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Remote Control Killing Like Sport - by Stephen Lendman
Defense contractor giants like Boeing, Lockeed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and others, as well as smaller rivals compete for growing demand for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). They include remote control operated killer drones, also called unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs).
It's America's newest sport. From distant command centers, far from target sights, sounds, and smells, operators dismissively ignore human carnage showing up as computer screen blips little different from video game images. The difference, of course, is people die, mostly noncombatants. More on that below.
On March 10, 2010, Der Spiegel writer Marc Pitzke headlined, "How Drone Pilots Wage War," saying:
They "sit in air-conditioned rooms far away from (America's wars). They guide their weapons with joysticks and monitors. The remote warriors work with a high degree of precision - at a fraction of the cost of a fighter jet," but just as deadly.
Operators use computer keyboards and five monitors. One says "I've got eight missiles and two bombs on two Predators. Weapons ready."
The main monitor shows a target's aerial view "from a considerable height....Three, two, one. Impact," after pushing a red button. "Excellent job," the man says after a destructive explosion. The entire mission lasted two minutes "against a faceless enemy" attacked by remote control half a world away.
"The whole thing looks like a computer game," virtual war "that doesn't require combatants to get their hands dirty" or perhaps souls compromised for mindlessly slaughtering civilians lawlessly - what America's media never explain or why Washington wages war.
Each drone system includes four aircraft, a ground station, a satellite link, and launch site maintenance crew, keeping UAVs ready to use round-the-clock on a moment's notice. Like America's wars, moreover, drone technology is a growth business, Insitu's Steven Sliwa saying the industry is well positioned like the aeronautical one during WW II - up-up-and-away for big profits.
America's Drone Command Centers
Two currently operate, the CIA's at its Langley, VA headquarters, the Pentagon's at Nevada's Creech Air Force Base, about 35 miles from Las Vegas.
Look-alikes, they're sterile, insular, secure computer rooms manned by "combat commuters." By day, they wage war, then drive home for dinner, relaxation, and family time, dismissive of killing for a living like mafia hit men, except they do it daily on a global scale against nameless, faceless targets.
Working in pairs, a pilot sits at one end of a computer station, a sensor operator at the other, controlling visual surveillance, able to zoom in for closer views, capturing images from drone cameras and satellites.
The Pentagon's team maintains constant radio contact with its Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) Qatar headquarters and US Kandahar, Afghanistan base where UAVs take off and land.
ACLU National Security Project director Hina Shamsi calls Predator drones "targeted international killings by the state." On February 8, 2010, she and Law Professor Philip Alston's London Guardian article headlined, "A killer above the law?" saying:
Sanitized killing on the cheap leaves disturbing issues unanswered, including a program shrouded in secrecy, no accountability, and dubious "no reports" of civilian casualties despite "credible (ones) that hundreds of innocents have died."
