Our Robots, Ourselves by David A. Mindell

Author:David A. Mindell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-09-16T04:00:00+00:00

They shot down a Predator, that’s one less slot for me.

They shot down a Predator, and it filled my heart with glee.

You know the sucky thing is, the Air Force is just building more of them . . .

They shot down a Predator and I wonder how that feels

For that operator, who lost his set of wheels.

It must feel so defenseless, like clubbing baby seals.

They shot down a Predator, and I wonder how that feels.

DOS GRINGOS, “THE PREDATOR EULOGY,” LIVE AT THE SAND TRAP

“The Predator Eulogy,” a song written by two fighter pilots known for their irreverent music, wryly exposes how the status of the Predator is far from settled within the air force while acknowledging the anxiety it generates (“one less slot for me”). The song probably refers to a number of incidents where Predators lost their radio links and had to be shot down by American planes to prevent them becoming a hazard to other aircraft. One even hears reports of these pilots painting Predator icons on the sides of their aircraft as symbols of aerial victory, until being forced to remove them by air force higher-ups.

“After I finished laughing,” one F-16 pilot reported when he was asked to fly escort for a Predator, “I refused and went on with more important business.” In typical language denigrating RPA operators, he described RPAs as “becoming fashionable with the bespectacled computer-screen officers living in fortified operations centers.” Many pilots point out the benign air environment in Iraq and Afghanistan, free of threatening air forces, arguing that RPAs would not be effective in a situation with missile defenses, enemy aircraft, and antiaircraft artillery. “In other words, a war.”

In 2011, Dave Blair, an air force officer studying for a PhD in International Relations, pointed out the basic contradiction in U.S. Air Force culture in an article in an air force journal. “When a manned aircraft with two spare engines scrapes the top of a combat zone, well outside the range of any realistic threat,” Blair asked, “why do we consider that scenario ‘combat’ yet deem a Predator firing a Hellfire in anger ‘combat support’”?

Blair recalled a barroom argument with a pilot of the F-22, the air force’s advanced fighter whose very cockpit resembles a Predator control station. The pilot told him “fighting a war via video teleconference isn’t very honorable.” Blair noted that “we might say the same for firing a missile beyond visual range from a fighter cloaked with stealth technology [the F-22 pilot’s job].”

In print, Blair described the air force’s sending “conflicting institutional messages” as a source of Predator crews’ morale and personnel problems. He called for the service to recognize that Predator crews were having significant effects in combat, albeit with reduced risk to their bodies, and to award them combat medals as a means to improve their sense of accountability.

The response was immediate, vociferous, and personal, declaring Blair’s paper “ludicrous at best and insulting at worst.” Had he had the experience of combat, one commentator railed, “maybe he would understand better while under direct fire.

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