{"id":159897,"date":"2015-06-22T20:29:46","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T20:29:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=159897"},"modified":"2015-06-22T20:29:46","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T20:29:46","slug":"drone-pilots-exhausted-suffering-ptsd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/drone-pilots-exhausted-suffering-ptsd\/","title":{"rendered":"Drone Pilots Are Exhausted and Suffering From PTSD"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>On Tuesday, <i>The New York Times<\/i> published the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/06\/17\/us\/as-stress-drives-off-drone-operators-air-force-must-cut-flights.html?smid=tw-nytimes&amp;_r=0\">latest look at drone pilots<\/a>. These Unmanned Aerial<br \/>\nVehicle operators are suffering such a high rate of exhaustion and stress that<br \/>\nthe US Air Force has been forced to cut drone missions down from a high of about<br \/>\n65 a week. They also currently have about 500 fewer pilots than they need.<\/p>\n<p>Though they get to fight their wars in safety, and see their families<br \/>\nevery night, these new type of soldiers suffer from a surprisingly high burnout<br \/>\nrate, and equivalent levels of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to fighter pilots.<br \/>\nAnd though when that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/02\/23\/us\/drone-pilots-found-to-get-stress-disorders-much-as-those-in-combat-do.html\">news first broke<\/a> two years ago, the temptation<br \/>\nto be<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uZwuTI-V8SI\"> withering and unsympathetic<\/a> was strong (okay,<br \/>\nmaybe that was just me), perhaps that kind of a mental reaction says something<br \/>\nvital about the dangers of war to the human soul. Even people who aren\u2019t themselves<br \/>\nin danger suffer when they\u2019re killing innocent people.<\/p>\n<p>Part of the stress comes from the fact that these 1200 pilots<br \/>\nare not in a battlefield setting. Strangely, but logically, controlling a surveillance<br \/>\nand\/or killing machine from thousands of miles away, concern about backing up<br \/>\nmanned personal, or more likely, worrying whether you\u2019re hitting a would-be<br \/>\nterrorist or some innocent civilians is stressful, no matter if you are safe<br \/>\nin some bunker in Nevada. Seeing your spouse and kids a few hours later heightens<br \/>\nthe alienation inherent in such a job. You\u2019re on duty, but you\u2019re at home. It<br \/>\nhas to be disconcerting. After all, PTSD doesn\u2019t tend to be about cracking up<br \/>\non the battlefield. It\u2019s about dealing with a banal job or life after you\u2019ve<br \/>\nbeen trained to be on edge all the time. These pilots have to do that daily<br \/>\nin a manner which must feel like psychological whiplash.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/lucy\/2015\/06\/18\/drone-pilots-are-exhausted-and-suffering-from-ptsd\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday, The New York Times published the latest look at drone pilots. These Unmanned Aerial Vehicle operators are suffering such a high rate of exhaustion and stress that the US Air Force has been forced to cut drone missions down from a high of about 65 a week. They also currently have about 500 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-159897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}