A fascinating and disturbing interview in Spiegel talks about the increasing use of “drones” — unmanned robotic aircraft that are piloted by remote control from anywhere in the world. The US currently has around 7,000 drones flying, and 43 other countries have some kind of drone in their arsenal.
Even though you might think that the pilot of a drone would suffer from less stress, since they are flying the aircraft much like one would play a video game, and are not personally in any danger. But ironically, the reverse is true. Drone operators are reporting higher levels of combat stress, increased fatigue, emotional exhaustion and burnout than actual troops in a combat area.
In fact, the very thing that makes drones safer might be causing the extra stress. As one drone pilot explained it “You’re going to war for one hour, and then you get in the car and drive home, and within two minutes you’re sitting at the dinner table talking about your kids’ homework.” This kind of casual, switch-on / switch-off warfare is deeply disturbing on many levels.
In real war, you are in the company of other soldiers, sharing the bad experiences as a “band of brothers”. But drone pilots don’t have that support. They are alone. Even worse, soldiers in a war area are in a situation where they can justify their actions as “kill or be killed”. But the drone pilot is not in any immediate danger.
In the end, making war “safer” might have the opposite effect. If there is less risk associated with war, then we are more likely to get into stupid wars.
The article also talks about “war porn” — where surveillance drones allow you to watch war taking place without actually taking part in it. You can even see videos from drones on YouTube. Like other kinds of porn, it allows us to see more while experiencing less.
5 Comments
http://xkcd.com/652/
On the one hand, yes it’s troubling. On the other hand, would you want the alternative? (More dead pilots/soldiers)
If the choice is between soldiers who experience some additional stress and soldiers who are dead, I’ll take the lesser of the two evils – the former. That is not to say there is not a third, better solution. But given those two choices, I’ll take stress over more dead soldiers.
While realizing there may be a “C” choice, given only the “A” and “B” choices of overly stressed and disconnected soldiers vs. dead pilots, I’ll take the former over the latter.
Sammy, sorry about the commenting problem (the fact that he submitted 3 comments is my fault, not his!).
If you read the original article (link in the post), he makes a good case that there *should* be risk associated with war. If governments can wage war without any danger to their citizens, then they are more likely to go into war without really thinking through the consequences.
So, ironically, if we think we can go to war with Iran (or Iraq) and it will not cost any US lives, and as a result we end up starting a stupid war that creates more terrorists, who then kill more Americans, then the end result is worse.
But it is a false choice anyway — there is probably no way to put the drone genie back into the bottle.