Global Drone Assassination Program on verge of collapse

Competition of good-paying jobs is fierce these days, but there is one job sector where they will train you, you can get paid six-figures, and you don't even have to work hard.
No kidding, in the private sector the starting salary is $100,000.

There's just one small catch: You sometimes have to kill children.

For some people that's a deal breaker.

The Air Force has a problem with their drone program.
It seems the drone pilots aren't happy with killing lots of civilians.

Drone pilots in the Air Force are quitting faster than they can be replaced.

There are currently 988 active-duty pilots for the Predator and Reaper drones – the two most lethal unmanned aircraft commonly used for surveillance and strikes. More than 1,200 pilots are needed.
Gen. Welsh says that the Air Force can only train approximately 180 drone pilots a year. But the annual need for drone pilots is closer to 300. And the Air Force loses about 240 drone pilots a year, as drone operators move to other jobs, or leave the military for higher paying jobs operating drones for the drone manufacturers that sell them to the military.

In response the Air Force has doubled the incentive pay for drone operators and is looking at raiding the National Guard for qualified drone pilots.

The manpower shortage in the drone program has gotten so extreme that a leaked internal memo shows that the program is on the verge of failure.

“ACC believes we are about to see a perfect storm of increased COCOM [Combatant Commander] demand, accession reductions, and outflow increases that will damage the readiness and combat capability of the MQ-1/9 enterprise for years to come,” reads an internal Air Force memo from ACC commander Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, addressed to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh. “I am extremely concerned.”
“ACC will continue to non-concur to increased tasking beyond our FY15 [fiscal year 2015] force offering and respectfully requests your support in ensuring the combat viability of the MQ-1/9 platform,” Carlisle added.
In other words, the Air Force is saying that its drone force has been stretched to its limits. “It’s at the breaking point, and has been for a long time,” a senior service official told The Daily Beast. “What’s different now is that the band-aid fixes are no longer working.”

The standard Predator drone crew is 10 people. In a crunch it can fall to 8.5 per drone.

“ACC squadrons are currently executing steady-state, day-to-day operations (65 CAPs) at less than an 8:1 crew-to-CAP ratio. This directly violates our red line for RPA [remotely pilot aircraft] manning and combat operations,” Carlisle wrote. “The ever-present demand has resulted in increased launch and recovery taskings and increased overhead for LNO [liaison officer] support.

The manpower crunch translates into longer hours, no leave, and damage to their careers. This just compounds the incentive to leave the program.

On the other end of the spectrum, the right-wing news media has never loved our global assassination program more.
Consider this "tasteful" headline from the New York Post in response to a Yemen drone strike that mistakenly blew up a wedding.

Isn't the idea of young lovers and their families being torn apart in a flaming shower of metal shrapnel just HI-LARIOUS!
The editors at the New York Post seemed to think so.
It makes you wonder what tasteful headline they thought of for the Newtown massacre.

Oh wait. That's different.
Those were real people. And by real people, I mean Americans. And by Americans I mean white people.

Muslims don't count.

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Comments

Big Al's picture

"couldn't happen to a more evil program".
Seems they're having to reduce the number of times they cruise around spying or killing to 65 to 62 per something
and that's going to hurt the ability to maintain the illusion of a fake war with ISIS/CIA.
A "leaked" internal memo says. There are reasons memos are leaked. In this case it's probably to get more money for
the program (hey Congress) and to focus people on the issue of a failing drone program rather than the illegal drone program.
It goes with the recent testimony by the Air Force Chief Dude to the Senate Armed Services Committee (John McCain) that
the Air Force is falling apart. Part of the "get rid of the sequester cuts" campaign in D.C.

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mimi's picture

Brandon Bryant described his own struggles with PTSD already in 2012. Der Spiegel interviewed him. ARD German TV made two pieces about him in 2012.
Dreams in Infrared: The Woes of an American Drone Operator - Dec. 14, 2012
ARD German TV (Washington Studio) made a piece about drone operators suffering deeply under PTSD. I remember a long interview one of our correspondent made with him. This is the German piece with lots of sound bites from Brandon Bryant.

German Transcript for the video: Clean Drone War (broadcasted Sept. 2, 2012 (If you are interested just put it into translate.google.com). I remember well all the raw material our studio shot, which included more images of their training, more interviews and images of their therapeutic retreats in Montana etc.
Very under-the-skin going, because most people associate with combat introduced PTSD incidents, explosions, fire, IEDs, helicopter fires, close-up war fare in the cities etc. These drone pilots and their training is as "clean" and as "technical" as playing with joy sticks and focussing like air controllers in their towers. It gets to them deeply. I would compare it with the "clean and hygienic torture methods of forced feeding hunger strikers in Guantanamo". Nothing "wrong" with it, it's "medically safe and saves the life of the prisoners". Riiight. Nothing wrong with it at all./s

Sorry, i just had some flashbacks from my previous exposure to this subject and its images in 2012.

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snoopydawg's picture

Thousands of innocent people dead trying to get one man. Will this evil empire ever be stopped? The world went to global war twice to stop military aggression, yet no one will tell the US to stop invading, committing coups or destroying countries. NATO member are just as guilty when they join in the slaughter.
The good news according to a diary on KOS, we may be extinct by 2050.
They don't give a shit how many innocent people they murder. And for what? MONEY AND GREED
And Obama is proud of his kill list. "Looks like I'm good at killing". Yes, you ass hole, you are!
MLK was correct his country is the biggest purveyor of violence.
Absolutely beyond words.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

MarilynW's picture

computers sending out the drones? The whole program looks designed by a sociopathic gamer. No offence to decent gamers.

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To thine own self be true.

gulfgal98's picture

one of my favorite topics is the drone program. Getting people to understand just how evil it is and why it is causing more and more people to turn to terrorism is a huge challenge. Most people think that the drone program is surgical and only kills known terrorists. When we tell them that it is exactly opposite and that many elderly, women, and children have been killed in drone strikes, most people are in disbelief.

The drone program has to be one of the most immoral programs that the United States is engaged in. It truly speaks to how warped our human values are here in this country.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy