Brandon Bryant: Confessions of a Repentant Drone Operator

I don’t thank soldiers for their “service” unless they are working against the military industrial complex, either as conscientious objectors, whistle blowers, political activists or some other means. That’s not to say that I don’t have a lot of sympathy for young kids who end up in the ranks because of parental bullying, the poverty draft or some other form of soft coercion. But once the truth of the matter is clear to a solider it’s unconscionable to continue to just follow orders, and heroic to disobey.

One such hero is Brandon Bryant who spent more than five years as a drone operator in a special unit of the Air Force in New Mexico. Bryant shared his story in a three part series titled “The Woes of an American Drone Operator” over at Spiegel Online that has made him the Silver Circle Rebel of the Week.

Brandon joined the military because he was told he could get his college education paid for. He wanted to be an investigative journalist. As a drone operator Brandon worked in a tiny, windowless container with one coworker and a command center that would make any gamer salivate, but in this context it really only served to distance him from the reality of his orders. As Brandon said, “I felt disconnected from humanity.” From this comfortable air-conditioned cockpit in New Mexico Brandon could execute people on the other side of the world with all the disassociation of the “World of Warcraft” game he played in his off time.

In his story Brandon describes spending hours watching people cultivate fields, play soccer, hug their spouses and go about their lives from the sky. He relays an incident where he and his partner received orders to fire upon house in Aghanistan. As the drone circled overhead Brandon targeted the house with a joystick and his partner pressed the button to fire, a division of labor doubtless designed to help soldiers not feel the full weight of their actions. The Hellfire missile launched and the two boys waited and watched for 16 seconds as it approached the target.

Brandon and his partner had not seen any activity on the monitor before firing. Just a house the same as thousands of homes they had seen with mud walls, a flat rough and a shed for goats. Then, with three seconds left, a young child walked into view.

The explosion flashed on his screen, and when it cleared the building was destroyed and child was gone. Brandon asked his partner “Did we just kill a kid?” His partner confirmed, “Yeah, I guess that was a kid.”

They typed into the chat window, “Was that a kid?” to some anonymous supervisor observing them from a command center somewhere in the world. “No. That was a dog.” the response came. They reviewed the video, and disagreed.

In so many ways this reminds me of Winston Smith being tortured by O’Brien until he accepts that 2+2=5 in the book 1984. The rewriting of history begins immediately, and I’m sure that many of the obedient soldiers do as Winston did and see what they are told to see. Do not believe your eyes. Believe authority. Believe the Party.

He says “I saw men, women and children die during that time. I never thought I would kill that many people. In fact, I thought I couldn’t kill anyone at all.” At some point he realized that he hated the cockpit and he wanted to do something that saved lives rather than destroyed them. He wrote in his journal, “On the battlefield there are no sides, just bloodshed. Total war. Every horror witnessed. I wish my eyes would rot.” He began talking back to his superior officers, and stopped being able to sleep. Then one day he collapsed on the ground, spitting blood. Doctors diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Brandon left the military, and now lives in Montana. In the Air Force drone operators are called cowards, because they push buttons from their comfortable cockpits rather than entering physical combat. From my perspective anyone who knowingly follows unethical orders because they fear reprisal from an unethical system are cowards. Brandon is a hero, not only because he got out, but because he exposed the ugly truth of the matter. As George Orwell said, “truth is treason in the empire of lies.”

I hope he find some healing in his new path, perhaps as an investigative journalist like he originally wanted.

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