The dark art of drone piloting: What it's like to man an umanned craft

THEY kill people from behind a computer screen thousands of kilometres away, but it is no game. This is the ‘bizarre’, troubling life of a drone pilot.

Flying an unmanned aircraft can be more confronting than being there.

LIEUTENANT Bruce Black is seated in a dark, claustrophobic box, piloting a military aircraft more than 10,000 kilometres away.

A private chat window known as a Whisper appears on his screen. “Don’t screw up, president’s watching.”

Lt Black, now retired, piloted MQ-1 Predator and RQ-170 Sentinel drones, spending weeks or months closely observing targets in Iraq and Afghanistan before a strike. The gunfire, the enemy and the friendly troops would fill his eyes and ears, before he was yanked back to the reality of this tiny, quiet room near Las Vegas.

News_Image_File: Lieutenant Bruce Black, former UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) pilot.

“A drone pilot is much more immersed than some combat C-130 pilot who’s there for 15 minutes and runs out of gas and has to leave,” he tells news.com.au. “You leave your life behind, drive on to a base, get your briefing and are transported straight to the action.”

He would chat to the men on the ground, bet on the Super Bowl with them and ask about their families. He could hear them shouting, see the faces of the enemy and feel bullets whizz past his head. All the while, he would be monitoring 20-plus chats over secure internet — with HQ, special ops, the commander — juggling information to build up a picture.

“It was a tremendous challenge,” he says. “We would brief up with them [the troops] via telecom. I knew who the players were. I’d be trying to find the guy coordinating the ambush.

“Then the door opens on the box. The lights turn on. I’d think, ‘What the hell are you doing in my airplane?’”

Someone had arrived to take over his shift. “It was downright bizarre,” he says. “It was jarring.”

Lt Black spent years as an FBI special agent and C-130 pilot for the Nevada air national guard, but claims his days flying “unmanned” aircraft were the best of his career.

He spent 600 hours monitoring Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi from a “Predator-Reaper” in Afghanistan, gathering intelligence and waiting for his moment to strike.

“It’s truly amazing how much you can help. What you had to do, what you were able to do, it was outstanding.”

And yet, few pilots want to work with Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS).

Lt Black says it’s because troops look down their noses at the role. “No pilot wants to fly in a video game,” he adds. “I went kicking and screaming, but I never felt more valuable as a military member.”

News_Image_File: A prototype of a European combat drone, known as Neuron, lands in Istres, France.

He says the role is seen as a “necessary evil”, where “you’re not a real pilot”. And your career is stunted, because the lack of personnel means no one gets much leave or opportunity to take PME training courses (Professional Military Education), which lead to promotions.

There are currently 988 active-duty pilots for Predator and Reaper drones — the two most lethal unmanned aircraft commonly used for surveillance and strikes. More than 1200 pilots are needed for 65 24-hour operations around the world.

Overworked and underpaid drone pilots work six days in a row, for an average of 13 to 14 hours a day. They log 900-1100 flight hours a year, compared with pilots who fly manned aircraft and put in between 200-300 hours per year.

The shortage dates back to 2008, when pilots were forced to transfer to unmanned aircraft, doing nothing for morale or the image of the role. Lt Black believes every pilot should rotate through the role. But others have grave doubts.

Military ethics specialist Christian Enemark last week told a Senate inquiry into Australia’s use of drones that they should not be used to target terrorists. The Australian Defence Force currently only uses unarmed surveillance drones, but senior defence officers have said acquiring armed aircraft is inevitable.

“The risk in taking the step to arm Australian drones is that this could open the door to unjust uses of force by Australian governments and/or by Australian military personnel,” said Dr Enemark. “The ADF should not use armed drones to execute an individual identified as a terrorist by a civilian intelligence agency.”

Even then, the ANU Centre for Military and Security Law submission said ADF surveillance drones could still be involved in breaches of international law if another state used its surveillance footage to launch an attack.

News_Image_File: Protesters perform mock killings in drone costumes as they demonstrate the use of military drones by the US government outside the Unmanned Systems 2013 exhibition in Washington.

Brandon Bryant is one of a handful of drone operators to speak out against the tactic. He said he had no leave for the first four years he worked as a sensor operator, in tandem with a drone pilot. He would cover for others who were on the brink of divorce because their families didn’t understand why they had to work so hard when they weren’t deployed.

But that’s not why Bryant hated the role. “Drones are cowardly,” he tells news.com.au. “From day one I hated it. The commander would say, ‘It’s not what you need, it’s what the Air Force needs.’

“It was very Zen. I could see everything around me. I could see every pixel, hear every crackle of the radio, people talking, I remember it all.”

News_Image_File: Brandon Bryant still remembers every one of his kills.

Bryant killed 13 people and he tries to remember every one. “It’s kind of like an honour thing,” he says. “You’re fighting humans. You have to remember. I don’t understand why other people don’t, or won’t. One person said to me, ‘I feel bad that I don’t feel bad.’”

At the time, however, he couldn’t look at the paperwork, because he was in shock. Now he wishes he could see who he killed. He believes there needs to be more transparency.

“I’ve been taken to the point of killing the enemy before they have a chance to become the enemy. They’re erasing the rules of war. The whole world becomes a battlefield. Drones make it so easy.

“There’s this destruction, not just of the other person but of yourself.

“They talk about camaraderie but there was none of that. You didn’t even share the same days off.”

Bryant says he feels “sick to his stomach” when he thinks of who he killed.

“My first shot killed three people working on a road, who hadn’t done anything. My second, they were in a house. I was just coming on my shift and was just told to pull the trigger.

“My third shot was near Mosul in Iraq. Some people were firing mortars from a truck and the cab. It was dangerous, but was it enough to kill them?

“My fourth kill was four people on a camel.”

News_Image_File: A US Predator unmanned drone armed with a missile stands on the tarmac of Kandahar military airport in Afghanistan.

Bryant began telling the world his thoughts after he was hospitalised with a staph infection. Believing he was about to die, he decided to open up when he was contacted with questions.

He felt he should tell people that drones weren’t the perfect, precise military kit Barack Obama was touting. But his words didn’t have the effect he hoped.

“I’m not well-liked by the drone community,” he says. “I thought I was going to speak out and people were going to say ‘Yeah!’”

But he has some support. Heather Linebaugh, who worked on the US drone program, spoke to the Guardian about the “psychological pain” of watching young soldiers die in Afghanistan, after the failure of the aircraft praised by politicians to identify IEDs.

Groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN have undertaken research into the effects of drone warfare, and say governments aare acting outside the bound of law and human rights.

News_Image_File: Tony Abbott at the announcement of MQ-4C Triton drone fleet at Edinburgh Air Force base in SA.

Bryant believes the “asymmetric tactic” of using drones breeds the use of worse tactics from the other side. Fighters exchange mobile phones with random civilians, and the drones end up on the wrong person’s tail. “We’re creating our enemy.”

It was only after Bryant left the force that he looked at UN reports that said only one terrorist or insurgent was killed in every 46 person targeted by a drone. “Before that, I would have said we get every target we want, but the way we go about it is s****y.”

Bryant says he didn’t agree when Michael Moore said snipers like Chris Kyle were cowards. “I’m not saying I agree with that type of warfare, but it takes 100 times more to do that.

“We watch the person we kill. We should know better.

“I blame myself, but I can’t really blame the people who trust that the system is working. They’re trusting the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain.”