7 ms·

This was a big thing for drone people based out of Eppley AFB in Omaha. Wake up, drive to work, attack enemies, drive home, sit there eating dinner with your fa

This was a big thing for drone people based out of Eppley AFB in Omaha. Wake up, drive to work, attack enemies, drive home, sit there eating dinner with your family trying to pretend you didn’t kill someone and can’t talk about it. Combat troops get to lean on each other after a firefight: “dude, good shot. That guy was about to get us!” You get validation that you did something to safe you and your friends, and it’s still a heavy burden, but you have people who were there telling you that you’re a good person and did the right thing. The Air Force did something shockingly reasonable (according to the newspaper coverage): they require all pilots to attend mandatory counseling sessions. Then there was no sign of weakness or any of that toxic nonsense. “Ugh, guess I have to go talk to the doc today, and I don’t want to, but guess orders are orders.”

Loquebantur 2mo ago
[flagged]
- Barrin92 2mo ago
  >The concentration of deaths is entirely implausibly described as "suicides", The article talks about 19 people. Given the size of those organizations that's statistically elevated but too small a number to descend into conspiracy theories. As the article points out they apparently had internal warnings and studies about lack of mental support for people in signals intelligence and cyber related roles. Given that this cluster of deaths seems to have happened in June/July, the Iran war and how the American government has conducted itself I don't find it surprising there's elevated numbers of suicides. You don't need to be on the frontline, if you're in sigint and involved in that attack on the school that casually blew up 150 girls and probably the stuff we don't know about I wouldn't be surprised people off themselves.
  - Loquebantur 2mo ago
    You supplant your lack of knowledge in statistics with unfounded assumptions and overt bias. The relevant metric here is number of deaths per size of the specified group and per time. You compare to completely different numbers and confabulate entirely unconnected "explanations". These deaths are most likely due to "housecleaning", as I said.
    - jonnybgood 2mo ago
      > These deaths are most likely due to "housecleaning", as I said. No, it’s not. It’s very obvious you have no idea of how US military personnel work and live, and the stresses that can be imposed on a person by the function of being in a military. Among those functions such as deployments which can come as a surprise and up root anything you having going on in your life. Or, having to live for several years in highly undesirable locations like Cannon AFB in the middle of no where. These can have a substantial effect on a service member’s mental health. Add in work conditions like working 12 hour shifts in a windowless room. Compounded even further by crappy leadership that you’re stuck with and continuously denies your leave. No, housecleaning is not more likely. You’re just ignorant of the military life.
      - Loquebantur 2mo ago
        You might want to actually read the article, then you would see how your descriptions don't actually apply. Part of the shitty work conditions (that remarkably persist despite incredible amounts of money vanishing in the DoD/W) is your employer being out to kill you should they get the idea of you being insufficiently free of morals or independent thought. I would argue, that part should worry you far more than your other points.
        jki275 2mo ago
        stop lying.
      - ciupicri 2mo ago
        > Cannon AFB in the middle of no where From what I see there are only 10 kilometers to a town which has a zoo, mall, church etc. It's not a walk in the park, but with given the zoning laws and car-centric culture of the US, it's not very much.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
- CircuitSeuss 2mo ago
  Or maybe… Things are really fucked right now. I agree that this is an abnormal number of suicides- I don't think anyone is disputing that. I disagree with your suggestion of “housecleaning” though. I would speculate that the answer is simplier: DoD “Hacker stuff” kills people. And worse. At scale. The psychological stressors of intelligence work alone is real and extremely high; Cyber Command’s role is not just to know, but to act. Cyber warfare is escalating faster than they can keep up, global consequences for their actions are high— and they understand the risks better than anyone [1](and can’t talk about it), but they are extremely under resourced, and because of leadership decisions or other factors outside their control, they feel unable to complete their work effectively [2], or are being told to do things they feel are immoral [3]. The most plausible cause of these suicides, and the takeaway I get from this story, is that under the surface of US global military operations, things are bad. If things are even more stressful than normal under the surface at CYBERCOM and personnel are feeling hopeless enough about it to end their own lives, this should be a red flag for the rest of us. - [1] maybe you can imagine having a hands on understanding of the real world impact of critical OT exploits, and being both unable to disclose specific details and also yelling into the void about it for years while no one listens. US water treatment cyber vulnerability is a great example of industry and government lagging so hard that it took an enormous volunteer effort and a decade to begin to address fixing issues which should have been a “fix it yesterday” all hands on deck priority. https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/07/water-system-controllers-dont-belong-on-the-internet-says-ex-nsa-chief-after-suspected-iran-attacks/5285070 https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/07/water-system... As another example, the US and Israel hacked “nearly all” traffic cameras in Tehran and used them to target and kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now think about the proliferation of internet connected doorbell and traffic cameras in the US… now imagine having an intimate understanding of how cameras can be used to kill people, while watching that risk grow exponentially over a decade, and being helpless to do anything about it because you aren’t allowed to talk about it and no one would believe you that doorbell cameras are a national security threat anyway. https://www.wired.com/story/from-ukraine-to-iran-hacking-security-cameras-is-now-part-of-wars-playbook/ https://www.wired.com/story/from-ukraine-to-iran-hacking-sec... https://www.safehome.org/resources/home-security-industry-annual/ https://www.safehome.org/resources/home-security-industry-an... [2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/25/us-cybersecurity-agency-cisa-reportedly-in-dire-shape-amid-trump-cuts-and-layoffs/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/25/us-cybersecurity-agency-ci... [3] e.g. disrupting Venezuelan or Iranian civilian infrastructure. Would you feel okay about developing the capability to cause a nuclear meltdown in Iran? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrv0p37k8jo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrv0p37k8jo https://cybernews.com/cyber-war/us-confirms-cyber-role-caracas-blackout/ https://cybernews.com/cyber-war/us-confirms-cyber-role-carac... https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116351998782539414 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1163519987825...
- mannanj 2mo ago
  I talked about the CIA very negatively after having a top secret clearance (never actually used it but it gives useful context). They then showed up in my commune and after a while of unusual behavior and psyops and pretending to be hippies (they couldn’t quite get that right) they resorted to drugging me to get answers they were convinced were true. I never ordered off the dark web, I do believe my [usa] government can be terrorists, I have purpose and meaning to want to surface truth to find peace because that’s what I believe. It was a scary time (in Jan - May 2023), and I fled back to parents in VA after which for a while they’d show up with similar personas of odd-people in open community gatherings attempting to get close to me. I’ve never thought of suicide before and even today have not. When I started sharing about this last spring on hacker news I got a slew of “random” messages and downvotes and people claiming I was sick. I am not mentally ill, I do not need a therapist. It took me several years to process the traumatic experiences and feel the courage to share because I hope it might help someone else going through something similar. I’m thankful for the one person who validated my experience and didn’t gaslight me or attempt to ad hominem/discredit through attack. These suicides very much can occur and I hope can begin to happen less. Here’s to a random stranger if you read this and are going through something similar, I hope you find peace and safety from these abusers!
  - nradov 2mo ago
    Has a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist ever evaluated you for paranoid schizophrenia?
    - mannanj 2mo ago
      That's insulting. And offensive. I think you should be the one asking the psychiatrist or psychologist to diagnose you whatever I deem fit - but, since I'm the one who shared something weird and you hide behind insulting others I don't have the speciality down for to recommend your psychologist. edit: I can see through your comment history you make a lot of offensive bad faith remarks to people. This is a forum of showing good faith, have you demonstrated that? Maybe you should ask your psychiatrist why you frequent a forum where you can't follow the very clear ruleset of showing good faith.
throw93939e0 2mo ago
Not bombing weddings could help as well...
MarkMarine 2mo ago
Can’t speak for others but the most damaging part of direct combat is watching people that you consider to be family die or be maimed.
- rdtsc 2mo ago
  > the most damaging part of direct combat is watching people that you consider to be family die or be maimed. I've heard from various places over the years (documentaries, friends) that soldiers really fight for their comrades at the end of the day. As in when asked "why are you here fighting" if they are in front of a news crews or something where they have to say "we're bringing democracy to ..." they'll just say something like "those fuckers blew my buddy up and I am here to pay them back".
  - MarkMarine 2mo ago
    No one runs into machine gun fire to bring democracy to someone else I can assure you of that.
    - breppp 2mo ago
      That's probably false as you can see historically that ideological armies have far better morale and better effectiveness
      - throw310822 2mo ago
        "Bringing democracy" is a very weak ideological motivation. I would rather call it plausible deniability. As in "we're doing this to bring democracy" and people might be left with the doubt that it's true.
        breppp 2mo ago
        It is a very weak ideological motivation for people who would never enlist in the first place. However, I think people are generally too cynical towards a very real belief system. There are multiple examples of US pushing for democracy against its own interest. Bush with the Hamas Gaza elections, Obama with the Egypt Muslim Brotherhood government and Carter with pre-revolution Iran are such examples
AndyMcConachie 2mo ago
[flagged]
- Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
  [flagged]
senderista 2mo ago
I feel more compassion for the innocent people they killed and it's not even close.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - superkuh 2mo ago
    We sure do. They mostly work in federal government and government contracting corporations. There are multiple clearly documented repeated drone strikes on US citizens, even US citizen minors, who never were even indicted with a crime, that ended in assassination. Like the two intentional strikes it took to kill 16 year old US citizen from colorado, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awla... . See also the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix executive program in general.
    - iluvcommunism 2mo ago
      [dead]
    - victorbjorklund 2mo ago
      Are American citizens always innocent? From what I have seen many Americans are guilty of a lot of bad stuff.
      - xanthor 2mo ago
        Until proven guilty, yes they are always innocent.
        victorbjorklund 2mo ago
        That is true for all people. Not just Americans. It’s just disgusting to say that all Americans are innocent but we can assume others are guilty. As far as I know Bin Laden was killed without ever being tried in a criminal court. Are school shooters in America innocent if they are killed before getting a trial?
Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
[flagged]
- naikrovek 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - throw10920 2mo ago
    > “Women belong in the kitchen” They never said anything remotely like that in their comment. You're actively lying about their words in addition to badly breaking the HN guidelines. You should re-read them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - naikrovek 2mo ago
      [flagged]
      - tomhow 2mo ago
        We've banned this account for repeatedly attacking fellow community members and refusing multiple appeals from us to stop.
greedo 2mo ago
Some minor quibbles... It's Offut AFB, home of StratCom. Eppely is the municipal airport. And Offut doesn't have any drone units, nor do they manage any. They due process reconnaissance for sure, but actual drone strikes aren't conducted from there. Creech AFB is where most of the drone units operating Reaper/Avenger etc are based.
- kstrauser 2mo ago
  D'oh! Yes, Offut, of course. My Google-fu is failing me right now, but when we lived in Nebraska, there was a long article in the Omaha World-Herald (I'm fairly sure) talking about the mental health problems of the local drone pilots. This would've been at least 15 years ago or so, and things have very likely moved around since then.
  - greedo 2mo ago
    It was definitely Creech. I remember the spate of articles discussing how the officers (the USAF requires drones to be piloted by officers) were both struggling with the close up nature of drone strikes combined with fewer or even non-existent flight hours affecting promotions.
    - kstrauser 2mo ago
      Huh. My memory's slightly different on that, but I can't find the source to cite so I'm can't argue it.
    - tolien 2mo ago
      It didn't help that there was a sense that it was a non-job compared to direct flying duties - "what do you mean PTSD, you spend all day playing DCS!" etc.
- LorenPechtel 2mo ago
  It's around here. Doesn't look like much of anything, except an awful lot of fence for what looks like not much of anything. I've never seen movement. (The highest mountain in the area sticks up nearly two miles above the base and overlooks it. This time of the year most hikers will be on some part of said mountain.)
perpetuallunch 2mo ago
News just in: talking about your mental health, especially for men, does not improve your mental health. For the majority of men, most of the time. If it did, shouldn’t we see mental health improving by now?
- debesyla 2mo ago
  Wait, it doesn't? Genuine question. Where can I read about this theory more?
  - throwaway173738 2mo ago
    At the He-Man club of course. We all face our challenges with stoicism like Odysseus when his sailors got eaten.
  - thin_carapace 2mo ago
    rephrased for ease of interpretation - venting about a problem is nice just as stretching a muscle is nice. stretching doesn't fix the root cause of muscle soreness though, just as venting does nothing to fix the issue. emotionally re-reacting is likely to result in strengthening of existing associations, which is more likely to cause repetition of a problem scenario, as opposed to leading to scenario avoidance.
    - tunesmith 2mo ago
      "talking about your mental health" does not mean re-parroting your trauma. there's understanding, re-framing, forgiving, all kind of other things that go beyond the limited belief that talking just calcifies trauma.
      - andsoitis 2mo ago
        Do you know a single person who has cured their mental health problem?
        2mo ago
jojobas 2mo ago
It appears to be a huge lapse on the part of command. These people should have eaten dinner thinking "I got them good, these fuckers".
jambalaya8 2mo ago
that's because they were the ones being threatened, they were at risk, and they did the kill shot as self-protection (putting aside whether they should have been there in the first place). Drone warfare isn't the same thing. People who kill by drone aren't "at war", more often than not now, just killers. Their buddies aren't there, they aren't there, and they were really never at risk of much but being sent to the brig if they defied orders.
- infinite_spin 2mo ago
  This seems like rage bait. You could just as easily make the claim that all soldiers, regardless of their support role, could refuse orders long before they were put in a position that risks their own safety, knowing that in all cases their role would be to support the killing of others.
  - jambalaya8 2mo ago
    Not sure why you would construe this as rage bait. I am merely pointing out that by subtracting the actual theatre of war, the "act" of "being in war" is being divorced from actually "being in war". This is no less true than suggesting someone who lost weight by being knocked out cold, going into a coma, and being put on drip fluids for months only to wake up more svelte than when they got beaten up lost weight but wasn't on a weight loss program. Just because it is not pleasant to admit does not negate the fact that it is true. As to the rest of your comment, everyone who signs up chooses their MOS, and those lacking the choice they want are totally allowed to not enlist in the first place in the U.S.; if there ever is a draft, this likely would not be one of the things those people would be drafted for first, either. If I recall, there is even a rather high signon "bonus" for this MOS, compared to most of the others (that may have changed in the years and years since I last looked though). In short, noone should enter a military contract thinking you should "feel good" with the idea of killing, though let's be real, noone should be suggesting you should think you won't be expected to; anything but. My point was, the U.S. and a number of other countries have gamified killing. Adding distance adds dehumanization. That is partly why it is done. Avoiding any current affairs talk because I am disgusted by how crazy people sound; this stuff has been true though for decades. The whole cyber thing in the post isn't even about drone careers it is about exploitation careers. But it is related, in a roundabout way. And both "careers" aim to put a remove between real life and the "job". Of course, I could make the argument that they have more in common than people think, but that would be a book not a comment on a thread. If you haven't checked out Sisela Bok's book on violence and gaming it is a good read, incidentally.

Loquebantur 2mo ago

[flagged]

Barrin92 2mo ago
>The concentration of deaths is entirely implausibly described as "suicides", The article talks about 19 people. Given the size of those organizations that's statistically elevated but too small a number to descend into conspiracy theories. As the article points out they apparently had internal warnings and studies about lack of mental support for people in signals intelligence and cyber related roles. Given that this cluster of deaths seems to have happened in June/July, the Iran war and how the American government has conducted itself I don't find it surprising there's elevated numbers of suicides. You don't need to be on the frontline, if you're in sigint and involved in that attack on the school that casually blew up 150 girls and probably the stuff we don't know about I wouldn't be surprised people off themselves.
- Loquebantur 2mo ago
  You supplant your lack of knowledge in statistics with unfounded assumptions and overt bias. The relevant metric here is number of deaths per size of the specified group and per time. You compare to completely different numbers and confabulate entirely unconnected "explanations". These deaths are most likely due to "housecleaning", as I said.
  - jonnybgood 2mo ago
    > These deaths are most likely due to "housecleaning", as I said. No, it’s not. It’s very obvious you have no idea of how US military personnel work and live, and the stresses that can be imposed on a person by the function of being in a military. Among those functions such as deployments which can come as a surprise and up root anything you having going on in your life. Or, having to live for several years in highly undesirable locations like Cannon AFB in the middle of no where. These can have a substantial effect on a service member’s mental health. Add in work conditions like working 12 hour shifts in a windowless room. Compounded even further by crappy leadership that you’re stuck with and continuously denies your leave. No, housecleaning is not more likely. You’re just ignorant of the military life.
    - Loquebantur 2mo ago
      You might want to actually read the article, then you would see how your descriptions don't actually apply. Part of the shitty work conditions (that remarkably persist despite incredible amounts of money vanishing in the DoD/W) is your employer being out to kill you should they get the idea of you being insufficiently free of morals or independent thought. I would argue, that part should worry you far more than your other points.
      - jki275 2mo ago
        stop lying.
    - ciupicri 2mo ago
      > Cannon AFB in the middle of no where From what I see there are only 10 kilometers to a town which has a zoo, mall, church etc. It's not a walk in the park, but with given the zoning laws and car-centric culture of the US, it's not very much.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
CircuitSeuss 2mo ago
Or maybe… Things are really fucked right now. I agree that this is an abnormal number of suicides- I don't think anyone is disputing that. I disagree with your suggestion of “housecleaning” though. I would speculate that the answer is simplier: DoD “Hacker stuff” kills people. And worse. At scale. The psychological stressors of intelligence work alone is real and extremely high; Cyber Command’s role is not just to know, but to act. Cyber warfare is escalating faster than they can keep up, global consequences for their actions are high— and they understand the risks better than anyone [1](and can’t talk about it), but they are extremely under resourced, and because of leadership decisions or other factors outside their control, they feel unable to complete their work effectively [2], or are being told to do things they feel are immoral [3]. The most plausible cause of these suicides, and the takeaway I get from this story, is that under the surface of US global military operations, things are bad. If things are even more stressful than normal under the surface at CYBERCOM and personnel are feeling hopeless enough about it to end their own lives, this should be a red flag for the rest of us. - [1] maybe you can imagine having a hands on understanding of the real world impact of critical OT exploits, and being both unable to disclose specific details and also yelling into the void about it for years while no one listens. US water treatment cyber vulnerability is a great example of industry and government lagging so hard that it took an enormous volunteer effort and a decade to begin to address fixing issues which should have been a “fix it yesterday” all hands on deck priority. https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/07/water-system-controllers-dont-belong-on-the-internet-says-ex-nsa-chief-after-suspected-iran-attacks/5285070 https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/07/water-system... As another example, the US and Israel hacked “nearly all” traffic cameras in Tehran and used them to target and kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now think about the proliferation of internet connected doorbell and traffic cameras in the US… now imagine having an intimate understanding of how cameras can be used to kill people, while watching that risk grow exponentially over a decade, and being helpless to do anything about it because you aren’t allowed to talk about it and no one would believe you that doorbell cameras are a national security threat anyway. https://www.wired.com/story/from-ukraine-to-iran-hacking-security-cameras-is-now-part-of-wars-playbook/ https://www.wired.com/story/from-ukraine-to-iran-hacking-sec... https://www.safehome.org/resources/home-security-industry-annual/ https://www.safehome.org/resources/home-security-industry-an... [2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/25/us-cybersecurity-agency-cisa-reportedly-in-dire-shape-amid-trump-cuts-and-layoffs/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/25/us-cybersecurity-agency-ci... [3] e.g. disrupting Venezuelan or Iranian civilian infrastructure. Would you feel okay about developing the capability to cause a nuclear meltdown in Iran? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrv0p37k8jo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrv0p37k8jo https://cybernews.com/cyber-war/us-confirms-cyber-role-caracas-blackout/ https://cybernews.com/cyber-war/us-confirms-cyber-role-carac... https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116351998782539414 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1163519987825...
mannanj 2mo ago
I talked about the CIA very negatively after having a top secret clearance (never actually used it but it gives useful context). They then showed up in my commune and after a while of unusual behavior and psyops and pretending to be hippies (they couldn’t quite get that right) they resorted to drugging me to get answers they were convinced were true. I never ordered off the dark web, I do believe my [usa] government can be terrorists, I have purpose and meaning to want to surface truth to find peace because that’s what I believe. It was a scary time (in Jan - May 2023), and I fled back to parents in VA after which for a while they’d show up with similar personas of odd-people in open community gatherings attempting to get close to me. I’ve never thought of suicide before and even today have not. When I started sharing about this last spring on hacker news I got a slew of “random” messages and downvotes and people claiming I was sick. I am not mentally ill, I do not need a therapist. It took me several years to process the traumatic experiences and feel the courage to share because I hope it might help someone else going through something similar. I’m thankful for the one person who validated my experience and didn’t gaslight me or attempt to ad hominem/discredit through attack. These suicides very much can occur and I hope can begin to happen less. Here’s to a random stranger if you read this and are going through something similar, I hope you find peace and safety from these abusers!
- nradov 2mo ago
  Has a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist ever evaluated you for paranoid schizophrenia?
  - mannanj 2mo ago
    That's insulting. And offensive. I think you should be the one asking the psychiatrist or psychologist to diagnose you whatever I deem fit - but, since I'm the one who shared something weird and you hide behind insulting others I don't have the speciality down for to recommend your psychologist. edit: I can see through your comment history you make a lot of offensive bad faith remarks to people. This is a forum of showing good faith, have you demonstrated that? Maybe you should ask your psychiatrist why you frequent a forum where you can't follow the very clear ruleset of showing good faith.

throw93939e0 2mo ago

Not bombing weddings could help as well...

MarkMarine 2mo ago

Can’t speak for others but the most damaging part of direct combat is watching people that you consider to be family die or be maimed.

rdtsc 2mo ago
> the most damaging part of direct combat is watching people that you consider to be family die or be maimed. I've heard from various places over the years (documentaries, friends) that soldiers really fight for their comrades at the end of the day. As in when asked "why are you here fighting" if they are in front of a news crews or something where they have to say "we're bringing democracy to ..." they'll just say something like "those fuckers blew my buddy up and I am here to pay them back".
- MarkMarine 2mo ago
  No one runs into machine gun fire to bring democracy to someone else I can assure you of that.
  - breppp 2mo ago
    That's probably false as you can see historically that ideological armies have far better morale and better effectiveness
    - throw310822 2mo ago
      "Bringing democracy" is a very weak ideological motivation. I would rather call it plausible deniability. As in "we're doing this to bring democracy" and people might be left with the doubt that it's true.
      - breppp 2mo ago
        It is a very weak ideological motivation for people who would never enlist in the first place. However, I think people are generally too cynical towards a very real belief system. There are multiple examples of US pushing for democracy against its own interest. Bush with the Hamas Gaza elections, Obama with the Egypt Muslim Brotherhood government and Carter with pre-revolution Iran are such examples

AndyMcConachie 2mo ago

[flagged]

Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
[flagged]

senderista 2mo ago

I feel more compassion for the innocent people they killed and it's not even close.

OsrsNeedsf2P 2mo ago
[flagged]
- superkuh 2mo ago
  We sure do. They mostly work in federal government and government contracting corporations. There are multiple clearly documented repeated drone strikes on US citizens, even US citizen minors, who never were even indicted with a crime, that ended in assassination. Like the two intentional strikes it took to kill 16 year old US citizen from colorado, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awla... . See also the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix executive program in general.
  - iluvcommunism 2mo ago
    [dead]
  - victorbjorklund 2mo ago
    Are American citizens always innocent? From what I have seen many Americans are guilty of a lot of bad stuff.
    - xanthor 2mo ago
      Until proven guilty, yes they are always innocent.
      - victorbjorklund 2mo ago
        That is true for all people. Not just Americans. It’s just disgusting to say that all Americans are innocent but we can assume others are guilty. As far as I know Bin Laden was killed without ever being tried in a criminal court. Are school shooters in America innocent if they are killed before getting a trial?

Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago

[flagged]

naikrovek 2mo ago
[flagged]
- throw10920 2mo ago
  > “Women belong in the kitchen” They never said anything remotely like that in their comment. You're actively lying about their words in addition to badly breaking the HN guidelines. You should re-read them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - naikrovek 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - tomhow 2mo ago
      We've banned this account for repeatedly attacking fellow community members and refusing multiple appeals from us to stop.

greedo 2mo ago

Some minor quibbles... It's Offut AFB, home of StratCom. Eppely is the municipal airport. And Offut doesn't have any drone units, nor do they manage any. They due process reconnaissance for sure, but actual drone strikes aren't conducted from there. Creech AFB is where most of the drone units operating Reaper/Avenger etc are based.

kstrauser 2mo ago
D'oh! Yes, Offut, of course. My Google-fu is failing me right now, but when we lived in Nebraska, there was a long article in the Omaha World-Herald (I'm fairly sure) talking about the mental health problems of the local drone pilots. This would've been at least 15 years ago or so, and things have very likely moved around since then.
- greedo 2mo ago
  It was definitely Creech. I remember the spate of articles discussing how the officers (the USAF requires drones to be piloted by officers) were both struggling with the close up nature of drone strikes combined with fewer or even non-existent flight hours affecting promotions.
  - kstrauser 2mo ago
    Huh. My memory's slightly different on that, but I can't find the source to cite so I'm can't argue it.
  - tolien 2mo ago
    It didn't help that there was a sense that it was a non-job compared to direct flying duties - "what do you mean PTSD, you spend all day playing DCS!" etc.
LorenPechtel 2mo ago
It's around here. Doesn't look like much of anything, except an awful lot of fence for what looks like not much of anything. I've never seen movement. (The highest mountain in the area sticks up nearly two miles above the base and overlooks it. This time of the year most hikers will be on some part of said mountain.)

perpetuallunch 2mo ago

News just in: talking about your mental health, especially for men, does not improve your mental health. For the majority of men, most of the time. If it did, shouldn’t we see mental health improving by now?

debesyla 2mo ago
Wait, it doesn't? Genuine question. Where can I read about this theory more?
- throwaway173738 2mo ago
  At the He-Man club of course. We all face our challenges with stoicism like Odysseus when his sailors got eaten.
- thin_carapace 2mo ago
  rephrased for ease of interpretation - venting about a problem is nice just as stretching a muscle is nice. stretching doesn't fix the root cause of muscle soreness though, just as venting does nothing to fix the issue. emotionally re-reacting is likely to result in strengthening of existing associations, which is more likely to cause repetition of a problem scenario, as opposed to leading to scenario avoidance.
  - tunesmith 2mo ago
    "talking about your mental health" does not mean re-parroting your trauma. there's understanding, re-framing, forgiving, all kind of other things that go beyond the limited belief that talking just calcifies trauma.
    - andsoitis 2mo ago
      Do you know a single person who has cured their mental health problem?
      - 2mo ago

jojobas 2mo ago

It appears to be a huge lapse on the part of command. These people should have eaten dinner thinking "I got them good, these fuckers".

jambalaya8 2mo ago

that's because they were the ones being threatened, they were at risk, and they did the kill shot as self-protection (putting aside whether they should have been there in the first place). Drone warfare isn't the same thing. People who kill by drone aren't "at war", more often than not now, just killers. Their buddies aren't there, they aren't there, and they were really never at risk of much but being sent to the brig if they defied orders.

infinite_spin 2mo ago
This seems like rage bait. You could just as easily make the claim that all soldiers, regardless of their support role, could refuse orders long before they were put in a position that risks their own safety, knowing that in all cases their role would be to support the killing of others.
- jambalaya8 2mo ago
  Not sure why you would construe this as rage bait. I am merely pointing out that by subtracting the actual theatre of war, the "act" of "being in war" is being divorced from actually "being in war". This is no less true than suggesting someone who lost weight by being knocked out cold, going into a coma, and being put on drip fluids for months only to wake up more svelte than when they got beaten up lost weight but wasn't on a weight loss program. Just because it is not pleasant to admit does not negate the fact that it is true. As to the rest of your comment, everyone who signs up chooses their MOS, and those lacking the choice they want are totally allowed to not enlist in the first place in the U.S.; if there ever is a draft, this likely would not be one of the things those people would be drafted for first, either. If I recall, there is even a rather high signon "bonus" for this MOS, compared to most of the others (that may have changed in the years and years since I last looked though). In short, noone should enter a military contract thinking you should "feel good" with the idea of killing, though let's be real, noone should be suggesting you should think you won't be expected to; anything but. My point was, the U.S. and a number of other countries have gamified killing. Adding distance adds dehumanization. That is partly why it is done. Avoiding any current affairs talk because I am disgusted by how crazy people sound; this stuff has been true though for decades. The whole cyber thing in the post isn't even about drone careers it is about exploitation careers. But it is related, in a roundabout way. And both "careers" aim to put a remove between real life and the "job". Of course, I could make the argument that they have more in common than people think, but that would be a book not a comment on a thread. If you haven't checked out Sisela Bok's book on violence and gaming it is a good read, incidentally.