary and training machine, where can the balance be located.

    As a former Strike, one of our primary missions is to provide ground assistace to forces using Naval Surface Gunfire Support (NSFS). Maybe the “crew” ex

  3. Great article.

    But it is interesting to weigh what is more important, the camaraderie building concept within the drone pilot community or the exposure to and identification with the ground combat experience?

    I think there is a balance that can be attained when placed in the context of the DOD budgetary and training construct.

    As a former Strike Officer, one of our primary missions is to provide strike assistance to ground forces using both Tomahawk and Naval Surface Gunfire Support (NSFS). This allows us to back up units in combat with on-the-spot force multiplication through added firepower. We trained exhaustively in the call-for-fire.

    That said, I think something unique is at play here. Having never been involved in ground combat, the reality that we could be remotely killing people never disturbed us. I attribute that to the crew lifestyle and mentality that develops on a ship. The fact that you are constantly surrounded by the very people whom you serve with for extended periods of time (and in dire circumstances may kill through damage control efforts to save the ship) plays a role. We can’t go home and we cannot isolate ourselves.

    Maybe it would benefit the drone program (USAF so far as uniformed services are concerned) to train its pilots in groups and assign them to the same units while keeping them relegated to the base on “short deployments”. Consider this change with a six week ground combat “introductory” course (along the line of the four week Naval Expeditionary Combat School), and I think a healthier drone force would be created. They would develop a bond in training, be deployed to the same units where that bond would be further solidified through combat experience, and have a frame of reference for what the units they support are doing.

  4. I would like to treat as a separate issue the notion of GQ as a vetted and knowledgeable publication which can reasonably examine military operations and their subsequent, albeit potential, medical effects on uniformed participants. I would submit that for a more cogent and scholarly examination of the topic, one would be better served to read Dave Grossman’s On Combat and On Killing in order to have a better background for analysis on potential effects from legally killing someone. GQ, naturally, is trying to sell magazines; this is clearly illustrated from the artistic license with which the Mathew Power tells his tale. As long as readers do not afford GQ the academic prowess of other publications, one’s lens can remain clear for an assessment of the accuracy, veracity, and academic quality of the writing. I read and enjoy GQ, however my primary motivation for reading it is men’s fashion – a topic to which they are far better suited (pun intended).

    With those sentiments in mind, if one assumes that the portrayal of Bryant is factual, I still saw a number of red flags:

    1. Bryant’s predilection towards video games leads me to believe that prior to joining the military he, like many of his generation, have become intoxicated with the plethora of combat simulation games which could very well have been a contributing factor towards his psychological problems. Perhaps he had “buyer’s remorse” after signing up and seeing that things are different in the real world.

    2. Power wrote “Bryant has never been philosophically opposed to the use of drones—he sees them as a tool, like any other, that can be used for good ends…” The distinctly non-democratic nature of our forces which protect our democratic society dictates that military members are to follow lawful orders. Bryant is not ‘dropping a dime’ on Lieutenant Calley and some of his platoon members at My Lai. He is trying to assume a moral high ground at Strategic and Operational levels by opposing UAV strikes; the alternative to engaging a known enemy would be to send in a ground team – an exponentially more dangerous option at the Tactical level.

    3. The article states that after a diagnosis of PTSD, Bryant rejoined the military hoping to become a SERE instructor. I question the veracity of both his re-enlistment whilst having unresolved medical issues as well as his goal of becoming a SERE cadre. I have been through a number of SERE programs, and have a father who was an Air Force SERE instructor. The idea that someone trying to work through PTSD issues, which included threatening to stab a video store clerk and days-long blackout drinking binges, could or should work in stressful environments found in SERE is ridiculous. He couldn’t have made it through an entry level course, much less become a qualified instructor.

    4. Power says “…Bryant considers leakers like ‘Chelsea’ Manning and Edward Snowden heroes willing to sacrifice themselves for their principles…” Manning got caught breaking the law and Snowden ran to avoid accountability; if Bryant felt that the existing procedures for lethal targeting, with all the legal oversight and built-in redundancies was inadequate, he had alternative courses of action to address his concerns.

    With reference to the AF training for future sensor-operator personnel, Gibbons-Neff states “He didn’t train with a unit, and why should he? He’s pushing a button and guiding a missile at a target…” If I understand correctly, this suggests that he and his peers were trained independently, rather than as a formal unit. I would submit that regardless of how “soft” one’s Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) happens to be, the training is done as a unit whether that be nurse/light wheeled mechanic/medic/etc. Yes, there are individual tasks that require training. However, collective tasks must be trained in order to accomplish the overall mission. Remember, he sat beside someone flying the UAV, had people behind him for target oversight, as well as other people the article did not mention.

    Your article suggests that the Air Force “should consider incorporating facets of infantry training into its work-up cycle.” I would counter that outside of the AF’s PJ training and their other SOF personnel, any effort to instill an infantry-type focus would fail. There are some who go to the gym to conduct physical training, and there are some who put on body armor for runs/buddy-carries en-route to the obstacle course. I acknowledge and concur with you that the critical point that may have been missed in Bryant’s case was speaking with his peers who would understand and empathize with his perspective. Does (did?) the AF discourage/prevent its UAV personnel from official peer-peer catharsis sessions in order to ameliorate anxiety in their ranks? I don’t know, but would submit if they do (or did) this would quickly come out and be squashed by senior leadership as a block to the health and welfare of its force.

    From my combat arms experience, I can tell you that having used AC-130 gunships on call for fire missions and having opportunities to visit/fly with their personnel, I already valued what they brought to the fight; namely saving people and killing bad guys when things were hot, as well as being tremendous force multiplier while we conducted hits on enemy targets. I did not, nor do I have antipathy for our brothers/sisters in the “kinder and gentler AF” – they have a different life than folks on the ground with combat MOS. Although, I must admit, on more than one occasion I MAY have used the phrase ‘Chair-borne-Ranger.’ However they have a different mission than personnel conducting combat operations on the ground. Both entities are different players working toward a common goal. The AF personnel I met had no interest in the mimicking either the lifestyle or training requirements of ground personnel.

    I differ with you regarding the portion of your article talking about killing where you state “The end result is always physically the same, but the moral weight tends to be ambiguous depending on the method used. Whether it is the bayonet or the guided missile, different methods carry different moral ramifications.” If I interpret you correctly, it seems that infantry forces are better able to deal with the imperative to kill because of motivations for self-preservation and protecting the men on your left and right. At face value one might agree, but how do we account for sniper operations? Yes, before sniper school potential candidates are evaluated by a psychologist, but engagements at distance are not for self-preservation. Isn’t an engagement at 1500 meters just as far away as that guy sitting in the padded chair stateside?

    Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars is a good examination of the topic of moral weight. I would submit that even a cursory review of the historical employment of ordinance aptly demonstrates that by any measure, our current usage far surpasses the moral barometer of our predecessors. When suggesting that Bryant couldn’t come to grips with the moral weight of his portion of the mission, I wonder how he would rectify his position if he were a member of a B-17 crew in World War II. The Circular Error of Probability, or CEP, during that time was a radial measure, in miles, from a bombing objective wherein if a bomb landed, it was considered a “hit” for the mission. The average CEP during the height of the war was 5-7 miles. If there were circumstances in which one might find moral challenges, the men who fought our previous conflicts carried a far heavier ruck than anyone today. In addition, the level of medical care and opportunities to seek it during that time compared to today are beyond compare.

    I would further suggest that some of today’s pilots conducting air to ground combat, as well as some of our artillery also go “home” at the end of their shift. It may not be stateside living, but everyone who has ever been overseas knows that on a FOB most forces are behind rings of security enjoying Green Beans coffee, copious varieties of food, opportunities like ‘Salsa Night’, as well as plenty of internet bandwidth and telephones.

    You posit that “Bryant kills alone, and bares the weight accordingly.” I don’t deny his condition, but that is not an accurate statement. Perhaps talking to his peers or a counselor would help him, but he is a cog in the machine that kills the bad guy(s). Without the intelligence to find a target, without the crews to maintain and launch the UAV, without a hundred other moving parts to include those folks who approve missile release, it simply does not happen. If he feels that he bares the weight alone, and his chain of command denied him opportunities for medical help, that is wrong. However I would disagree if the point is to suggest that Bryant and other sensor-operators are not only untrained emotionally, but are being used, as Power suggests as ‘experiments.’

    A personal note; during one mission I was calling in intelligence for a target which had gone up the chain, been approved, and we were waiting on missile release. I continued to supply updates on the objective, which included the arrival of female members of the organization we were targeting. Somewhere distant, warm, and dry, someone decided to call off missile release because of the presence of females. The Power article’s exploitation of the number of Bryant’s unit involvement in “Total enemies killed in action: 1,626” infuriates me. Power wants us to feel sorry for Bryant watching an enemy bleed out on a target; I feel sorry for the unknown numbers of civilian and military personnel that were later killed because we didn’t stop some bad guys when we had the opportunity.

    I agree that we need to prepare our forces, regardless of their level of involvement, in the business of killing bad guys. Are we doing a better job that any time in history? I would say yes.

  5. I’d rather let Brandon Bryant speak for himself, but he has spoken of the “moral injury” he suffered from his role in inflicting physical injury and death upon people on the other side of the world while watching on a computer screen.

    Thomas Gibbons-Neff suggests that this could have been avoided through “incorporating facets of infantry training…shared sweat” and “a greater sense of camaraderie amongst the pilots”. Brainwashing, in other words. Drugs could be used, too. Anything to keep the sensor operator from looking at what he’s doing, and saying to himself, “This is evil, why am I involved in this?”

    The soldier whose own life is on the line may be less likely to see things this way. That doesn’t make it any less true… and often the soldier does see it, anyway. “Moral injury” is not unique to the cubicle warrior. It’s just that it’s the only kind he suffers.

  6. To Mark Gubrud:

    Regarding “moral injury”, there is a reasonable expectation that any service member of any branch will be required to use force at some point during their time employed as a Solider, Sailor, Airman or Marine.

    From a Navy standpoint, we can’t be expected to perform infantry movements and engage in firefights, but we do stand armed watches and mount crew served weapons, fully knowing that we could be attacked on a transit or fired at while steaming and have to retaliate.

    I would think a MQ9/armed drone pilot would accept that before signing the line and taking on the job as it is their primary job. And not that this acceptance justifies indiscriminate killing either.

    I wasn’t hunched over the console, itching to fire away missiles, but was accepting of the fact that the missiles we fire may kill civilians in addition to whatever target(s) happened to be at the same location. I signed up for this and accepted this job knowing the implications of being responsible for the primary battery on board. And I am a firm believer that the Tomahawk missile is the original, modern drone. Note the Echo model.

    It is not about brainwashing, it is about building a support network, and the ability to communicate and identify amongst peers. Incorporating some form of small unit tactics to facilitate this would work in that it provides the operators (drone) with an understanding of what services they are providing to the ground customer.

    More importantly, it puts these operators into an environment where they have to rely on each other and can develop bonds with each other that can carry them through their time as pilots. From my take on this, and I cannot speak for Bryant, it sounds like the USAF failed him in preparation for his assigned tasks as an operator. Cultural change within the drone community and how the pilots are screened, trained and treated could greatly assist in a very emotionally taxing job.

    And again, he should have had a reasonable expectation of what he was signing up for as an armed drone pilot. And again, I cannot speak for Bryant.