The views expressed here are personal and do not represent the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the United States government.
I’ve recently written about Brandon Bryant, ex-Air Force drone sensor operator (or as they apparently call them in Norway, a “pilot”) over on my blog, PickYourBattles.Net. Brandon is the star of a new Norwegian documentary called Drone, where his personal story is apparently the meat of the flick. There is just one problem. Brandon Bryant is a liar.
In the short video embedded above, at one point Brandon claims, to an audience in New York City, that the FBI called him to inform him that he was being targeted by ISIS. Then the video shows him telling that exact same story to an audience in Germany, where instead of ISIS he says that the FBI told him he was being targeted by a conservative right wing “Christian Patriot” group. This is par for the course. Sadly, most in the media seem to ignore Brandon’s utter lack of credibility. Or at least they don’t carefully research him. I guess I can’t really blame them. After watching more than forty videos of Brandon running his yap, I do not begrudge them for passing up on the experience. Still this charlatan needs to be exposed.
I know Brandon hates him some TAH so I had to show up over here. And when asked to pile on as a guest blogger, I just couldn’t say no. Kind of like Bryant couldn’t say no to violating his oath of office because he was scared that he might be “ridiculed.” Yeah he said that. In public.
To be fair, those of us in the defense business know that ridicule strikes fear into the hearts of even the most courageous soldiers, strike that, “warriors.” Mortars, rockets, small arms, and anti-aircraft artillery are one thing, but we’re talking about ridicule here. This ain’t X-box, ridicule is the real deal, it’s like being in “the shit.” In fact, I may have just now developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) simply from the thought of ridicule. I am viewing a computer screen right now, so there is a case to be made. If you’re Brandon Bryant, of course, or one of his Legion of Jerkoff superhero sidekicks.
Not only does Brandon claim PTSD from being a drone operator with only a handful of lethal actions from ten thousand miles away from the battlefield, but he has also publicly stated that he’s waiting on his VA benefits so that he can have a place of his own. He’s too good traumatized to get a job and he claims to be homeless. Never mind that he lives with his mother in Missoula, or at least he did, and was using the generous GI Bill to go to school; a bounty that comes not just with full tuition, but also with more than $1000 a month in Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH). Still, Brandon will tell ya, he’s homeless and he’s a “disabled veteran” with no income. He says he has nothing. He touts a “physical injury” from his time in the service, but somehow that doesn’t keep him from literally doing back flips on internet video. If you don’t watch this video for any other reason, it’s worth watching just to see that. But to be fair, I can’t swing a stick without hitting a homeless disabled veteran doing gymnastic maneuvers. So there’s that.
But show some compassion, dear reader. Brandon is too disabled to work. Especially not while also fitting in his globe trotting and fine foreign dining, and giving speeches and attending long Q&As about his European film. That poor bastard really pulls on my heart strings.
I’ve known Brandon online for some time now. When I first became acquainted with him, I thought he might have something of substance to offer to an important discussion. Turns out I was wrong. His story morphed over the years from wanting to be a voice for drone operators serving under bad leadership, to him later claiming that distance technology is cowardly and bad. Of course, there are many who agree with him on that point. We in the biz call them the enemy. They hate our distance warfare capability as much as Brandon does, and they prefer making hand-to-hand IEDs. You know, what Brandon would call honorable combat. Practically a fist fight.
Now this self-proclaimed expert on war is writing letters to the President of the United States, as though he has some kind of moral authority despite the fact that he directly violated his oath of office while he was serving. That doesn’t stop him from making lofty proclamations, though.
Not only have I learned that Brandon will lie without a second thought, as the video above demonstrates, but his motivations are not pure. They weren’t pure when he was in the military, and they’re not pure now. It’s still all about him. He knows nothing of service despite his collection of Reader’s Digest quotes to the contrary. He admits that he’s always wanted to be a hero and that he grew up with comic books. I think it’s fair to say that him plagiarizing the words of Captain America from a Marvel comic both at his Tedx talk, as well as during his ramblings at the Drone documentary premiere in New York City, shows that he hasn’t lost that love of fiction. Brandon is all about spreading fictions.
But public service and public discourse are not the stuff of fairy tales. And there is an important discussion to be had about our nation’s national security and how our military capabilities are utilized. Sadly, Brandon is hurting this discussion and the credibility of better people who inexplicably enable his shenanigans. For some reason, these more serious people are not relegating Brandon to the kid’s table where he belongs. Perhaps these journalists and lawyers are just taking their time, as I did, figuring out his lack of character. I suspect, however, that many of Brandon’s foreign friends, like Tonje Hessen Schei, are not too troubled by his character so long as he follows a particular script.
And that script is infecting and hurting an important discussion all over the internet. Hopefully the fine folks at TAH can help foster and improve the discussion by continuing their fine tradition of exposing this guy for the fraud that he is. Brandon likes social media and a lot of people are eating up the piles of manure he’s feeding them. I hope that those who hate liars as much as myself, and who love their country and want our capability to remain strong while we debate the proper use of that capability, will help get the word out on Facebook and Twitter about this scoundrel.
Thanks for your help.