the mover.’ Someone at the CAOC makes the decision. They will call in another air asset to observe the hide and wait for further movement.
It is the nature of the Reaper’s observation pod that makes the decision so urgent. When the camera is fully zoomed in, say for a missile strike on a target or for capturing details on the ground with the greatest clarity, it is compared by the operators to ‘looking through a straw’. There is an extremely narrow field of view. With the camera fully zoomed out to give the widest view, it would still soon lose sight of one of the two technicals. Plus, with the camera zoomed out, it would be easier for the crew to lose track of the second vehicle in this built-up area.
The pilot starts working with the CAOC and JTAC, getting the necessary conditional permissions and constraints for hitting the anti-aircraft gun with a Hellfire missile. Just starting the process gets my heart beating faster. Everyone I speak to in all of my subsequent interviews describes the same physical response, and more, to the build up to a strike.
No strike is approved yet – too many unknowns. However, the paperwork is in place and can be activated within seconds of the vehicle clearing the civilian area.
The vehicle was moving through the small roads of the town faster than any other passing car or truck. Perhaps the driver senses he is being watched. He will certainly know that he will become a target once he is spotted. I wonder if he is a hired hand or if he is a true-believing ideologue with martyrdom on his mind.
‘Do you sometimes think the IS guys are setting out to die?’ Things are temporarily quiet so I venture a question.
‘Some, definitely yes. Others, I would say no. You see it in their behaviour. Mostly, though, you can’t tell.’ Apart from answering me the Boss is scanning the area for potential kill zones, depending on the route of the technical.
With the edge of town only a few hundred yards ahead – and therefore the open space a missile strike would need – radio calls get quicker and sharper. The conditional 9-line – the approval process that contains nine steps or pieces of information – only requires that there are no civilians in the blast zone. The pilot and the Boss discuss possible strike angles and missile settings. Apparently there is a choice. Who knew? I guess that is the point of military secrecy. They still don’t spell out exactly why they go for a particular choice.
Without warning, the technical brakes hard and swings left into a large compound, squeezes past a tree and under some kind of shelter built onto the side of a house. On a Scottish farm I would expect it to be where a tractor is parked overnight. Within seconds, a tarpaulin is draped over the front of the shelter. If the crew had not watched the technical being driven in there they could never have spotted it. A map grid reference is noted and the crew settles in to watch this building for the remaining time of the shift. Where have the hours gone?
I push my wheeled seat back to the MIC’s station. He is rewinding and replaying segments of the video from the drive through town. Screen shots are magnified and he is consulting with the Senior Mission Intelligence Coordinator (SMIC) sitting in the Ops Room next door.
‘We are looking at these tubes here,’ explains the MIC, pointing to some shapes on the back of the technical next to the anti-aircraft gun. From this view, the possible options include: mortar tubes, shoulder-held rocket launchers, something I can’t decipher from my notebook or plumbing supplies. Apparently the last option was not a joke. A plumber’s truck would make an ideal vehicle for a technical.
Through my headphones, I hear a series of checks being read out. When I return to the pilot’s and SO’s station they are preparing for a mid-air handover of the Reaper to XIII Squadron at RAF Waddington. Their shift is just starting and they will now watch the site where the technical is hidden, waiting to pounce if it ventures out to fight. I don’t know why, but I feel a sense of anti-climax as we traipse out of the box. I mention it to the Boss.
‘It’s unfinished business,’ he replies. ‘We have seen what those guns can do [against the Free Syrian Army and others] and it’s not a good feeling to go home knowing this one is still out there.’ I make a note to explore this further.
‘So what happens now?’
‘Now we go home, sleep for a few hours and come back and do it all again tomorrow.’ That was not strictly true. After a twelve-hour day he would do at least one or two more hours in his office. A day’s flying is almost a break from his main job as Squadron Commander.
My mind wanders with fatigue as the crew goes through the in-brief with the Auth and the pilot signs the aircraft back in. The Auth runs through a series of checks and his last question sticks with me: ‘Are you fit to drive home?’ (They are required to declare if they are not fit to do so.) It is now the middle of the night and I am wrecked. There is a whole series of rooms in a building nearby with clean, available beds for those who cannot face the drive home. I suspect that regular self-deception goes on at this desk when it comes to tiredness and fitness to drive. I have a list of questions but they will have to wait.
I learn over the coming weeks and months that life on a Reaper squadron revolves around sleep management. It also revolves around trying to switch off, knowing that dangerous people with dangerous weapons have been spared bomb or missile strikes because of the risk to nearby civilians.
As I make my way back to my car for the drive back to my hotel room on the Vegas strip I doubt my own fitness to drive. And I have not gone through the extreme adrenaline surges that the crew experienced in the build-ups to the shots that they were never able to carry out. This most fascinating of days has left me with a profound sense of unfinished business. There is no finality, no fulfilment of a job well done. No explosions, no killing of the ‘baddies’. The part of me that loves to see a task neatly finished would be driven mad doing this job.
When I get back on the highway, the darkness of the desert is oppressive in places. The headlights of other cars and trucks have a hypnotic effect. A distant glow on the horizon grows steadily until the bright city lights burst into view. It is an assault on my visual acuity after a day in a darkened box watching greyscale images of a distant desert land. I console myself with the possibility that it will all make more sense tomorrow…
10 Further details about the CAOC can be found at http://www.afcent.af.mil/About/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/217803/combined-air-operations-center-caoc/, accessed 30 July 2017.
11 In July 2018 the designation Red Card Holder was changed to Green Card Holder.
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