{"id":56573,"date":"2014-11-20T13:04:59","date_gmt":"2014-11-20T18:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=56573"},"modified":"2014-11-20T13:04:59","modified_gmt":"2014-11-20T18:04:59","slug":"first-trigger-pulling-drone-operator-speaks-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=56573","title":{"rendered":"First trigger-pulling drone operator speaks out"},"content":{"rendered":"

ABC News<\/a> talks to the first drone operator to fire a Hellfire missile from a Predator platform, you know, since it’s becoming popular to talk about your secret operations these days. He says that he once found Osama bin Laden a year before the 9-11 attacks made bin Laden a priority target. However the drones didn’t carry missiles in those days. A year later, he had his opportunity to shoot at a different target;<\/p>\n

“We had spent many hours preparing for this moment, but a palpable sense of apprehension hung in the air,” Swanson writes. “The Predator system was by no means mature; it was little more than a prototype\u2026 I pulled the trigger, called ‘weapons away’ and flew straight and level.<\/p>\n

“The time until impact seemed an eternity; then, in an instant, the screen was filled by a bright white bloom of light. As the bloom dissipated, we saw an object move quickly across the screen, flailing like a ragdoll tossed in the air. It was a body, twisting and contorting and glowing from the heat of the blast. Nearly a decade-and-a-half after that first-ever intercontinental air strike by UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle], that fleeting image remains burned in to my memory,” he writes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Scott Swanson who says that he “cringes” every time he hears the word “Chairforce” says that he’s coming out now to counter the myth that operating a drone isn’t like a video game;<\/p>\n

“[T]o all of us who fly or have flown armed UAVs, one thing is as clear as the sharpest video image: war is not now, nor will it ever be, a game,” he writes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, well, maybe they should stand during their entire shift. Unless the Duffel Blog<\/a> is lying, they’ve already done away with chairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t about posture. The Colonel\u2019s just plain sick and tired of this \u2018Chair Force\u2019 moniker. Being around all these CENTCOM doorkickers all day long means we have to put up with all their crap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richoux denied that this had anything to do with the \u201cunofficial Air Force nickname.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Airmen, whether they are flying jets, piloting UAV\u2019s, or gathering intelligence, are always sitting down. This stuff has got to be bad for their back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some airmen at the command were angered.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow the hell am I supposed to work under these conditions?\u201d said Senior Airman Gregory Jones. \u201cSo we use chairs. Big deal. It doesn\u2019t mean we all should be at standing desks like a bunch of idiot hippies.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ABC News talks to the first drone operator to fire a Hellfire missile from a Predator … First trigger-pulling drone operator speaks out<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-force"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}