{"id":20175,"date":"2012-07-16T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2012-07-16T11:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=20175"},"modified":"2012-07-11T19:11:08","modified_gmt":"2012-07-11T18:11:08","slug":"bravery-and-drone-pilots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/07\/bravery-and-drone-pilots\/","title":{"rendered":"Bravery and Drone Pilots"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pentagon considers awarding war medals to those who operate America’s death-delivering video games.<\/em><\/p>\n

The effort to depict drone warfare as some sort of courageous and noble act is intensifying<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Pentagon is considering awarding a Distinguished Warfare Medal to drone pilots who work on military bases often far removed from the battlefield<\/strong>. . . .<\/p>\n

[Army Institute of Heraldry\u00a0chief Charles]\u00a0Mugno said most combat decorations require \u201cboots on the ground\u201d in a combat zone, but he noted that \u201cemerging technologies\u201d such as drones and cyber combat missions are now handled by troops far removed from combat.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon has not formally endorsed the medal, but Mugno\u2019s institute has completed six alternate designs for commission approval. . . .<\/p>\n

The proposed medal would rank between the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Soldier\u2019s Medal for exceptional conduct outside a combat zone.<\/p>\n

So medals would be awarded for sitting safely ensconced in a bunker on U.S. soil and launching bombs with a video joystick at human beings thousands of miles away. Justifying drone warfare requires pretending that the act entails some sort of bravery, so the U.S. military is increasingly taking steps to create the facade<\/a> of warrior courage for drone pilots:<\/p>\n

The Air Force has been working to bridge the divide between these two groups of fliers. First off, drone operators are called pilots, and they wear the same green flight suits as fighter pilots<\/strong>, even though they never get in a plane. Their operating stations look like dashboards in a cockpit.<\/p>\n

And drone pilots themselves are propagating boasts of their own bravery more and more<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Luther (Trey) Turner III, a retired colonel who flew combat missions during the gulf war before he switched to flying Predators in 2003, said that he doesn\u2019t view his combat experience flying drones as \u201cvalorous.\u201d \u201cMy understanding of the term is that you are faced with danger. And, when I am sitting in a ground-control station thousands of miles away from the battlefield, that\u2019s just not the case.\u201d But, he said, \u201cI firmly believe it takes bravery to fly a U.A.V.\u201d \u2014 unmanned aerial vehicle \u2014 \u201cparticularly when you\u2019re called upon to take someone\u2019s life.<\/strong> In some cases, you are watching it play out live and in color.\u201d As more than one pilot at Holloman told me, a bit defensively, \u201cWe\u2019re not just playing video games here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 salon.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pentagon considers awarding war medals to those who operate America’s death-delivering video games. The effort to depict drone warfare as some sort of courageous and noble act is intensifying: The Pentagon is considering awarding a Distinguished Warfare Medal to drone pilots who work on military bases often far removed from the battlefield. . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}