Driving drones can be a drag
On its surface, operating a military drone looks a lot like playing a video game: Operators sit at workstations, manipulating joysticks to remotely adjust a drone’s pitch and elevation, while grainy images from the vehicle’s camera project onto a computer screen. An operator can issue a command to fire if an image reveals a hostile target, but such adrenaline-charged moments are few and far between. Instead, a drone operator — often a seasoned fighter pilot — spends most of his shift watching and waiting, as automated systems keep the vehicle running. Such shifts can last up to 12 hours, as is the case for operators of the MQ-1 Predator, a missile-loaded unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used by the U.S. Air Force for overseas surveillance and combat. “You might park a UAV over a house, waiting for someone to come in or come out, and that’s where the boredom comes in,”...