“High value target. That’s all you need to know.”
It was already ninety degrees at Creech Air Force Base, the morning sun burning down on several dozen trailers neatly arranged in four rows. Captain Mike Berger, seated inside one of the dimly lit, cramped, and chilly trailers, kept his right hand on the joystick and his left on the throttle as his eyes scanned one of the fourteen displays built into the two-person control station. Beside him and sharing a center console was First Lieutenant Dee Ardis, likewise studying her screens.
Berger and Ardis were seated inside an MQ-9 Ground Control Station controlling a Reaper drone, with Berger piloting the aircraft while Ardis operated its sensors. For the last twelve hours, the Reaper had been circling high above Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a Pakistani province bordering Afghanistan. This section of the province was mainly no-man’s-land, a disputed area sparsely populated with villages containing only a dozen or so families each, a region where the Pakistani government had ceded authority to tribal warlords. In the center of Berger’s visual display was a single dwelling at the end of a long dirt road, if you could call it that—more like a trail worn into the rugged terrain, snaking through the wilderness.
Most days, it’d be just the two of them in the control van during their six-hour shift, even during combat missions taking out the bad guys. But Berger had been surprised this morning when he arrived to relieve the off-going team, finding an entourage of four high-ranking Air Force officers—his supervisor and his boss, plus a colonel and brigadier general he hadn’t seen before—further cramping the small trailer as they monitored the mission. Berger sensed the tension the moment he stepped into the trailer. When he was briefed on the operation, he’d been told, “High value target. That’s all you need to know.”
Thus far, it had been a boring four hours, with Berger keeping the MQ-9 Reaper at ten thousand feet to keep it out of sight and earshot of anyone inside or approaching the isolated dwelling. It was clear that today’s mission was combat-related and not just surveillance, and the Reaper was well equipped for the task, carrying four Hellfire missiles and two Paveway II five-hundred-pound bombs, all laser-guided to their target by equipment in the sensor ball mounted beneath the Reaper’s nose.
Although Berger and Ardis flew the drone, operated its sensors, and released its weapons, the mission was coordinated by an attack controller, a special operations type who Berger figured was probably sitting in a windowless concrete bunker somewhere in the Middle East. In the past, different controllers had provided Berger and Ardis with varying degrees of freedom over their attacks. Some were micromanagers, directing the drone approach angle, weapon selection, and impact point.
Other attack controllers were more hands-off, simply saying, “Kill these two targets,” letting Berger and Ardis make the optimum selections. Berger still didn’t have a feeling for this attack controller, as they’d had few interactions thus far. Things began to pick up, however, when Berger noticed movement on his optical display.
A white bongo—similar to a pickup truck but with a wider body—appeared on the left edge of the display, dust billowing behind it as the vehicle traveled up the dirt road toward the dwelling. From ten thousand feet and a thirty-degree offset, he could tell there were two occupants inside the bongo, but nothing more.
The attack controller’s voice emanated from Berger’s headphones. “Request visual target confirmation.”
Berger acknowledged, then tilted his joystick, sending the Reaper closer to the ground so its camera had a low enough angle to get a good look at the faces of whoever was in the truck.
The drone leveled off at the new altitude as the bongo stopped beside the dwelling. When the two men, both wearing white dishdashas—long white robes traditionally worn by Middle Eastern men—stepped from the vehicle, they were greeted by two other men who emerged from the building. Ardis zoomed in, taking a picture of each man’s face.
Berger waited as the facial recognition algorithms worked in the background, watching the percentage under each photograph churn until the reading under one of the pictures stopped at ninety-three percent. The man’s name remained blank on Berger’s display, but a green Target Confirmed appeared beneath the image as the four men entered the dwelling.
“We have confirmed jackpot,” the attack controller declared. “You are cleared for weapon release. Paveway in the center of the building.”
Berger selected one of the Reaper’s two Paveways, then waited as Ardis slewed the laser designator onto the building.
Release solution valid appeared on a display in the center console.
Berger armed the Paveway—Master arm on.
Finally, Ready for release appeared.
After a final glance at the laser designator, verifying it was locked on to the center of the building, Berger pressed the red button on his joystick, releasing the five-hundred-pound bomb.
As the Paveway descended toward its target, Berger assessed the probability of mission success. A five-hundred-pound bomb would normally kill everyone inside a dwelling that size, but they had no building schematics and no idea of the structure’s internal layout or composition.
Berger watched as the Paveway completed its journey, hitting the building dead center. An orange fireball erupted, billowing upward above a trail of black smoke as debris rained down on the surrounding landscape. As Berger examined the display for survivors, two men ran from the building.
“We’ve got two squirters,” Ardis announced.
Berger focused on the squirters, a drone term for someone who runs—squirts—from the scene of an explosion.
“Kill the squirters,” the attack controller ordered. “Payload your choice.”
Berger selected a Hellfire missile, which could be guided more effectively toward nimble targets on the move. The two men were close together and running in the same direction, so Berger directed Ardis to guide the missile between the two men. After Ardis adjusted the laser designator to the escaping pair, Berger released one of the Reaper’s Hellfire missiles.
As the Hellfire began its journey, Berger evaluated the advance warning that would be provided to the two targets. An incoming Hellfire missile would create a sonic boom, with the time delay between boom and impact up to eight seconds depending on the azimuth—the angle the laser designator was aimed toward the target. After years of drone strikes in the Middle East, the bad guys had learned—if you hear a boom, it’s time to run.
“Four-second warning,” Ardis announced, having done the mental calculation.
Four seconds ought to be short enough between boom and detonation, Berger figured, providing insufficient time once the targets heard the boom for them to realize what it was, change direction, and flee far enough from the impact point to survive.
The Hellfire streaked toward its targets, and just before it arrived, the two men altered their escape route, turning abruptly and splitting up. The Hellfire detonated a few seconds later, filling the center of Berger’s visual display with another explosion, albeit much smaller than the Paveway’s.
Ardis waited for the dust to clear, then zoomed in on the area, searching for the targets. Both men were lying immobile not far from the Hellfire crater, one man on his back with his eyes frozen open, and the other facedown with red splotches spreading through the sand, outward from his body.
Post-mission analysis would be conducted to assess the results of today’s mission, but Berger was confident the men’s status on his display would be updated from Target Confirmed to Target Deceased.
The attack controller’s voice came across Berger’s headphones again. “You are released for further duties.”
Berger tilted the joystick, turning the Reaper toward Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan for refueling and rearming.