Jaffe: The watchers: Airmen who surveil the Islamic State never get to look away
I don’t like Greg Jaffe, the Washington Post reporter. At the last Milblog conference, Jaffe was a panel “expert” and he told the assemblage that milblogs had outlived their usefulness because he knows more about the military than former members of the uniformed services. I guess that’s why the Post has hired at least three of my friends who served in the GWOT as reporters in the last few months.
Anyway, Jaffe writes about one member of the uniformed services in his latest piece for the Post; The watchers: Airmen who surveil the Islamic State never get to look away. His subject is Courtney, 29, an Air Force staff sergeant and intelligence analyst who is involved with the drone program where she works at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia.
Jaffe expects us to feel sorry for the airman because she has been at this job for three years without a break – that she takes the war home every night when she gets off her shift.
For more than three years, this has been Courtney’s war — 10 hours a day, four days a week, thousands upon thousands of hours of live video footage from Iraq and Syria.
[…]
“Our airmen never get to unplug,” said Lt. Col. Alison Kamataris, the deputy commander of the 497th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group here.
Infantrymen typically serve nine- to 12-month combat tours; pilots deploy for four months. Even U.S.-based drone pilots rotate off war duty every three or four years.
“We don’t have the same ability to give breaks to train or innovate,” Kamataris said of her analysts.
The article continues and Courtney tells about the time she she had to do bomb damage assessment on a bunch of God-less heathens who had just murdered a number of their prisoners. The scene was “gruesome” she said, so gruesome that she had to talk to a counselor at the end of her shift. I’m sure she did, but can you imagine one of your infantrymen asking to talk to a counselor after a patrol?
The toughest part of the job, she says, has been forgetting about it when she goes home and not second-guessing decisions.
The key part of that phrase here is “she goes home”. Jaffe tells us that she doesn’t have the luxury “to look away”, yet while she’s at work, she “looks away” long enough to check if she’s been selected for OCS, she discusses the fact that she wasn’t selected with her colleagues and then the first thing that she does at the end of her shift, is call her parents. All things an infantryman in the combat theater can’t do “to look away”.
I understand that being on these drone crews is grueling, tedious and necessary work, but please don’t make it sound like it’s more grueling than that of the people who are actually in the theater of war, face-to-face with the people they kill.
I know Jaffe likes drone crews, because he take a short drive from his office and pretend like he’s “at war” while sitting in an air conditioned cubicle deep inside the guarded gates of an airbase – he can never take the place of someone who has stood inside the borders of Iraq, chewed the sand and stood toe-to-toe with the enemy.
Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.
Category: Air Force
Another media assclown that thinks he knows more than those of us that have worn the uniform. I’m guessing that he’s spent more time in his comfortable office in DC than over in Afghanistan or Iraq getting shot at.
These reporter bitches hardly ever got shot at. They always are in the rear with the gear. Very few ever go where the bullets are flying. They get paid to write stories and they can do that from their air conditioned hotel rooms. They just make up most of the shit they write anyway.
As difficult as it is, the “competition” between who has it worse really needs to not be the focus of conversation.
Not getting to “step away” is perhaps because the Air Force did a massive reduction and now is hurting even worse for personnel because they started treating their people like shit. They have a huge morale problem still, which they may or may not be trying to fix. So, the Air Force bureaucracy is to blame in this case. (Same as the Army, though the mastermind of the whole thing was King Barry in his reduction of forces attitude a couple years ago.)
This is an answer with merit, the reduction in force hit a lot of analyst positions from what I’ve seen as I know a few of these folks.
When you treat people like shit they tend to avoid re-enlisting. My own family had an analyst serving the Air Force for 8 years and deciding to walk away to a civilian job where hours, pay, benefits, and general treatment of the workforce was the difference between staying at a Motel 6 or the Chatham Bars Inn…
The resulting personnel shortage means there aren’t any bodies to rotate around into different roles.
I agree the whining about what sucks more is counter productive. Everyone assumes their job is more difficult than others. That’s true whether you are working the plumbing system at the New York Ship and Sanitary Canal or are under fire in a war zone. Perhaps we should start asking why we are still involved in an undeclared war 15 years after the initial authorization of force was issued…without a formal declaration of war against any nation. Why do we continue to violate the sovereign airspace of foreign nations we are supposedly at peace with?
Thanks for elevating the conversation. Bean counters deplore redundancy but in the war “business” having one hundred of something left over cannot be compared to having one too few of any critical item. It was Shakespear’s line for Richard III, defeated on the battlefield, on this subject that remains the most eloquent: “For want of a nail, a shoe was lost. For want of a shoe a horse was lost. For want of a horse a Kingdom was lost.”
Using a “business model” strikes off “surplus personnel” with the results too commonly seen, alas, going back to ancient time. War, with it’s horror, pain and waste is damned bad business, without any question. But trying to wage what is monstrously wasteful in an “efficient” manner is a cruel folly which can only be compared to the grave error of trying avoid to avoid a conflict with an implacable enemy with the employment of diplomacy. Many past administrations have been guilty, naturally, of both. The innocent suffer, as usual.
PS. How would you render “The innocent suffer” in Latin?
I wonder what this turd (Jaffe) thinks of Brandon Bryant?
Do you suppose Jaffe and Val Kilmer get together from time to time and swap notes?
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2009/02/val-kilmer-may.html
BTW I never had a gut like Val’s when I was in Viet of the Nam.
Can we youngsters here use the term the Afgh of the Stan?
Or the Ir of the Aq?
You oldsters are having all the fun. We can’t have that.
No, you are not able to use either of those terms until a verified poser of your era is exposed and has used them as part of their bullshit vocabulary.
Those are the rules. Don’t like it? Tough Titties.
So let it be written.
So let it be done.
Roger. Thank You, SFC D. The clincher should have been added.
Temporary brain fart/senior moment on my part.
This is how/why the NCO Support Chain works so well.
Having been to both of those places, I use the term “Idon’tgiveashitistan” for all the countries in that part of the world….but I’m old and disgruntled.
What is wrong with “Shit-holistan?” That is one of my fave’s, as it covers quit a bit of territory.
“Fuck-thatistan” is another.
Deplorable.
For once I’m with you, Yef. When did this Viet of the Nam crap start and where? I find it flippant and disrespectful of those whose names are on that Wall.
A poser in New York City once used the phase when MCPO confronted him.
OK I get it, like “Lawer.”
But still, it’s disrespectul so how about we don’t take our lead here from a frickin’ poser?
“Never get to look away”? Sheesh. Watching warfare from 6,000+ miles away compares to being in an active war zone about like watching a car wreck on TV compares to being IN a car wreck personally.
RPV operators and other support troops in CONUS get to go home at the end of the day; they never personally experience many of the “bad things” that occur in a combat zone – like random incoming. That was routine at many installations when I was in Iraq. And random incoming is near the low end of stressful incidents for those in areas of active hostilities.
Count your blessings, lady. Sometimes long distance ISN’T “just like being there” – it’s far better.
Oh, for Pete’s sake, Hondo, let her have a whine now and then.
She calls her mom every night when she gets home from work? What is she? Three?
Yeah, I started calling my mother every night when I got home AFTER my father passed, because she was 80 and lived alone in a big old farmhouse. I was just making sure she was okay. I told her if she didn’t answer the phone within 10 rings, I’d call the local police to check on her.
I can sort of understand how every job has its difficulties, but there are Combat Camera troops who conduct BDA from ground zero all over the Iraqi/ Afghan AORs. We had two to three man teams assigned to every MND/ MNB documenting horrible shit at any given time. Not sure what it’s like since retiring. I know there are some here who have poked fun at COMCAM, but our folks were utilized to document combat, law of land warfare violation, crimes against humanity, and crimes by former regime members.
Drones…
I love this parody from the Kroll Show
To the grunt on the ground in that video calling for an airstrike from Delta Alpha Bravo (DAB), you’re SOL.
DAB’s plane crashed on take-off. Some sort of fuel problem./smile
Just make it a little more interesting for him – turn the heat up about 50 degrees, get a nice set of heat lamps to shine on him for hours, and stick a hairdryer on high in his face. Add in some friendly office personnel playing locals, and have some of them randomly shoot weapons at him – that might give him a little taste of life outside the cubicle.
Or how about hosing him down with a garden hose intermittently throughout the day and night then let him see if he can dry out his skivvies in the humidity of Southeast Asia. Let him undergo the decision making process as to whether it’s better to remain rolled up in your semi-water-tight poncho and soak in your own sweat in the tropic heat or just lay there and try to sleep without the damned poncho getting soaked by the hose.
wah wah wah
It’s turkey bacon. To someone who has never had bacon, the stuff is pretty good, even great. Until they’ve had real hickory-smoked thick cut pig, cooked just right.
Some of us don’t have the option.
Pork bacon ain’t kosher.
What fun is religion without sin?
Gotta do something to confess, or else Father O’Bannion would have to find a new line of work!
Yeah. The priests loved me, especially just after I reached puberty.
“Well now, Master MC, that’s a pretty HIGH battin’ average, laddie!”
…if you know what I mean and I think ya do!
Bet it wouldn’t stop him from screwing his neighbor’s hot wife…
WAR STORY ALERT: I can relate to this airman. During Nam I worked CINCPAC J3A3 Special Ops as a paper pusher. My job each day was to review and sort for distribution to the O-6 and 4 O-5’s message traffic from MACV. What I read caused several sleepless nights (i.e. tiger dragging grunt out of a foxhole and carrying him off screaming, SVA hand-to-hand combat on disguised junks in Haiphong Harbor, some of our SF mission reports). The tiger report still bothers me 49 years later. I guess the difference is I was thankful to be in Hawaii not Nam and dedicated to doing my job and not bitching about it. Yes we had counselors, they were called bartenders in those days, but then again, we were not as spoiled as this generation.
10 hours?
Marine MP’s literally stand for 12 hours a day on post and that is in garrison.
Sounds like the Air Force needs to man up, or whatever equivalent is for female SNCO’s.
Man, I wish I could do BDA on some ISIS fucks.
I got to watch a couple of drone strikes on Talis while I was in a BDE TOC in Afghaniland. We let out a mighty cheer after one, and the DCO scolded us and forbade us from ever doing that again.
Dumb, but I sure didn’t need to talk to a counselor after. That shit was one of the most joyous moments of my life, and I’ve got kids!
I was in the TOC for a few strikes in Afghanistan. I continually gave my recommendations on any concerns as far as populace, routes, etc., just to be sure the commander had the best information for his decision. I even reinforced the “shoot those fuckers, I’ll get the road fixed within 2 days.” attitude because higher up was always so concerned about routes being “green” more so than killing bad guys.
Luckily, my team worked for some badass commanders who loved watching strikes hit and seeing bodies going flying in all directions. Because? That was 1, 2, 3, etc., less fucksticks who would be out laying IEDs for a week or two, at least.
The only time we groaned is when the mortars missed and the dirtbags got to run off into an area they couldn’t keep shooting at. Sometimes plain ol’ “HE” is perfectly sufficient to do the job. Trying the 15 other types of rounds isn’t always the best idea. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that….
We were pretty accurate as I remember. But we didn’t use mortars either, for the most part.
We had a lot of trouble in one village, to the point of suffering 4 KIA there. We razed the entire place, but in the weeks after, it seemed like one or two of these assholes would show up every afternoon to implant IEDs. We’d kill them and see more the next day.
They never fucking learned.
Oh, and then after razing the main village, we had to push further in to the area for whatever reason. I was able to review the CONOP for that mission and study the location of some of the OBJs. Later, I took a routine helo movement over the area, and had great fun identifying the real locations of the OBJs, which were nothing more than big, black spots on the earth.
Yeah we had locations that we didn’t have enough troops to deal with, but higher wanted us to. “More with Less” and “less with less” were so annoying to hear. Especially after being told “Afghan Good ’nuff isn’t acceptable, please start using ‘Afghan Sufficient!'” which was total eye-rolling. Luckily, we weren’t on VTC only on conference calls for those.
“Hey we need the ANA/ANP/ABP to do patrols in there!” “Great Sir, are you going to get their next higher to ensure they do it? Or will we be the ones leading them out there and making sure they get there, with enough fuel, so they can do it?” “Drive on guys, keep doing what you’re doing!” “Yeah, sure.”
I remember sitting in a bunker once after getting rocketed and listening to Kiowas chase down bad guys and light them the fuck up. We could hear every other bunker cheering because we took them out and didn’t get rocketed for over a week after that.
Ha, all of that sounds so familiar.
Higher wanting us to go places we had no business being? Check. During that mission I talked about, we dropped a GBU-54 out in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t blow, so BDE wanted us to send an EOD team to go take care of it. I won’t explain all the details, but that was clearly impossible. Well, to everyone except BDE.
Also, useless Afghans? Check. Except it seems like yours just lacked resources. Ours were cowards. During the initial razing of that village, my S3 asked the local ANA commander if he wanted to join us. He refused, but asked us to please demolish one building we had left standing because bad guys used it to launch RPGs at them. The 3 said, “I hope they continue to do that” and walked off.
According to many an ETT I knew when I was there, most were idiots. Every time they tried to teach Fire Discipline they’d just “spray and pray” saying “allah will guide the bullets” or aiming a Howitzer via just looking down the breech saying the same.
P.S., not to mention that to this day they’ll still switch sides and alliances at the drop of a hat,
As Jonn says, drone operators and image analysts do perform tedious and very necessary work. But articles like this one do the specialty no favors, but instead hold the people up for ridicule. Jaffe needs to be told his play for sympathy is not helping here. My 2 cents.
This is why some folks assert that “mill blogs have outlived their usefulness”. The wise and proper narrative, carefully crafted by our betters, is drowned out by all these first-hand-experts and “facts” thingies.
You don’t even have to compare her “suffering” to that of the grunts.
The “Fobbits” in theater who never step outside the wire still have to deal with extremes of heat, nasty porta potties, no privacy, silly arbitrary military rules, and no days off.
And that is on top of diseases, insects, and the possibility/likelihood of IDF.
But you know what, if she’s tired of her hideous 4 day work weeks why doesn’t she just volunteer for a tour in the sandbox? I bet they’d take her in a heartbeat.
Ranger Fucking That!
I’ll have to ask my boss if I can switch to a 4-day 10 hour schedule and see what he says….
But as I mentioned above, the comparisons shouldn’t be the focus some make them out to be and dickwads like this candyass reporter need to shut up and stop trying to become famous writing about the military.
I doubt he wrote anything about the severe reductions in force implemented by Obama 3-5 years ago. While DoD still maintained a decently high budget, they still cut the fuck out of personnel to “save money”, but where did all that money they saved go? Lobbyists? Defense Contractors? Think Tanks that wanted to study how much more “we” could fuck over the troops before there was a mass exodus? A board of jerkoffs who had 6-figure pensions to determine how much they could cut “new” pensions while making it seem like this was helpful?
As a current ‘fobbit” I endorse and agree with everything you say. I keep thinking “Man this place sucks as bad as it did when I was here 7 years ago. And worse than it did when I was here 26 years before that.” (Yeah I’m really that old)
Yef ain’t gonna like this.
Whining about how tough you have it is hardwired into military service (and perhaps human brain).
Its fun to hear from Air Force personnel stationed in CONUS working four days a week.
But then I read these kind of stories from a German soldiers in the eastern front in WW2 and it makes me feel like an Air Force NCO working four days a week in CONUS:
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-german-war-story-walter-warda-20160507-story.html
Four days a week means four ten hour shifts on duty vs five eight hour shifts.
Keep in mind outside of basic and tech training, the Air Force, (with some exceptions: guard mount, PT, mandatory weekly fun, inspections, and so forth), doesn’t form up and march to and from work. In one squadron I was in it’d take forever on a march to get everyone to their duty sections, some were 30 miles from the orderly room, some were 10 miles, and some were across the road.
I spent Christmas Eve a number of years ago with a German Soldier that served on The Eastern Front. After the Jager started flowing the stories he told were dumbfounding and deeply disturbing. At the end they were running towards the Americans as fast as they could. Unfortunately he wasn’t quite fast enough. Fortunately he was good with languages and the Russians needed an interpreter for talking to the Americans and Germans. He managed to hand onto the Americans and make it over here.
On an operation in Turkey in 1961, we were allowed to go into Istanbul after the exercise concluded. I was with a couple of other SP/4’s and we were wearing Class A khakis.
As were were walking by a sidewalk bistro a couple of Anglo men were staring at us wide-eyed and motioning for us to come to their table. Once we got past the language barrier, (one of our guys spoke some French) we learned these guys were ex-pat German soldiers who had been captured by the 101st as they were fleeing from the Russians. They related that, as POW’s, they had been fed and clothed better by the American paratroopers than their own German units.
They loved the 101st Airborne Division and we were the first troopers they had seen since 1945. We couldn’t pay for a drink that afternoon.
“I’m sure she did, but can you imagine one of your infantrymen asking to talk to a counselor after a patrol”?
No because PTSD a lot of times hits a lot later on.
Acute stress is usually termed Critical Incident Stress or acute stress and often just runs its course, never developing into diagnosable PTSD
Jeezus H Christ on a broke-dick bamboo raft stuck up Shit Creek without a fuckin’ paddle, SHE doesn’t even have General Order 1A to deal with!
Poor little Courtney; I really, really feelz for her (sher or whatever). She works a whole 40 hours 4 whole days a week. In my war it was 24/7, 7 days a week for 15 months. If we were lucky, we were allowed to talk to our parents or loved ones for about five minutes on a MARS radio once or twice per year. Most significantly, she doesn’t have to worry about coming home missing limbs or in a metal casket. Give me a effing break!
Fuck her, Every day I watch 10 hours of Apaches, Fast movers and ambushes taking out Shitbags for on You-tube and I dont get paid a dime.
10 hours a day, 4 days a week? So that’s what, 40 hours a week? That’s how much I work now as a contractor and that’s a vacation compared to the 80-100 hours a week you pull in the Marine Corps, stateside or deployed.
The Air Force constantly opens themselves up to jokes and derision for BS like this
One would almost think this is a joke
If one didn’t know the Air Force and a good portion of Airmen
Add to that the difficulty the media has in accurate reporting and we have no idea if this airman really is a whiner or if she was only portrayed that way. That one is simply impossible for any of us to discern.
My we should just switch.
I could try their version of drones and they could try “droning” as in Ranger School or long as movements.