I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

It points to the same fundamental misunderstanding of law. Law depends on overwhelming non-lethal force on the side of law. Where that is not available, it cannot be used.

So complaining about US legal guarantees (that have exceptions, like DEA, SWAT and frankly IRA teams) not being available outside of the region where the law's overwhelming advantage exists is no more valid than complaining the sky doesn't turn red to make sure your sunset picture looks cool or complaining cars don't fly.

> We need to make sure we're not being manipulated. Here the Guardian is just serving up an emotional, unsubstantiated, one sided view of this discussion. I'm not sure how this is different to much of the chest beating I'd see on Fox News. I'm not here to argue for or against the drones. Just that if we pride ourselves on being educated and critical thinkers that we apply that to all sources of data we read.

I had some of the same reactions that it seemed like some of it was hijacking anti-war for anti-drone. I would be upset with the guardian if they received this and did not run it. I don't know what their back-and-forth process would be in editing this.

> We all know war is hell. We know using weapons to attack people creates horrific, real human harm. So starting off listing the effects of weaponry on humans tells us nothing about drones. It just tells us about the horrors of war. Given this is an article about drones it should be very drone specific.

Right, so let's not be too quick to accept that drone warfare and traditional warfare are the same thing. It's very important to distinguish and consider what is new. You can read into a bit and see she's not just listing the effects of weaponry on humans. Considering her vantage point through a screen, and mental state during and after the attacks, her "how many X have you seen" questions are very drone specific. For one thing, she probably has orders more Xs than anyone in a traditional combat position. For another, the non-threatened state in which she killed another is important. I think her questions help me see her witnessing the carnage.

> Do drones increase or decrease the inevitable horrors of war? I suspect they decrease it with smaller more targeted bombs vs prior more traditional larger bombs. Today if we make a mistake we bomb the wrong home and kill everyone. 25 years ago we bombed the entire village. Maybe they increase it because we're carrying out a lot more sorties than we did prior when a jet and a pilot were needed/at risk. However, I'm not sure and this article goes nowhere close to helping with the discussion.

I would say they increase human suffering and hide horror. I think that your suspicion that it decreases horror goes along with horror being hidden. "A lot more sorties" needs to be discussed before dismissing this as not helping. When you bomb an entire village, it's in a war zone and everyone on both sides is damned certain of what happened and the outcome. Here we bomb several more houses, in areas that aren't even war zones, because our intel is "better" and our strikes are more "precise". The enemies, locations, and outcomes are undefined and unchecked, hard to see. And since the attacks are smaller and more secretive, visibility is reduced. There is little public visibility or scrutiny on our side. It's not war as usual. It starts to tend toward the whole planet being a theater of war rather than any one specific place. It's horrifying.

So drones are used outside of designated war zones and in non-traditional combat. Then i'm not convinced that "Do drones increase or decrease the inevitable horrors of war" is the right question. But the article adds firsthand account that the feedback systems are very low bandwidth and easily make mistakes. It adds firsthand experience of psychological damage that operators suffer. These both help with discussion around that question.

> "The view is so pixelated it makes decisions tough" Can you imagine military people who fight/fought on the ground in real combat and order in strikes reading that? Surrounded by smoke and fire and deafening noise and hoping (or maybe not caring) that the strike they call in hits the right target/s vs all the nearby civilians also hiding and cowering in a village?

Exactly, "maybe not caring". I think justification would be easier in a situation like that: in battle, with smoke around, on something resembling a battlefield, a well-defined enemy. I think i that the less i was threatened, the more guilt and psychological damage i would suffer later for an incorrect kill.

Add in to the mix the fact that we are serving hellfires to peoples faces using the same low-bandwidth, inhuman triggers we might use to serve ads to their faces (signature strikes), it's really a new problem. Precision in space and time doesn't matter much without precision in intelligence. The bandwidth, confidence, and human involvement must be very high on killing system like this, as they're used in scenarios that have little to do with traditional battlefields. The "so pixelated" argument helps us see this and should not be dismissed in the way that you are dismissing it, by saying it's harder for boots in combat to make decisions in limited visibility.

> Lastly, imagine how you'd feel reading a similar opinion piece on Fox News from a gun ho former operator talking about all the American lives he saved by observing and taking out "the bad guys". What's even better with drones we're not losing American solider lives and dramatically reducing the number of innocent civilians killed vs how we would have approached the same problem just 25 years ago.

> War is hell. The issues are complex. Trusted new sources add to the debate. Biased ones feed their viewership what they know they'll eat up and do little, maybe even damage, the search for truth.

Firsthand experience of the suffering caused is good to hear about. Repeatedly stating "War is hell" seems to accept that we are only discussing legitimate war situations. It's not so easy to skip to "War is hell" in the war on terror. Without visibility or even statistics about what's going on, i'm ok with seeing anything that raises awareness. I'd like to see the pot stirred a bit on this one. With human beings, i'd like to err on the side of caution. Worst case is it's biased as heck and it causes discussion and justification. I wish one of my concerns was that We the People could accidentally dismantle or harm a highly effective and necessary drone program.

Edited to fix an assumption about author.

The only thing this shows is that the recruiting standards for the US drone program are substandard, as the author was allegedly part.

1) Yes, absolutely UAV based jammers don't block all IEDs. Ground jammers like WARLOCK also don't block all IEDs. One thing they did do was force a lot of command detonated IEDs to go to command wire systems, instead of various wireless systems, which meant we then had a man with a switch in his hand within a few hundred meters (tops), who we then lit the fuck up before or after the attack. Sure beats someone being in another city with a cellphone!

Just because something isn't 100% effective doesn't mean it's worthless.

2) Yes, UAVs are offensive combat weapons, particularly the programs in Horn of Africa and Pakistan. OTOH, I don't see a huge difference in getting killed by a Hellfire from a drone vs. having guys from JSOC show up at your door. There's a legitimate concern that UAVs lower the threshold to engage in ongoing low intensity conflict, but in the cases where they do have the right targets, I see no difference between drone, manned aircraft, or on the ground trigger-pullers.

3) The vast majority of drones are pure Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) missions. DOD didn't even arm their drones for a long long time, it was CIA (who operate in those places) who pioneered armed Predators (then the other armed drones). Part of this is internal politics (pilots = officers), part of it is that when you've got manned aircraft armed with diverse weapons systems orbiting overhead, you can just use a smaller/cheaper/lighter drone for pure ISR, then when you develop a target, send the manned aircraft with a full suite of weapons to choose from to do the actual attack mission.

4) The grainy image of a UAV camera, over a 4h monitoring mission, is probably way beyond the standard of proof of a combat shooting in general. The UAV defaults to "no shoot". A soldier in combat who is threatened defaults to "shoot". You don't need high precision on a single image if you're able to spend a long time watching, gathering supporting information (knowing the area, vehicles that approach, etc.). This isn't law enforcement or civilian self defense; it's war. It's totally legitimate to question whether we should be at war, but the actual conduct of the war is less debatable IMO.

Not to detract from your point, but we used B-52s frequently for air support missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Units (well, usually AF CCT or TACP on the ground with the unit) could call up fire missions and would get a platform, which could be an A-10, F-16, F-15, F-18, B-1B, B-52, etc. as supplied by the air force based on what was available (usually overhead, or within a short flight). CCT had more flexibility in getting "better" stuff or more specific requests.

So, I'm going to say "2010", but it might actually have been 2011 or 2012 or even 2013 (I haven't kept up).

> Can you give more context on the quote you cite? I'm not sure how staring at the ground addresses suicide risk, as I do not believe anyone is dying of boredom here.

First i thought that was the idea, but I think "the ground" is "the aftermath" here, as in bodies and carnage on the ground.