Drone Pilots Flee US Air Force in Record Numbers
SputnikNews.com
10.03.2015
Slamming drone strikes as a “coward’s war,” US drone pilots are fleeing the US Air Forces in record numbers, putting Washington’s well-advertised robotic form of battle under the threat of collapse.
Ekaterina Blinova — US drone pilots are fleeing the US Air Force in record numbers undermining Washington’s remote-control warfare plans in the Middle East and Africa.
According to Pratap Chatterjee, an investigative journalist, the US Air Force needs at least 1,700 trained pilots of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), however, facing increased outflow of employees, the Air Force is currently engaging regular cargo and jet pilots into becoming instant drone pilots “in order to keep up with the Pentagon’s enormous appetite for real-time video feeds from around the world.”
There are about 1,000 drone pilots in the US Air Force with 180 graduating annually from special training programs which would-be pilots complete at Holloman Air Force base in New Mexico and Randolph base in Texas. Alas, at the same time about 240 trained drone pilots quit each year, according to statistics.
The US Air Force officials fail to provide clear explanation of such a phenomenon. It is believed that drone pilots lead a cushy life: they live with their families in the United States, far away from zones of actual armed conflicts. Like office employees they are sitting in front of computer monitors, operating UAVs with joysticks and “playing what most people would consider a glorified video game,” the journalist underscores. Some of them are carrying out “fly” missions over Afghanistan and Iraq, watching US troops on the ground, collecting data and video feeds, while a selected few are conducting “assassination missions” eliminating “high value targets” in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
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