Greetings from gorgeous Hawaii and welcome to my blog. To be honest I never cared much for the blogosphere. It seemed an overly democratic mess of opinions to include the informed and the not so informed, the objective and the pure polemic. Now I will be adding mine to the fray.
My name is Sean Atkins. I am 27 and a lieutenant in the US Air Force. As an intelligence officer I currently function as a Mission Operations Commander for armed Predator UAV flights over Iraq and Afghanistan. Before commissioning last year I attended the University of Southern California where I graduated with honors. Previous to this I was an enlisted airman stationed at RAF Mildenhall, Suffolk, where I supported Special Operations Forces and Operation Allied Force.
If utterly bored here is the link to an article version of my honors thesis entitled "Unwanted Allies: What influences negative domestic reactions to deploying forces into allied states". www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5008671063. It appeared in the winter 2004 issue of the journal Air Power History. I welcome comments.
I look forward to meeting and interacting with each of you and am quite excited to get started. As to the more interesting questions:
1. Location: In my half tiled living room. I have intended to tile the other half for weeks but my two baby boys occupy more time than I have.
2. What I can see: Looking out the window behind the computer screen I see all the way across Pearl Harbor to Diamond Head, the volcano on Oahu.
3. Why WiMW: Several reasons really, first being the quality of the staff and programs produced by King's. Another is that I am looking for a broader, more international perspective in studying conflict and international relations. Yet another is that I have missed England since I left and, if I am fortunate enough to receive the MA, graduation will give me another good reason to return.
posted by Sean Atkins @ 10:33 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Hi Sean:
I'm glad that you've joined the course. The view from your window certainly sounds preferable to mine as I've a basement office on The Strand in central London. A bomb could go off and I wouldn't notice. I know what you mean about children taking up all your time. My two have come down with conjunctivitus which they've passed on to their mother. I've stayed home as a result to help out as I'm the only one here who doesn't look like a gargoyle! The good thing about this mode of teaching is that I can do it from home.
I find your job fascinating and just a little bit surreal, truth be told. If flying an armed aircraft over Iraq in real-time from an office in Hawaii is not a measure of how drastically some aspects of warfare have changed in just the last few years then I don't know what is. I have a mental image of a UAV operator working from a home office--something like an on-line student.
Are you a pilot? I seem to recall that there is a philosophical difference between US Army and USAF on UAV operators with the latter maintaining that they must be trained pilots while the former reckons that's unnecessary.
I'd love to talk t you about it someday. If you do get yourself to the UK at anytime be sure to drop in. In the meantime, welcome to the course!
Thank you for the welcome; I am more than pleased to be taking part in the inaugural class of this program. As for the view, it may be beautiful but I am still isolated on a 30 mile wide island while you are living it up in London. When there, I lived in Cambridge and would visit London often, fascinating city.
I suppose global networks have drastically improved both our lives. You can work from home while family is ill (sorry to hear about the conjunctivitis, I hope they are feeling better by now) and I can take part in a conflict thousands of miles away without having to forward deploy. The family gains in both these situations.
I'm not a Predator pilot but the officer in charge of the intelligence collection. So the pilots take my sensors to where I need them and my Airmen exploit the intel. I agree about the surreal nature of this position. Being involved with combat and other events while they unfold in the Middle East is strange enough. It becomes surreal when, after you have watched the incredible people on the ground face life and death, you walk out of the operations room, back into sunny Hawaii and drive home to your family. Somewhere back in Iraq is the soldier/marine far away from his family and facing people who want to kill him and whom he must kill. Adding to the moral complexity is the ability to hunt and kill someone half way around the globe and then return home for dinner.
In regard to the philosophical differences between the Army and Air Force and piloting UAV's, I'll just say that I feel much safer having a well trained pilot take the aircraft around. There are situations the Predators get into when having gone to flight school comes in handy. I would think these differences in thought stem from the different envisioned uses: Army wants them for tactical battlefield Intel while the USAF sees a broader function. Flying over to see where to focus your assault does not require as much skill as flying long distances/durations to perform other types of intel collection.
Well, it's true London does have a great deal of appeal in that respect. I've lived a lot of different places and it does have the definite feel of a 'world city'. Part of the reason I feel so at home in the department of war studies (aside from the obvious--the bature of the subject and the reputation of the department)) is its central location. There's always a seminar or conference going on nearby which, in theory, I could take part in. In practice, I don't do that enough--but the THUOGHT that I could somehow matters.
I think you must be right about the nature of the philosophical differences regarding the employment of UAVs. The army has an obvious interest in light UAVs, the sort of thing you can carry in a backpack and fling into the air by hand; the air force's interests are broader (I'll not use the term 'strategic' as the debate as to what is tactical, operational or strategic has gotten exceedingly convoluted lately).
What concerns me is the gray area between the two where opportunities may be missed because the two big players divvy up the drone business in a way that makes sense vis-a-vis their corporate interests but neglects crucial functions. I am thinking of the you take fixed-wing, we'll take rotors sort of logic that's left close air support something of an orphaned step-child in the past.
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