UAV pilots talk about defying gravity, criticism - Entertainment, Books - Navy Times

UAV pilots talk about defying gravity, criticism

An addendum is pasted to a front page of “Predator”: “As this book was going to press, foreign threats of retribution against the pilots of RPA (remotely piloted aircraft) operating in the Mideast were made known to us. In response, we created pseudonyms for some of the characters appearing here, in order to protect their identities.”

If this sober note does not convince you that a Predator pilot’s work is stressful, the rest of the book makes a convincing case.

A Predator has automatic systems but is not autonomous, Air Force Lt. Col. Matt Martin and Charles W. Sasser write; a Predator has no feelings, but its pilot does.

On “my first kill,” Martin writes, an elderly Sadr City man walked into the path of a Hellfire missile intended for an insurgent. Martin watched on a monitor, distraught.

“By the time this war was over, I was apt to have more innocent blood on my hands ... rubble and wreckage in my wake, and Iraqi mothers and wives cursing me — or the idea of me.”

Piloting a plane over Iraq from 7,500 miles away and then stopping for milk on your way home is not life in a war zone, Martin readily admits. However, the juxtaposition of being at war at work and trying to be at peace while off duty is mind-boggling.

Martin spends time in the war zones, too. During deployments to Iraq, he becomes convinced that war is war, no matter who or what drops the bombs. He defends the Predator against critics who say it is inhumane:

A Marine aviator in an F-18 “could bomb the hell out of a city block to knock out two snipers — and that was war.”

“Any Predator that clobbered a truckload of insurgents ... and unintentionally scratched a washerwoman hanging out laundry nearby became tantamount to a war crime.”

“Predator” veers off the flight path a couple of times, but it gives readers an excellent sense of what it feels like to control an MQ-1B.

Piloting a Predator is “like trying to fly while looking through a soda straw,” Martin writes, “like riding a roller coaster without being able to turn your head or look up or down” in front of several monitors that include military chat rooms, satellite maps, lights, cameras and action.

The next time your office computer freezes, imagine that your screen is your only means of helping troops on a life-threatening war-zone patrol.

Imagine that, and you get a picture of the precarious and mostly thankless position of a pilot in “Predator.”