PKSOI/GLOBAL TRENDS CASE STUDIES A Drone's Strike Away | Page 14

Case Study #1118-08
PKSOI TRENDS GLOBAL CASE STUDY SERIES
Although drone operators might not conform to the traditional image of the battle-weary warrior, they can suffer higher
levels of post-traumatic stress disorder than conventional bomber crew members, a recent study found. Explains aviation
expert and former Royal Air Force navigator Peter Gray, “they [drone operators] follow the pattern of life in a target
environment, and they get so used to that, living day in, day out with these people, that when an attack has to be made,
they feel it every bit as much as a pilot of a fast jet who just drops the bomb.” 108
An Operator’s Story
In 2013, Airman First Class Brandon Bryant spoke out about being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder due
to the pressures of his job. Recounting an attack from his base in the Nevada desert on two suspects in Kunar Province,
Afghanistan, Bryant recalls what he watched on his screen:
The smoke clears, and there’s pieces of the two guys around the crater. And there’s this guy over here, and he’s
missing his right leg above his knee. He’s holding it, and he’s rolling around, and the blood is squirting out of his
leg, and it’s hitting the ground, and it’s hot. His blood is hot. But when it hits the ground, it starts to cool off;
the pool cools fast. It took him a long time to die. I just watched him. I watched him become the same color as
the ground he was lying on. 109
That was Bryant’s first shot in early 2007, just a few weeks after his 21st birthday. For most of his six years in the US
Air Force, Byant worked as a sensor in tandem with the drone pilot, who sat in the chair next to him. “While the pilot
controlled the drone’s flight maneuvers, Bryant acted as the Predator’s eyes, focusing its array of cameras and aiming its
targeting laser. When a Hellfire was launched, it was a joint operation: the pilot pulled a trigger, and Bryant was respon-
sible for the missile’s ‘terminal guidance,’ directing the high-explosive warhead by laser to its desired objective. Both men
wore regulation green flight suits, an unironic Air Force nod to the continuity of military decorum in the age of drone
warfare.” 110 Most days, Bryant worked twelve-hour shifts, often overnight, six days a week. Because both the Afghani-
stan and Iraq wars were not going well at the time, “the Air Force leaned heavily on its new drone fleet. A loaded Preda-
tor drone can stay aloft for eighteen hours, and the pilots and sensors were pushed to be as tireless as the technology they
controlled.” 111
Sitting in the darkness of the control station, Bryant watched people on the other side of the world go about
their daily lives, completely unaware of his all-seeing presence wheeling in the sky above. If his mission was
to monitor a high-value target, he might linger above a single house for weeks. It was a voyeuristic intimacy.
He watched the targets drink tea with friends, play with their children, have sex with their wives on rooftops,
writhing under blankets. There were soccer matches, and weddings too. He once watched a man walk out into
a field and take a crap, which glowed white in infrared. 112
At first, Bryant believed in the mission and that it was vital, that drones were capable of limiting the suffering of war and
of saving lives. But, “when this notion conflicted with the things he witnessed in high resolution from two miles above,
he tried to put it out of his mind. Over time he found that the job made him numb: a ‘zombie mode’ he slipped into as
easily as his flight suit.” 113 By 2011, Bryant had logged nearly 6,000 hours of flight time, flown hundreds of missions,
killing-in-action 1,626 enemies altogether. Looking at a large bulletin board with the faces of wanted targets, including
bin Laden and al-Awlaki, he often asked himself when starting his shift: “What motherfucker’s gonna die today?” He
conceded, “it seemed like someone else’s voice was speaking, some dark alter ego. ‘I knew I had to get out.’” 114
In a 2011 mental-health survey of 600 combat drone operators, Air Force psychologists found that 42 percent reported
“moderate to high stress and 20 percent reported emotional exhaustion or burnout. The study’s authors attributed their
dire results, in part, to ‘existential conflict.’ A later study found that drone operators suffered from the same levels of
depression, anxiety, PTSD, alcohol abuse, and suicidal ideation as traditional combat aircrews.” 115
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