FORMER DRONE OPERATOR HAUNTED BY HIS ’1600 HITS’ SCORECARD
Brandon Bryant is haunted by the pixelated images he saw while operating a drone camera inside a virtual cockpit that smelled of sweat. Thermal images of heat rising from blood spilled after a target’s leg was blown off. The image of a dog — or was that a child? — running toward a target seconds before it was incinerated. Five U.S. soldiers killed when their vehicle hit an IED buried in the road. “I saw men, women and children die during that time,” the 27-year-old Missoula, Mont. native told Germany’s der Spiegel. “I never thought I would kill that many people. In fact, I thought I couldn’t kill anyone at all.”
In two recent interviews, Bryant tells of the psychological toll of being a drone camera operator for more than five years. “I can see every little pixel if I just close my eyes,” he recalled in an interview with NBC’s Richard Engel. He calls the experience dehumanizing, one that turned him into a sociopath who joked upon arriving at work, ” Which one of these f_____s is going to die today?”
When he was wrapping up his service in 2011, his commander presented him with a tally of the dead from his missions: the number was 1,626 people. When he told that number to his girlfriend she soon broke up with him. “She looked at me like I was a monster,” he said. “And she never wanted to touch me again.” Bryant has been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, causing him sleeplessness and anger. It’s a disorder that researchers are currently successfully experimenting to eradicate with a drug. When he had downtime on the job, he would write in his journal. “On the battlefield there are no sides, just bloodshed,” he once wrote. “Total war. Every horror witnessed. I wish my eyes would rot.”
Brandon Bryant is haunted by the pixelated images he saw while operating a drone camera inside a virtual cockpit that smelled of sweat. Thermal images of heat rising from blood spilled after a target’s leg was blown off. The image of a dog — or was that a child? — running toward a target seconds before it was incinerated. Five U.S. soldiers killed when their vehicle hit an IED buried in the road. “I saw men, women and children die during that time,” the 27-year-old Missoula, Mont. native told Germany’s der Spiegel. “I never thought I would kill that many people. In fact, I thought I couldn’t kill anyone at all.”
In two recent interviews, Bryant tells of the psychological toll of being a drone camera operator for more than five years. “I can see every little pixel if I just close my eyes,” he recalled in an interview with NBC’s Richard Engel. He calls the experience dehumanizing, one that turned him into a sociopath who joked upon arriving at work, ” Which one of these f_____s is going to die today?”
When he was wrapping up his service in 2011, his commander presented him with a tally of the dead from his missions: the number was 1,626 people. When he told that number to his girlfriend she soon broke up with him. “She looked at me like I was a monster,” he said. “And she never wanted to touch me again.” Bryant has been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, causing him sleeplessness and anger. It’s a disorder that researchers are currently successfully experimenting to eradicate with a drug. When he had downtime on the job, he would write in his journal. “On the battlefield there are no sides, just bloodshed,” he once wrote. “Total war. Every horror witnessed. I wish my eyes would rot.”
Thankfully, I never received a collective tally of my missions during the Second Lebanon War. Perhaps it is best to never know.
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