Drone is as close as you get to action

Creech Air Force Base, Nevada: From his apartment in Las Vegas, Sam Nelson drove to work through the desert along wind-whipped Highway 95 toward Indian Springs. Along the way, he tuned in to XM radio and tried to put aside the distractions of daily life — bills, rent, laundry — and get ready for work.

Nelson, an Air Force captain, was heading for his day shift on a new kind of job, one that could require him to kill another human being 7,500 miles away. Seated in a padded chair inside a low, tan building, he controlled a heavily armed drone aircraft soaring over Afghanistan. When his shift ended, he drove 40 minutes back through the desert to the hustle and neon of Las Vegas.

Drone pilots and crews are at the vanguard of a revolution, one that the US military and intelligence agencies have bet on heavily. The first Predator carrying weapons was rushed to Afghanistan just four days after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Today, the US Air Force is spending nearly $3 billion (Dh11 billion) a year buying and operating drones, and is training pilots to fly more unmanned than manned aircraft.

Strong demand

Demand is so strong that even non-pilots such as civil engineers and military police are being trained. More than 7,000 drones of all types are in use over Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Pentagon has adapted consumer-driven technology such as satellite television and digital video to give pilots, combat troops and commanders at headquarters a real-time look at the enemy on computer screens.

This is combat in the age of video games and virtual reality. Even though drone pilots operate from half a world away, they are as engaged in deadly combat as any pilot inside a plane.

A drone pilot can fire on an insurgent dug into the Afghan hills and be home in time for a backyard barbecue. In just an hour or two, the pilot can go from a heated argument with a spouse to a tense radio conversation with an amped-up soldier pinned down by weapons fire.

"On the drive out here, you get yourself ready to enter the compartment of your life that is flying combat," said retired Col Chris Chambliss, who until last summer commanded drone operations at Creech Air Force Base, the command centre for seven Air Force bases in the continental US where crews fly drones over Iraq and Afghanistan. "And on the drive home, you get ready for that part of your life that's going to be the soccer game."

Drone crews don't put their lives at risk. Instead, they juggle vast streams of video and data. With briefings both before and after their missions, their workdays typically stretch to 10 or 11 hours. Many of the pilots are experienced military fliers, but the camera operators tend to be much younger — often only 19 or 20, and new to the stresses of combat.

Just like troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, drone crews have access to chaplains, psychologists and doctors. They are taught to keep an eye on one another for signs of stress. The psychological challenges are unique: Pilots say that despite the distance, the video feed gives them a more intimate feel for the ground than they would have from a speeding warplane.

After his stint in Nevada flying drones, which the military refers to as "remotely piloted aircraft", Nelson recently transferred to a crew at an air base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Crews there and in Iraq, often battling high winds and freezing temperatures, control the drones on takeoff and landing, then hand them off to the US-based teams.

Briefing

While still in Nevada, after arriving for his shift one day, Nelson received a battlefield briefing and then opened the door to his office — the ground control station.

He settled into the cockpit seat, known to pilots as the ‘Naugahyde Barcalounger', facing computer screens displaying live images from the mountains of Afghanistan — colour during the day, black-and — white at night. He could type messages in chat rooms connecting him to scores of military personnel and analysts worldwide, and he could call up maps, satellite images and intelligence reports. He talked by radio with ground commanders and troops who saw the same live images on their laptops and hand-held radios.

Next to Nelson, who flew C-5 cargo planes in Iraq before volunteering to pilot drones, was Tech Sgt Jim Jochum, who operated the cameras. An intelligence coordinator, whose job is to study the imagery, was posted next door.

Locked in on a mission, they often forget they're in Nevada. Capt Mark Ferstl, a former B-52 pilot, said drone pilots typically feel more intimately involved in combat than they did when they sat in actual cockpits. "When I flew the B-52, it was at 30,000 to 40,000 feet, and you don't even see the bombs falling," Ferstl said. "Here, you're a lot closer to the actual fight, or that's the way it seems."

Nelson recalled one instance when he received an urgent radio call from a ground controller whose unit was under fire. "You could tell he was running, and you could hear shots being fired at the enemy," Nelson said. He tracked the insurgents and targeted them for two F-16 fighter planes that attacked and killed them, he said.

Col Dale Fridley, a 50-year-old former F-15 pilot, said one of his most rewarding moments as a drone pilot came without firing a shot. After a US military vehicle broke down in the desert in Afghanistan's Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold, the rest of the convoy returned to base. The stranded soldiers were able to sleep while Fridley's drone stood watch overhead, awaiting a repair crew's arrival in the morning.

"And that," Fridley said, "was something that was never, ever possible before."