Drone pilots: Why war is also hard for remote soldiers

America's decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have seen drone aircraft piloted from thousands of miles away become a primary instrument of American military might. But the Pentagon is only now beginning to come to grips with the question of what is it like for those pilots to "telecommute" to a battlefield – and what effect that is having on them.

The Pentagon calls it "telewarfare" – pilots fly unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, out of places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, from trailers equipped with video screens that allow them to watch the activity of insurgents half a world away and, when given an order, to kill them.

At the end of the day, these pilots then get in their cars and drive home to their families, mow the lawn and make dinner, or take their children to soccer practice.

RECOMMENDED: Unmanned drone attacks and shape-shifting robots: War's remote-control future

The result is an "existential conflict" in some UAV pilots, says Col. Hernando Ortega, surgeon for the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency. It is "a guilt feeling, perhaps – or a 'Did I make the right decision?' " he explains. " 'Was this a friendly fire incident? Was it a good outcome? Was it a bad outcome? Could I have done it better?' "

Pilots' struggles to compartmentalize these doubts amid an otherwise normal daily life – in addition to the stress of long hours and increasing demand for their skills – have prompted growing questions about whether the Pentagon should be waging these wars in ways to better care for the pilots doing the fighting.

The conclusion, in many cases, is yes. While the Pentagon has for many years laid tremendous emphasis on the need to care for the mental health of soldiers returning from foreign battlefields, it is now learning that it may need to apply some of these same lessons to the telecom-muters who go to war without ever leaving home.

"We have guys who have not deployed anywhere and yet can still have combat effects of distant places," Ortega says.

The concern is that war by remote control has grown faster than the Pentagon's ability to cope with its effects on the force, Ortega and others say. "There's huge sort-of inertia around this aviation culture," he warns, that portends "huge issues, really, for the Air Force."

Gradually, however, efforts to reexamine the culture have gained momentum. For example, some military officials are lobbying to change unnecessary overnight shifts that might compromise the judgment and performance of pilots, as well as work spaces that currently make it hard for pilots to see when their colleagues are particularly stressed.

This awareness is rising as demand for UAVs continues to grow. Though the weak economy has forced some cutbacks in defense spending, the Pentagon's latest budget sets aside some $5 billion for Predator and Reaper drones, which have become indispensable to commanders on modern battlefields.

This causes stresses of its own. The Air Force still doesn't have enough pilots to fly these drones, according to senior US military officials. For that reason, the Pentagon is scaling back the number of remotely piloted aircraft it purchases in order to focus on the training of UAV pilots. Yet the Pentagon still plans to step up the pace of combat air patrols – in essence, the number of 24-hour rotations of surveillance in the sky at any given time – from 61 currently to 65 next year. That number could surge to 85 during times of conflict.

The challenge of managing this mounting pressure on UAV pilots now in the force is one reason the Pentagon was particularly interested in examining pilot stress levels. It turns out that "a lot of these guys say they're subjectively very stressed," says Ortega. Workload issues are the top factor causing anxiety among the UAV crews, Ortega says. Along with long hours and fewer pilots than the Air Force needs, "shift work, schedule changes – those are top, No. 1 issues for stress," he adds.

1 | 2

Next