ABSTRACT
Military commentators commonly cluster the domains of drone activity into “the three D’s: the dull, dirty, and dangerous” (Tice, 1991). When considering the role of aerial drone operators, the three D’s each refer to distinctive, and distinctly unpleasant, modes of labor. The dull : Routine ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) missions fl y in 8 to 12 hour shifts (Hart, 2010, p. 24), rarely requiring much from the operator beyond “babysitting the automation” (Cummings, Mastracchio, Thornburg, & Mkrtchyan, 2012, p. 24). Drone operators commonly experience melancholy and boredom (Hurwitz, 2013). The dirty : This ostensibly refers to the utility of drones for entering spaces into which humans could not enter without incurring serious physical injury, including death. “Dirty,” however, just as easily describes the too frequent imprecision of so-called surgical drone strikes and the tragic extent to which drone attacks have contributed to the piles of collateral damage – i.e., murdered innocents and traumatized populations – accumulated in the numerous dirty wars that comprise the ongoing war on terror (International Human Rights, 2012). The dangerous : Drone technologies offer surrogates for situations into which humans would rather not enter. In addition to the danger felt daily by civilians in foreign countries routinely surveilled and fi red upon by U.S. drones, drones are also hazardous to the health of the people behind the controls. A recent study showed that drone operators are as likely as their boots-on-theground counterparts to experience post-traumatic stress disorder (Dao, 2013).
