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Drone Pilots: We Don’t Get No Respect

HercDude

By HercDude
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SurelySerious Gray Beard

SurelySerious

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There is real damage done to those people who were named, even if it was legal, and I argue it added nothing to the value or message of the article.

It is definitely not legal to release PII of personnel in overseas, sensitive, or routinely deployable units, even for a FOIA request. 5 USC 552 b 3 and 10 USC 130 b. It's a specific FOIA exemption. We get hammered for emailing a recall roster to our own personal email, and some legal team thought, "Give out names to the press when the law says not to? This seems right."

Agree that there is no further public good that arises from knowing who the MP was.

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Great discussion going on here. Let me add an alternative perspective. They said it wasn't possible to arm RQ-1 with Hellfires. Fortunately others in USG disagreed. They said you shouldn't arm UAV

sqwatch
sqwatch

I wrote this while deployed after watching "good kill". Lots of words, some of them funny. I rented good kill from itunes the other day, and within the first 5 minutes i was p1ssed off. I thought t

General Chang
General Chang

Don't worry, hardly any of them are cleared for staff duty.

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Steve Davies Gray Beard

Steve Davies

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Sure, someone in the AF messed up by releasing the names...

There is real damage done to those people who were named, even if it was legal, and I argue it added nothing to the value or message of the article.

a) You cannot expect the mainstream media to understand that. From their perspective, putting a name to the quote lends it credibility, and that's a powerful metric. So... if the Air Force (implicitly) says it's OK to do that, then why should they be expected to know any better?

b) You should expect your employers to ensure that a) is irrelevant (by not releasing names).

It's a pretty simple situation.

I fully accept that the media can be very, very bad news for serving and former members of the armed forces. But sometimes there needs to be greater introspection and less propensity to blame the convenient scapegoat that is 'the media'.

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herkbum Gray Beard

herkbum

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It's not only that it is convenient to blame the media, it is also likely necessary. They are looking for the headlines and many times, it appears, doesn't give a damn about the consequences of what they report. Seen it too many times. Always remember Rainman's everlasting legacy to BODN-never speak to the media!

Herkbum

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ShavedDogsAss SNAP

ShavedDogsAss

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Not once, over multiple deployments in a few different "shooter" MWS's have I seen the media give straight facts with objective analysis and not inject some level of bias into the story.

Had a SQ/CC once have a full day completely shadowed by a reporter, from breakfast to putting the kids to sleep. Cowards took 3 seconds of footage where he stumbled over his words and attempted to discredit him.

Never put your face or name in front of the media.

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GKinnear Flight Lead

GKinnear

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Copy. It's the media's fault that your employer has released names into the public domain in direct contravention of its own rules.

Here's why I blame the media (the following is a quick comparison of SIB vs AIB., not 100%, but close enough for here):

In the quotes that are anonymous, it's a safe assumption those came from the SIB. The Safety Investigation Board is convened to get info out to other interested parties (generally other aircrew) about the causes of a mishap so they don't repeat those actions. It's privileged so the involved parties are more forthcoming in what actually happened. There is no legal liability (99.9% of the time) stemming from the SIB, no names attached, and is not generally for public consumption.

The named quotes, then, I'm assuming are from the AIB. Accident Investigation Boards are convened to who/what is "at fault" and liable for criminal proceedings. It's held after the SIB concludes and is a independent Investigation. Since criminal charges CAN (not always) stem from the AIB, it has NO inherent privilege. It can be offered like any normal investigation (ie, immunity), but not a blanket coverage compared to the SIB. The AIB is releasable to the public (again, in most cases.)

Now, based on the AIB info above, it was NOT against USAF policy to release the names, providing they came from the AIB. Hell, the final SIB report won't even have the mishaps crews name attached. That info is kept separate locations so there is no accidental exposure. I've seen plenty of "media" pieces that included names in them, but redacted for first names only or callsigns, Amn Joe, Capt Maverick, or Major NeverTrustTheMedia. Granted those were friendly pieces, but it can be done. The names included in the OP did nothing to enhance the article and may have done long-term harm to them personally and to the Safety world when it comes to future investigations. the barracks rumor-mill can always point to this article without a clue about the SIB vs AIB difference and make SE job more difficult.

So to reiterate.... Thanks media!

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SurelySerious Gray Beard

SurelySerious

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The named quotes, then, I'm assuming are from the AIB.

There aren't any names in the publicly available AIB full narrative. The information would have to have been knowingly released upon request, reference my FOIA rant above. This isn't an SIB/AIB issue.

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Steve Davies Gray Beard

Steve Davies

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My last post on this topic.

Here are the main takeaways for you: don't put something into the public domain that you don't want, er, in the public domain. And when you do, don't cry like a little girl and blame everybody but yourself for the fact that that information is no longer protected.

Here's why I blame the media (the following is a quick comparison of SIB vs AIB., not 100%, but close enough for here):

Your safety world and your colleagues may have been compromised as a result of the inadequacies of your rules, as written and enforced by your employer, but it's all someone else's fault? Fuck me.

I've seen plenty of "media" pieces that included names in them, but redacted for first names only or callsigns, Amn Joe, Capt Maverick, or Major NeverTrustTheMedia. Granted those were friendly pieces, but it can be done. The names included in the OP did nothing to enhance the article and may have done long-term harm to them personally and to the Safety world when it comes to future investigations. the barracks rumor-mill can always point to this article without a clue about the SIB vs AIB difference and make SE job more difficult.

You're comparing apples (FOIA requests) and oranges (interviews).

1. When an editor receives a FOIA package that features some names redacted but others not, it is perfectly reasonable for him or her to conclude that the Air Force has approved the release of those names. Indeed, the very fact that some names have been released and others not would tell me that the Air Force has conducted a risk assessment of some kind to determine that those names can be published. That is exactly the logical thought process I would have, and I have a conservative approach to this stuff - as some people here with first hand experience of my work could tell you, I don't fuck around with people's privacy or their safety.

2. In contrast to receiving a FOIA package, when interviewing members of the military, it is perfectly acceptable to offer them anonymity. So, yes, you will have seen that in cases where anonymity has been offered or requested, names are redacted by the media. This is, as I started the paragraph by saying, a completely different situation to receiving a package of material that the Air Force is, by releasing it, approving for dissemination into the public domain

3. I have already explained to you that putting a name to a quote gives it credibility, and new outlets are all about credibility. If you don't understand that, there's nothing I can do for you, but please stop saying that naming some of the speakers did not enhance the article. I for one would not have believed a couple of the quotes had there not been names in the article.

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discus Gray Beard

discus

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I'll just leave this here...

http://theweek.com/article/index/264769/this-laser-armed-drone-could-blow-fighter-jets-out-of-the-sky

Here's an idea for an awesome dogfighting aircraft. Make it small, light, and fast. Build it out of materials that are hard to detect on radar. Even give it a laser cannon.

Oh, and don't put a human in the cockpit. In fact, don't even closely tie the drone to human ground control. Because in an aerial knife fight, a computer-controlled machine will beat a human pilot.

That's the idea behind a controversial proposal by U.S. Air Force captain Michael Byrnes, an experienced Predator and Reaper drone pilot. Byrnes is calling for the development of a robotic dogfighter, which he calls the FQ-X, that could blow manned fighters out of the sky.

"A tactically autonomous, machine-piloted aircraft … will bring new and unmatched lethality to air-to-air combat," Byrnes writes in Air and Space Power Journal.

In Byrnes' conception, machines have the edge in making the lightning-fast decisions necessary to win a close-quarters aerial battle. "Humans average 200 to 300 milliseconds to react to simple stimuli, but machines can select or synthesize and execute maneuvers, making millions of corrections in that same quarter of a second," he writes.

Byrnes focuses on famed fighter pilot John Boyd's classic observe-orient-decide-act decision cycle — the "OODA loop" — which predicts that victory in combat belongs to the warrior who can assess and respond to conditions fastest.

Like a fighter pilot trying to out-turn his opponent in a dogfight, the trick to OODA is quickly making the right decisions while your enemy is still trying to figure out what's going on.

It's a battle of wits in which computers are superior, according to Byrnes. "Every step in OODA that we can do, they will do better."

Byrnes envisions a drone designed from the start to utilize the full potential of an unmanned dogfighter. The FQ-X would be constructed of advanced, difficult-to-detect "metamaterials." It would have extremely powerful computers that could determine an enemy aircraft's position from even the scantest of sensor data.

"The principle of 'first look, first kill' belongs to the aircraft with the most processing power and the best software to leverage it," Byrnes writes.

The FQ-X would also have multispectral optics and computer vision software that would enable it to distinguish friendly from enemy aircraft. The drone would pack a laser or a cannon firing armor-piercing incendiary rounds.

To sweeten the robot's victory, on-board machine-learning systems would analyze the encounter and transmit tips to other combat drones.

It should be pretty obvious we're not talking about some plodding, prop-driven Predator drone being steered by humans sitting in a trailer in Nevada, but rather a fast- and high-flying robot jet that functions without much need for human guidance.

"With FQ-X, autonomy for the conduct of the engagement would return to the air vehicle to take advantage of its superior processing speed and reaction times," Byrnes proposes.

But there's a tension in robotic warfare between the machines' incredible speed and lethality and we human beings' natural desire for direct control. Inserting a man into the loop inevitably limits a drone's potential.

Without human control, we effectively grant robots licenses to kill.

Byrnes suggests breaking a dogfighting drone's actions into different phases, including searching, stalking, closure, capture, and kill. Operator control would vary with the phase. And in the heat of direct combat, when milliseconds matter, the robot calls most of the shots.

It's a bold proposal — one the Air Force as a whole has showed little interest in pursuing. Only the Navy has openly discussed adding air-to-air missiles to jet-powered drones. Considering the bureaucratic resistance, Byrnes worries that the flying branch could eventually have no choice but to borrow dogfighting robot technology from the sea service.

"Aviators may dislike it, the public will question it, science fiction imagines harbingers of the Cylon apocalyps,e and we are uncertain about how to best utilize it within the context of a larger Air Force," he writes. "Nevertheless, the FQ-X concept is too dangerous to our current thinking to ignore forever."

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