Comment by greedo
10 hours 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.
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.
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.
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.
Huh. My memory's slightly different on that, but I can't find the source to cite so I'm can't argue it.