Remote-control warriors suffer war stress too
BY SCOTT LINDLAW
Associated Press
Monday, August 11, 2008 10:29 AM PDT
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| Col. Charles W. Manley, California Air National Guard, Commander of the 163d Maintenance Group,163d Reconnaissance Wing pilots a training simulator for the U.S. Air Force MQ-1 Predator, at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, Calif., in a June 25 photo. The air national guardsmen who fly Predator drones over Iraq are fighting a war from the safety of Southern California, but confronting some of the same wartime stresses as their comrades on the battlefield. |
MARCH AIR RESERVE BASE, Calif. — Working in an air-conditioned trailer nicknamed the Dumpster, Predator pilots peer into Iraq through a bank of computers, operating by remote-control the drone via keyboard and chat software — and occasionally unleashing missiles on enemy fighters.
When their eight-hour shifts are done, they merge onto the highway and blend into the Southern California suburbs.
For the growing number of air national guardsmen involved in unmanned combat missions, it can be a whiplashing daily transition, and one that is taking a toll on a few of them.
‘‘When pilots finish their job sitting in the ground control station, they climb out of that thing, hop in their car and then they drive home, and they have just been basically at war,’’ said Col. Albert K. Aimar, commander of the 163rd Reconnaissance Wing here.
‘‘The psychological stress, the emotions they’re dealing with from fighting a war and then going home and seeing your kids and playing soccer or jumping in the pool with them, there are tremendous emotional issues,’’ he said. There is the exhaustion that comes with the shift work of this 24-7 assignment; the classified nature of a job that demands silence at the breakfast table; and there are the images.
A Predator’s video cameras are powerful enough to allow an operator to distinguish between a man and a woman, and between different weapons on the ground, unit commanders say. While the cameras’ resolution is generally not high enough to make out faces, it is sharp, they say.
Aimar, a weapons system operator on F-4 fighters in the 1970s, said flying unmanned Predator drones in combat can weigh on a pilot and on the sensor operators who control cameras and weapons systems.
‘‘When you come in (with a fighter) at 500-600 mph, drop a 500-pound bomb and then fly away, you don’t see what happens,’’ said Aimar, who holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology. ‘‘Now you watch it all the way to impact, and I mean it’s very vivid, it’s right there and personal. So it does stay in people’s minds for a long time.’’
The 163rd has called in a full-time chaplain and has enlisted the services of psychologists and psychiatrists to help ease the mental strain from this remote-controlled fighting, Aimar said.
‘‘We’ve been doing this for two years now, and we’re pretty adaptable,’’ Aimar said. But, he said, ‘‘It’s causing some family issues, some relationship issues. It’s just not something we ever had to deal with.’’
Similarly, chaplains have been brought on at Predator bases in Texas, Arizona and Nevada.
In interviews with Predator pilots at three bases, and a pilot and sensor operator here, none said he had been particularly troubled by the mission, but they acknowledged it comes with unique challenges, and sometimes makes for a strange existence.
‘‘It’s bizarre, I guess,’’ said Lt. Col. Michael Lenahan, a Predator pilot and operations director for the 196th Reconnaissance Squadron here. ‘‘It is quite different, going from potentially shooting a missile, then going to your kid’s soccer game.’’ Several pilots said mentally walling off their military life from civilian life was key.
‘‘I think you have to compartmentalize,’’ Lenahan said. ‘‘A year ago I was going through a divorce, and coming in to do this job, I had to leave that at home.’’
Still, each said the job, which often involves protecting U.S. troops, was a great source of pride.
A veteran F-16 pilot, Col. Chris Chambliss flew missions and bombed targets during Operations Northern Watch and Southern Watch in Iraq in the 1990s. That experience prepared him for his current job as a Predator pilot, he said.
‘‘When I go through the main gate in the morning, I go, ‘Now I’m in the forward location, I’m in the fight,’ ’’ said Chambliss, commander of the active-duty 432nd Wing at Creech Air Force Base, Nev.
But Chambliss and several other wing leaders said they were concerned about the sensor operators, who sit next to pilots in the ground control station. Often, the sensor operators are on their first assignment, several officers said.
‘‘I sign a lot of birthday cards for kids turning 19,’’ Chambliss said. On four or five occasions, sensor operators have sought out a chaplain or supervisor after an attack on the enemy, he said. While pilots actually fire a missile, it is the sensor operators who use laser instruments to guide it all the way to its target, he said.
