Droning On

A blip on the screen. A flash unseen, unheard. Heads and limbs scattered a half a world away. Hausmann leaned back in his chair. Stimson slapped his console. “Got ‘em, Hoss! Boffed ‘em bad.”

“Do we have PID?” Hausmann asked into his mic, ignoring Stimson, the sensor operator.

Restless moments passed before the speakers crackled. “Positive identification. Target termination. No friendlies. Thanks for the air support, Oasis.”

Stimson stood up and smiled broadly at Hausmann, “That’s what I’m talking about. Give us an IR signature and we’ll give you a bullseye. Dead on, my man.”

Hausmann nodded. That was all he ever did with a confirmed kill. A nod. He swiveled his chair away from Stimson who was already off slapping backs with the other officers on what they jokingly called the Flight Deck. Because of the relay delay to the strike zone, Hausmann had plenty of time to consider his last kill as he followed up with the corpsman who’d called in the strike. It would all go into his report. A few pages that he’d submit to the base commander before he drove home—twenty minutes away.

Ray Hausmann loved flying. He didn’t exactly feel the same way about killing. Where he spent his days at Creech AFB in Indian Springs, it was hard to tell if he was really doing either.

Flying military UAVs and drones was like playing a video game, and so was killing the enemy. Unfortunately, the bad guys in the real world were a lot harder to discern. That was a problem. It was easy to site a laser-target marker on an unfriendly; the hard part was determining who actually deserved a guided missile or explosive drone down their throat.

Even if most targets in the call down were hostile, it was too often friendlies and collaterals who unexpectedly felt the long, unforgiving reach of America’s might descend upon them from on high. Hausmann knew the same thing happened in ground battles. Mistakes occurred. Innocents perished. War was messy.

The messier the better, Hausmann had begun to think. That’s what really began to get under his skin, like an unnoticed tick slowly gorging itself. His conscience became bloated by a hidden shame. The job of war had become too easy. Too convenient. Killing folks half a world away and then driving home to the suburbs to barbecue, have a beer and watch America’s Got Talent felt increasingly wrong. He’d begun to feel like a thief, stealing away unknown lives.

Later that afternoon, as he pushed his young daughter in her stroller, Hausmann heard chatter and whistles as they neared the playfields. He’d come to watch the end of his older daughter’s soccer practice and then walk her home. As the sun dipped in the true-blue Nevada sky, the temperature cooled comfortably.

Ray Hausmann. Family man. He could almost forget that he killed for a living.

The sound came on quickly. His two-year-old on his shoulder, Ray turned instinctively. A dark object was hurtling through the evening air, rotors whining ominously. Hausmann crouched low and cradled his daughter with one arm and yelled, “Incoming!”

The explosion was merciless.

Merciless laughter

Shaken, Ray stood up from his protective stance and checked on his daughter. She was looking at him curiously.

Most of the adults nearby were laughing. Some watched him cautiously, maybe nervously. For a split second, he was furious, and then he heard the high-pitched whining noise again. He grew embarrassed as he tracked the sound. It was a cheap quad-copter. A few kids in an adjacent field were racing their toy drones. They hadn’t buzzed him and his daughter. He’d just overreacted.

Ray smiled at the adults around him. “Don’t mind me,” he chuckled. “I’ve been spending a little too much time on base.” They smiled back, some still cautiously, but the base they knew. These times could make anyone jumpy.

He patted his daughter’s head and turned to watch his other daughter on the practice field. But his mind wasn’t on soccer. It was on the new ways of war. He flew and directed military drones and UAVs. Everyday, he experienced from afar the damage they could inflict. But now, he’d come to understand their real power.

Fear. Out of a clear blue sky.

From the corner of his eye, he watched the kids in the nearby field playing with their toy drone. Harmless fun. Would they end up at the base on the Flight Deck?

He picked up his young daughter and watched his older one on the soccer field. Would they someday fear a clear blue sky?

That beautifully mild Nevada evening, his duty to his children, to his country, seemed much unclearer.