The war room: Daily transition between battle, home takes a toll on drone operators

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Drone pilot instructor Capt. Christopher Clark, standing, looks on in the ground control station during a training mission as new pilot Lt. Andrew Teigeler flies a Predator over Creech Air Force Base, Nev. Call it combat as shift work, a new paradigm of commuter warfare that is blurring the historical understanding of what it means to go off to battle.


The war room: Daily transition between battle, home takes a toll on drone operators
By Megan McCloskey, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, October 27, 2009

CREECH AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. – The daily work duties are arduous, involving close tracking of insurgents, patiently watching them dart in and out of shelters and, if the opportunity presents itself, occasionally raining missiles down on their heads.

But at the end of each day, the Air Force crews who control the Predator and Reaper drones circling high above the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq stand up from their Naugahyde chairs, emerge from their cramped trailers on this remote Nevada air base and climb into their cars for the drive home, arriving in time to tuck their kids into bed.

Call it combat as shift work, a new paradigm of commuter warfare that is blurring the historical understanding of what it means to go off to battle. And the strain of the daily whiplash transition between bombs and bedtime stories, coupled with the fast-increasing workload to meet relentlessly expanding demand, is leading to fatigue and burnout for the ground-based controllers who drive the drones.

“We have 5,000 years of one type of warfare and only a couple of years of this new kind,” said P.W. Singer, author of “Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.” “These guys are simultaneously at home and at war. It may be that human psychology isn’t designed for that. We don’t know yet.”

Col. Pete Gersten, commander of the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing at Creech, said that when he deployed as a fighter pilot to Iraq and Afghanistan, he would kiss his wife, hug his children and then emotionally detach.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=65658