Tech. Sgt. Jason, 91st Attack Squadron sensor operator, flies a simulated training mission on an MQ-9 Reaper at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., May 8, 2014.

Tech. Sgt. Jason, 91st Attack Squadron sensor operator, flies a simulated training mission on an MQ-9 Reaper at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., May 8, 2014. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. N.B

America’s Drone Pilot Shrink Says They Need a Vacation From War

The men and women fighting America’s drone war can’t go home, no matter where they are.

CREECH AIR FORCE BASE, Nevada — “Doc,” one of America’s few practicing psychologists with top-secret clearance, spends his days talking to drone pilots. For security reasons, the Defense Department asked Defense One and other reporters not to refer to him by name. Doc is tall, slender, patient, and speaks with a slow and calm voice as he shoots down various popular notions about what it’s like to fly robots into war.

He is frustrated, he said, that some people picture the pilots as disengaged, mindlessly blasting away at targets like a kid playing Halo. “Nothing could be further from the truth. They are physiologically engaged with what’s going on,” he says. Nor are they burn-outs, shell-shocked by scenes of war. “The vast majority of folks aren’t being traumatized by what they’re seeing,” says Doc.

The absence of trauma, however, is not the same as the presence of happiness.

In a small base about 45 miles outside of Las Vegas, Nevada, and 63 miles north of a brothel called Sheri’s Ranch, the United States is at war. Since August, the drone operators of Creech Air Force Base have flown more than 3,300 sorties against the Islamic State, dropping bombs, firing missiles, guiding manned jets to their targets, and providing intelligence to coalition forces on the ground. Indeed, there is perhaps no U.S. military entity more directly engaged in the fight against the Islamic State.

They’re involved in every engagement that’s taking place in Operation Inherent Resolve, said Col. Jim Cluff, who commands the 432nd Wing and the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing at Creech. And that has many of the men and women at Creech approaching a mental breaking point.

Studies have shown that 4.3 percent of Air Force drone operators report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. That’s “on the low end of rates (4–18%) of PTSD among those returning from the battlefield … and lower than projected lifetime risk of PTSD for Americans (8.7%, American Psychiatric Association, 2013)” according to a 2014 paper from the United Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine.

“The unique challenge of this situation is they think about combat a little bit differently,” Doc told Defense One. “If there’s a guy lobbing grenades at me, I don’t have time to consider, ‘What do I think about warfare?’ It’s a survival thing. Here, because we’re so far removed from the battlefield geographically, they’ll think about warfare in more philosophical terms. “

Col. Jim Chittenden, a drone pilot who once flew fighter jets, has the bearing of a man in excellent mental health. Flying Predators and Reapers  made him feel more “engaged with the battlefield” — even though he was physically farther away. And the transition from speeding over the fight below at Mach 1 to flying in lazy circles for hours on end made him think about war “differently.”

He’s not the only one. The waning relevance of multi-million dollar fighter jets, designed to provide close air support or shoot down other aircraft and then rapidly fly back home, show how the wars a nation plans for aren’t the ones it fights. The drones that putter into a combat zone and loiter for a full day with just enough munitions to destroy a clay house are technology’s answer to asymmetrical warfare. Today’s flying robots are a weapon to be used against individuals, not nation-states.

There’s a part of you that feels like ‘I know more about this house’s life than I know about my own right now.'
Capt. Kristi

Those who operate the drones are drawn into an intense and intimate form of warfare. A team of drone operators might fly 6,000 hours, watching and waiting, before striking a target. All that time can create a surreal bond between an operator and the subject of surveillance.

“You’re tracking an individual house because they think it’s a hotbed for meetings and you watch people drink their tea on the porch,” said Capt. Kristi, a drone operator identified here by her rank and first name only. “You know what gas station people go to. There’s an odd sense of voyeurism. It’s like, ‘Hey, it’s getting to be 10:15; I’ll bet he’s going to have his tea. At 10:45, he’ll go to the gas station down the street to get his Luckies.’ There’s a part of you that feels like ‘I know more about this house’s life than I know about my own right now.’”

Kristi, who has been flying combat missions for three years, said the most difficult aspect of the job is not what she sees directly. It’s the feeling of impotence that comes from her ability to shape some outcomes but not others. It follows her when she heads home at day’s end. “You can be in there for eight hours … you can be following a guy that you know committed some horrible crime and you’re thinking about those things the entire day.”

In a way, her ability to “just go home” makes it worse. “With other assets, you’re deployed and you make it back to your base, there’s a camaraderie. You can say, ‘I just flew the worst mission.’ There’s a sense of family, cohesiveness. Here, we get in a car and go to a five-year-old’s soccer game,” she said.

This isolation, which distinguishes the job of drone pilot from others in the military, is tough but, technically speaking, it isn’t trauma. It’s a new malady that the military doesn’t know how to recognize.

But Kristi does not exist in a permanent state of suffering. She feels deeply connected to the work she does and the rewards that it offers. “When you can loiter over an area for 24 hours, and have constant handover with a similar asset, and the next day you’re in the same area and the same town, you know ‘That trash can wasn’t here yesterday.’ So if you know friendly forces are going to go through, you can tell them, ‘This looks different. I saw it.’ That can be incredibly helpful.”

Kristi’s wants are few. More than anything, she said, she would welcome “meaningful” time away from the front line. In military parlance, this is called dwell time, a rotation back to a home base after being deployed to a war zone. But the military does not acknowledge that the drone operators at Creech are in a war zone, although they’re fighting the Pentagon’s war. For them, dwell time is non-existent.

In part, this is due to a shortage of qualified pilots. On any given day, says Lt. Col. Leland Cowie, who commands the 11th Reconnaissance Squadron, he is missing one-third of the pilots he needs. In May, a GAO inspection found that only 35 percent of Air Force and Army drone pilots had completed the training needed to fly the full spectrum of potential missions. (The GAO found essentially the same thing last year.) In order for Cowie to get more operators, current operators have to train them.  But there aren’t enough operators to do both training and conduct operations. It’s a Catch-22.

A World Without Light

“I can fly our crews every day,” said Col. Jim Cluff, who commands the 432nd Wing and the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing at Creech. “There’s no dwell for them. Some of them have flown combat straight three, four, five years.” The operators under his command are “constantly engaged in combat for years at a time.” The effect of that is real.

Doc, the psychologist, says this lack of “battle rhythm” can affect the psyche and condition. “We know people do well when there’s light on the end of the tunnel.”

He isn’t alone in this concern. The absence of light, is, of course, darkness. It’s one reason that psychologist Rollo May described depression as “the inability to construct a future.” That description also applies to many of the men and women at Creech.

As technologies advance, Cowie is worried that policymakers will ignore the effects on operators. “We’re going to start fielding variants that fly longer than 24 hours. How do you provide manning to support that?”

There’s no easy way to give America’s drone pilots time away from the screen, and the problem will likely get worse before it gets better. The United States is ambivalent about its war against the Islamic State, as shown by the president’s own remarks regarding the use of force in Iraq and Syria. Speaking to reporters in February, Obama promised to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the enemy but not to send ground combat forces to help. The drone warriors pay the price for that policy.

At the entrance to the main facility at Creech, an oval plaque mounted on a concrete base reads, “Through These Doors Passes the Future of Aviation.” Yet the men and women at the forefront of that revolution have no sense of how their circumstances might change or improve, no sense of their own future. For the Pentagon, they are indispensable, and they are few.

There’s no telling when they’ll be allowed to truly go home.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.