Brandon Bryant, a drone operator, says his work makes him numb and that he slips into a "zombie mode." This man's only job is to follow orders: maneuver the camera, aim the laser dot, and release the trigger when his overseers instruct. In Bryant's confessions to GQ magazine, he recalled a time when he was directed to destroy a home containing a "high-value individual" on whom he had no information. He silently sat there, his laser hovering over a corner of the house, until he received the word to fire. Six seconds before impact, a small figure scurried
across the screen. A bright flash later, there was no person there. Bryant swears it was "a little kid," but the commanders continually affirmed him that it was just a dog. After playing the surveillance video over and over again, Bryant and his co-pilot are certain that the figure is not a dog. Drone operators like him experience high levels of emotional and psychological stress from the dozens they have stalked and killed all while sitting in boredom in front of a computer within a sweaty, cold room in the Nevada desert.
When Bryant returned home, he became angry, isolated, and depressed, and most of his co-operators felt the same way. Many became alcoholics, and almost all felt had nightmares of all those they had killed without ever experiencing a single battle. Bryant said that the effect was worse because he and a majority of the others “weren’t prepared to take a life.” He even had recurring dreams of his favorite video game, World of Warcraft, in infrared. Air Force psychologists found moderate to high stress in 42% of some six hundred operators surveyed. Bryant
broke down and told a therapist, “I
wanted to be a hero, but I don’t feel like a hero. I wanted to do something good, but I feel like I just wasted the last six years of my life.” She diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder, something surprisingly common for drone pilots.
An article a few years ago revealed that drone pilots commonly used the word “bug splat” to describe the mess on the ground left behind after killing someone. Murder and destruction being desensitized so much that the remainders of a walking, talking, and
loving human being is compared to “bug
Grant Regen 2014