Air Force Hires Civilian Drone Pilots For Combat Patrols (latimes.com) 74
schwit1 writes: For the first time, civilian pilots and crews now operate what the Air Force calls "combat air patrols," daily round-the-clock flights above areas of military operations to provide video and collect other sensitive intelligence. Civilians are not allowed to pinpoint targets with lasers or fire missiles. They operate only Reapers that provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, known as ISR, said Air Force Gen. Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, head of Air Combat Command.
Re:This isn't hard folks (Score:4, Insightful)
The biggest problem is finding people that will follow orders when the penalty for not following orders is lower than it is for a military officer or enlistee. That barrier will probably preclude civilian contractors that have never had military service from performing that job. Don't know about former-military civilian contractors though, they might be better at not flinching, but then there's the legality issues surrounding the ramifications of bad calls where innocent people died, or where someone intentionally does something that kills noncombatants. At least in the past civilian contractors had to be present to do the acts that killed innocents such that the country in which the acts were committed could mount something of an objection. What's the law on a civilian remotely operating a machine in a foreign country that's specifically equipped to kill, using that machine to kill? At least a military member could see prosecution if through the military system of justice, but I don't know how well that would work for civilians.
Re:This isn't hard folks (Score:4, Insightful)
TFA explicitly points out that the civilians will not be pulling the trigger. They will be used only for Combat Air Patrols (a term that seems just a bit inappropriate) that are for data gathering and surveillance only. The trigger pullers will be active duty military.
The problem, in TFA's eyes is that this represents a slippery slope - how many degrees of separation do you need in a military setting?
Require military trigger pullers (Score:5, Informative)
TFA explicitly points out that the civilians will not be pulling the trigger. They will be used only for Combat Air Patrols (a term that seems just a bit inappropriate) that are for data gathering and surveillance only. The trigger pullers will be active duty military.
The problem, in TFA's eyes is that this represents a slippery slope - how many degrees of separation do you need in a military setting?
IIRC, the air force has about four major protocol points that they follow in order to ensure that drone strikes are legal. One of those is that the person pulling the trigger be military so that you are ensured a direct chain of command, i.e. legal authority to kill others on behalf of the state, (this also ensures they get qualified immunity from lawsuits.)
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One of those is that the person pulling the trigger be military so that you are ensured a direct chain of command
What they really should do is provide an "easy" way for their 'civillian' drone operators to just become military by signing a piece of paper that subjects these people to a chain of command, without other problematic caveats such as a 6 year or X year commitment, or caveats of an ability to be reassigned to any other random job as an interchangeable part, or caveats of a requirement to u
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when one of our gunships knowingly strikes, for an hour, an active field hospital to get just one guy...I get the felling certain people in charge don't really care that much about being all 'right and proper'.
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Unless there's GPS buffers built-in to the protocol (min/max elevation capacity, hard turns limited, etc), the drone could strike any target by simply crashing into it.
I think that concept was pretty-well hammered into the public's mind after 9/11, yeah?
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Maybe because they don't match the definition of a mercenary?
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That's sticky mainly due to the Geneva Convention's definitions for the criteria needed for the label. Given that the United States has been a party to the conflicts in which nonmilitary persons have been hired by the US to participate in, they're not mercenaries by the definition that requires Nationals not affiliated with the belligerent nations. Given that they're generally not hired into infantry or other common roles and are usually used f
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You just don't DO THIS for very, or I assumed, very clear reasons of the laws of war.
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I suspect most of these civilians are former military who the Air Force couldn't hold on to because of pay, discipline and lifestyle issues. Not that I'm faulting them. As civilians I'm sure their pay is higher than it would be for an equivalent military member. They aren't subject to the UCMJ. Don't have to worry about being arbitrarily transferred to Podunk Idaho or Deathcamp Afghanistan, and while they have to be polite to officers for whom they work, they can't be jailed for calling them a dickwad if it
Re: This isn't hard folks (Score:2)
Korea? The Philippines?
There are places people get paid to level up your pathetic pud. Note all they need is a security clearance.
How much do they charrge? (Score:2)
If they let civilians use the weapons, they could probably eliminate the deficit.
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This would be so much more fun than piloting my little Phantom 3 around town.
Pew! Pew!
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So after a drone strike, we can expect to see one of these drones come in, hover, and bob up and down over the victims' bodies.
Re: Next stop, outsourcing drone pilot (Score:1)
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The US mil is thinking back to Vietnam and the Strategic Hamlet Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and even the UK experience in the Boer War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The AI will just patrol 24/7 and interdict in any movement it its grid.
Until then its more of the (Nov. 20 2015) https://theintercept.com/2015/... [theintercept.com]
so, open season on American civilians now? (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, if I were at war with the United States, they would be legitimate targets. And presumably, if they didn't wear uniforms and hid among civilians, then US is to blame for any "collateral damage" from bombing civilian centers. After all, there are unlawful combatants hiding among them.
Re:so, open season on American civilians now? (Score:5, Interesting)
To be at war requires you have a nation state and declared war. No nation state is willing to openly declare war so we end up with nation state sponsored or at least ignored terrorism/asymmetric warfare.
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An announcement by the PM that "the Dutch are at war" is different than a declaration of war. What does "being at war with an ideology" even mean?!?
Unless you are talking about the No Surrender Motorcycle Club, who decided to join the Kurds in Northern Iraq and Syria
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Yes. This is how we do it:
https://youtu.be/YRKhTvUUYMI [youtu.be]
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Yes, there is a ritual (two actually).
Ritual is the correct word. Declarations of war are a matter of international law, and legal systems use rituals to mark important things and events. It's a specific act that cannot be re-interpreted to mean anything but the declaration of war. In the Roman era, for example, declarations of war involved a priest called a Fetial who would throw a particular kind of spear across the border into enemy territory. A Fetial priest would never have reason to throw a spear
Re: so, open season on American civilians now? (Score:2)
You are at war with people who are at war with you.
Did the school bully ever ask you if you wanted to be bullied? Did the drunk in the bar ever ask if you'd like to be beaten up, please sir?
Seriously, if a group picks you as their enemy, it doesn't matter of they are a nation-state.
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Keep in mind you analogy of the school bully and the bar drunk. So if you are at war with a school bully, the accepted US tactic blow up the school and adjoining properties are guilty by association. If you are a war with a bar drunk, target the bar with drone missiles and if it is a chain target all the rest of the chain because the drunk might be in one of them instead. Lets be clear on the reality of the terror wars, the fantasy Global War on Terror versus the real Global Terror War (where little or nor
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You are not at war with the school bully or the drunk. You might have to defend yourself from them you might have to kill them when you reasonably believe to not means they would kill you. In war you kill them in the safest way possible, civilian casualties are acceptable as long as your kill your enemy. You kill from a distance you kill with technology you kill them till they submit or there is nobody left to kill. There are reasons why in war you have to treat a captured enemy humanly they did nothing
Re: so, open season on American civilians now? (Score:2)
Modulating your response is rarely helpful. With the bully, once you've given up on avoidance, the authorities, and reasoning, snack them hard. Or you continue to get abused.
In war, conventional war, you would if course focus on combatants, overwhelming force, quick resolution if possible.
In unconventional war, where combatants mix with civilians and disguise their identity, you have no such luxury. Starving them off their weapons sounds good until they start making them in kitchens. Starving them literal
Re: so, open season on American civilians now? (Score:2)
Yeah, autocorrect is a marvel.
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That's been the state of things for a while. Obama killed a US Citizen abroad using a Drone. As is standard procedure, someone asked about the legality - you know, due process. The White House said "There was enough due process." Meaning the justice department said it's ok. No trial, no jury, you know rule of law. Just whacked the guy. Not a peep from main stream media. Imagine if GW Bush did that. They'd still be talking about it and how terrible it was.
Anwar al-Awlaki
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Gran
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Really? (Score:1)
"Air Force Hires Civilian Drone Pilots For Combat Patrols"
Sounds perfect, I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
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Those things aren't armed, so short of someone using one of those drones for a kamikaze strike (which i'd imagine would be p. hard given that the thing is flying relatively high and there are armed soldiers in the room), there isn't much one can do.
You can get shot down, but that's about it.
The MQ-9 typically carries an ordnance load-out of some kind, even when operating in an observer role; it's just that when it's operating in an observer role, it carries less ordnance, not zero.
Typically, if the analysts get alerted, and while watching the feed, decide that they need to go "weapons hot", there is a military pilot or two in the room with the civilian pilots to handle laser-painting the targets, or the dropping of ordnance on them.
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What could go wrong?
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Then they should put the video on twitch.tv.
I'll bet the chat would be awesome:
Japan (Score:1)
Japan has been hiring children to control giants robots for like 20 years.. It's about time.
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It will run like any other call center does. Where each team of client support representatives, has a supervisor to handle the difficult problems, military will have supervisor that will take control and shoot.
erm.. no
Mercenaries aren't new (Score:2)
CIA, is that you? (Score:2)
Civilian pilots is what they call the CIA and other members of the intelligence community. Lots of the spy planes of past eras were piloted by "civilians". Sounds to me like an awkward phrasing of "the CIA negotiated some air time in our drones" with the phrasing designed to distract from what's actually happening and instead creating a debate about a completely different topic.
Then again, the intelligence agencies already have plenty of drones and that's no secret, so it's entirely possible I'm wearing too
That's How Artillery Started (Score:1)
When artillery were first used by nation states, they were also hired out to contractors. (Of course when captured they weren't given the honors of war due soldiers, they were slaughtered. That was the impetus to incorporate them into their respective armies.)
There is nothing new here.