Says I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death on the side of a road.
I worked on the US
drone program. The public should know what really goes on: Heather
Linebaugh.Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned
Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I
could ask them a few questions. I d start with: “How many women and
children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?” And: “How
many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the
nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?” Or even
more pointedly: “How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a
road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs (unmanned aerial
vehicles) were unable to detect an IED (improvised explosive device)
that awaited their convoy?”
Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of
drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the other hand,
have seen these awful sights first hand.
I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death
on the side of a road. I watched dozens of military-aged males die in
Afghanistan, in empty fields, along riversides, and some right outside
the compound where their family was waiting for them to return home from
the mosque.
The US and British militaries insist claim that this is an expert
program, but it s curious that they feel the need to deliver faulty
information, few or no statistics about civilian deaths and twisted
technology reports on the capabilities of our UAVs. These specific
incidents are not isolated, and the civilian casualty rate has not
changed, despite what our defense representatives might like to tell us.
What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a
drone is not usually clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon,
even on a crystal-clear day with limited cloud and perfect light. This
makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if
someone has weapons for sure.
One example comes to mind: “The feed is so pixelated, what if it s a
shovel, and not a weapon?” I felt this confusion constantly, as did my
fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people, if
we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian s
life all because of a bad image or angle.
It s also important for the public to grasp that there are human
beings operating and analysing intelligence these UAVs. I know because I
was one of them, and nothing can prepare you for an almost daily
routine of flying combat aerial surveillance missions over a war zone.
UAV proponents claim that troops who do this kind of work are not
affected by observing this combat because they are never directly in
danger physically.
But here s the thing: I may not have been on the ground in
Afghanistan, but I watched parts of the conflict in great detail on a
screen for days on end. I know the feeling you experience when you see
someone die. Horrifying barely covers it. And when you are exposed to it
over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your
head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that
many people will hopefully never experience. UAV troops are victim to
not only the haunting memories of this work that they carry with them,
but also the guilt of always being a little unsure of how accurate their
confirmations of weapons or identification of hostile individuals were.
Of course, we are trained to not experience these feelings, and we
fight it, and become bitter. Some troops seek help in mental health
clinics provided by the military, but we are limited on who we can talk
to and where, because of the secrecy of our missions. I find it
interesting that the suicide statistics in this career field aren t
reported, nor are the data on how many troops working in UAV positions
are heavily medicated for depression, sleep disorders and anxiety.
Recently, the Guardian ran a commentary by Britain s secretary of
state for defence, Philip Hammond. I wish I could talk to him about the
two friends and colleagues I lost, within a year of leaving the
military, to suicide. I am sure he has not been notified of that little
bit of the secret UAV program, or he would surely take a closer look at
the full scope of the program before defending it again.
The UAVs in the Middle East are used as a weapon, not as protection,
and as long as our public remains ignorant to this, this serious threat
to the sanctity of human life – at home and abroad – will continue.
Heather Linebaugh served in the United Stated Air Force from January
6th 2009 until March 2012. She was stationed at Beale AFB California
during that time as an Imagery Analyst, as part of an Intelligence
Squadron. She finished her service in the Air Force as a Geo-spatial
Analyst in March 2012 and is now speaking publicly about her experiences
as part of the drone program during the Occupations of Iraq and
Afghanistan