priorities from the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The CAOC provides command and control for all air assets – the different kinds of aircraft – operating in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.10
There are two immediate priorities, though if emergencies arise those priorities can change at any time. The first is to check the site of yesterday’s missile and bomb strike against IS to see if activity has resumed in the location. The second is to search for a couple of IS technicals that have been seen in the area. These mobile weapon-carriers can have anything from 0.50in-calibre machine guns whose rounds can penetrate concrete, to larger and more devastating anti-aircraft guns. I don’t need to spell out their primary job but they also make very effective and fast-moving artillery. Hit, run and hide is the maxim. They conduct the rapid, aggressive manoeuvre warfare that IS used so effectively to seize as much ground as it did in the early stages of its offensive. That was before Western air power joined the fray, especially the Reaper with its exceptionally long loiter times, surveillance capability and weapons.
The screens before me show slow-moving images of bleak, sandy countryside, punctuated with random houses, settlements and towns. When we arrive at the scene of yesterday’s strike, it seems clear to me that there is nothing going on. Maybe I just have a low boredom threshold but I would have been away from that area in two minutes flat. Rubble is rubble and the damaged building nearby looks uninhabitable. But then, perhaps, my idea of uninhabitable is different to those who are fighting a war for which they are ready to die.
The self-sacrificial element of what the IS fighters are doing is difficult to ignore and even more difficult to understand. Dying for one’s cause is the ultimate commitment. There’s also what they do to innocent civilians and to Muslims from different historical traditions. And this brings me to a curious corner of the public drone debate and a word that regularly crops up in discussions about drones: ‘fair’. As in, ‘Is it fair to use remotely piloted Reapers against jihadists who can’t strike back at them?’ Hilarious. The notion of war as a fair fight has emerged somewhere in recent arguments against the use of Reaper. Since the time of the Chinese military theorist Sun Tzu more than 2,000 years ago – and probably before – the idea has always been to make war as unfair on your enemy as possible. The advantages offered by RPA are not a violation of traditional military strategy – it is what militaries have been after for centuries. If activists want to use drones as a kind of lightning rod for anti-Western, anti-technology, anti-globalisation, anti-government criticism they should just say so. Instead, they can drown out the dedicated, informed scholars, activists and journalists who work to hold governments to account over their use of Reaper and other RPA.
Here’s a test. Look at wars throughout history. Start listing the ones where political or battlefield leaders deliberately surrendered a distinct advantage to give their enemy a fair chance of winning. It will not take you long. (And no, I am not talking about the occasional act of chivalry or compassion on the battlefield.)
Anyway, back to the screens. Yesterday’s reconnaissance of the area had been limited by strong winds and the sand it dispersed in the air. Today, in contrast, there are crystal clear skies and maximum visibility. The thorough examination of yesterday’s strike site yields no indication of life and activity. Everyone agrees that the job is completed. The MIC receives a new tasking, or task, and gives the pilot a bearing and destination. But the pilot does a curious thing. The direction indicator on the screen shows that the Reaper has responded to his joystick. Specifically, I can tell that he has gone into a left turn. In an aircraft cockpit in flight, gravity and centrifugal forces combine to cause the crew to lean into the turn. Despite this particular cockpit being a shipping container that is firmly anchored to a concrete base in the middle of the Nevada desert, the pilot still leans left into the turn. I don’t know if his brain is telling the rest of his body to move that way, or whether he is using his body as a means of understanding the movement of the distant aircraft. Either way, it looks weird.
Almost immediately the SO spots something and zooms in the camera on his pod. A technical fills the screen. It is a quad cab pick-up truck and the MIC identifies a 0.50in-calibre machine gun on the back. Nobody seems especially interested or excited about this development. The SO explains: ‘This is not a Daesh-held area so it is unlikely that this will be one of their vehicles out on its own. We are just working out who it does belong to.’
The three crew members each contribute description and analysis of the image on the screen. Even I can tell that the markings do not belong to IS. The MIC breaks away from the conversation to check on the several intelligence chatrooms he has running on his screen. He types in a description of what they are seeing and where it is. The MIC is not just a recipient of intelligence, he is also contributing to the overall intelligence picture of the area. Some quick cross-checking confirms that, in this rapidly changing environment, the technical belongs to a non-IS, non-government militia.
‘Does that make them the good guys?’ I ask. The question is intentionally mischievous. There is a long silence. The pilot is the first to respond. ‘Well, they are good-ish – at least for now.’ His hesitation is understandable. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ are much-misused, malleable terms in this conflict. As are the names and allegiances of many of the militias involved in it.
They move on from the good-ish, bad-ish technical to get on with the systematic area search south of Mosul. After half an hour of ‘watching buildings go round’ as the camera moves from building to building and small settlement to small settlement, I find my attention drifting slightly. There has been no sign of life in the last three places we looked.
‘Where is everybody?’ I ask.
‘Were you watching BBC News last night?’ came a reply. ‘The luckiest ones have family in safe areas. The other lucky ones are in a refugee camp or trying to cross the Med. by boat to Europe.’ The images of refugees being rescued from their pathetic, barely seaworthy boats are harrowing. There is something similarly shocking about the empty places that the refugees have left behind. Homes, schools, businesses, mosques. The spaces that were once filled with life and vibrancy are now empty shells, many destroyed or damaged in the fighting.
While the discussion of the empty homes was going on, the MIC was receiving updated information from one of his chatrooms. He gives the pilot and SO an eight-figure grid reference – still some miles south of Mosul but further to the west – which the CAOC would like to investigate. Intelligence from the myriad of supported forces on the ground in Iraq has made its labyrinthine way to Nevada for visual confirmation from the air.
However, before the crew reaches the location the flex crew reappears. Dinner time. The MIC updates everyone on the latest intelligence picture. Each crew member then gives a detailed description of what they are doing, what they are looking for and why. Then one by one the members of the relief crew settle into their seats. One hundred years on from the rapid growth of air forces in the First World War, control is handed over with the words that aircrew – often instructors and trainee pilots – have used ever since.
‘You have control,’ says the exiting Reaper pilot.
‘I have control,’ responds the relief pilot.
The crew head off separately to make phone calls, answer emails, you name it. For those with children, it might be the only chance to speak to them between school and bedtime.
One of the aspects of being a Reaper operator that is widely known is the disjuncture between home and work, particularly when work life involves observing often harrowing events and killing people who have been watched for long periods. What is not appreciated, and certainly did not cross my mind before I was confronted with it, is that the mental transition between war and peace does not happen at the beginning and end of every day. It happens at the beginning and end of every stint in the GCS during
