July 31, 2015
‘When you mess up, people die’: civilians who are drone pilots’ extra eyes
Abigail Fielding-Smith and Crofton Black of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Sitting in his curtained cubicle at Hurlburt Field airbase in Florida, an image analyst was watching footage transmitted from a battlefield drone. If he thought the images showed someone holding a weapon or doing anything suspicious, he had to type it in to a chat channel seen by the pilots controlling the drone’s missiles.
Once an observation had been fed in to the chat, he later explained, it was hard to revise it – it influenced the mindset of those with their hands on the triggers.
“As a screener [the person who decides whether to type an observation in to the chat channel] anything you say is going to be interpreted in the most hostile way,” said the analyst, who asked to be referred to as John.
John and other analysts at the base worked gruelling 12-hour shifts: even to take a bathroom break they had to persuade a colleague to watch the computer screen for them. They couldn’t let their concentration or judgment lapse for a second. If a spade was misidentified as a weapon, an innocent man could get killed.
“The position I took is that every call I make is a gamble, and I’m betting their life,” he said. “And that is a motivation to play as safely as I can, because I don’t want someone who wasn’t a bad guy to get killed.”
In spite of his vital role in military operations, the analyst was not wearing a uniform. In fact, he was not working for the Department of Defense or any branch of the US government. He was employed by one of a cluster of companies supplying image analysts to the US military’s so-called war on terror.
Staffing to operate a drone patrol of a single area for 24 hours
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s award-winning drones team has spent six months exploring this intersection of corporate interests and global surveillance systems. Drawing on interviews with a dozen military insiders (including former generals, drone operators and image analysts), contracts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, scores of contractor CVs openly available on everyday job sites such as LinkedIn, and the analysis of millions of federal procurement records, the bureau has identified 10 private-sector companies at the heart of the US’s surveillance and targeting networks.
The private sector’s involvement could grow: an air force official confirmed it was considering bringing in more contractors to help process the nearly half a million hours of video footage filmed each year by drones and other aircraft.
Analysing this video can be a highly sensitive role. As one contractor analyst told the bureau: “When you mess up, people die.”
While the military’s use of boots-on-the-ground contractors has prompted numerous congressional responses and tightened procurement protocol, among the public few are even aware of the private sector’s role processing military surveillance video.
“I think they’ve fallen under the radar to some degree,” said Laura Dickinson, a specialist in military contracting at George Washington University law school and author of Outsourcing War and Peace. “It’s not that these contractors are necessarily doing a bad job, it’s that our legal system of oversight isn’t necessarily well equipped to deal with this fragmented workforce where you have contractors working alongside uniformed troops.”
In theory, these contractors are not decision-makers. Military officials and project managers are there to ensure they perform according to the terms of their contracts.
But past experience in Iraq and Afghanistan suggests management of military contractors does not always work perfectly in practice, especially when their services are being called on so frequently. As one commander told the bureau, demand for air force intelligence against threats such as Islamic State is “insatiable”.
The ISR revolution
Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) have become central to American warfare in recent years.
US counter-terrorism operations such as a 16 May special forces raid on the Isis commander Abu Sayyaf are critically dependent on the video captured by drones and other aircraft.
Analysts thousands of miles away can tell a team on the ground the exact height of ladder they need to scale a building, or alert them to approaching militants. They can also establish a “pattern of life”, and what constitutes unusual movement in a particular place.
The aircraft are flown by pilots and operators from bases in the US, while the analysts examining the video they transmit are mostly housed in clusters of analysis centres – part of a warfighting structure spreading from Virginia to Germany known as the distributed common ground system (DCGS).
Remotely piloted aircraft, as the US military prefers to call drones, are more often associated with firing missiles at the tribal areas of Pakistan and Yementhan with gathering intelligence. But it is the latter capabilities – particularly the ability to collect and transmit video footage in close to real time – that have revolutionised warfare.
“In Kosovo the intelligence we would get was typically a photo, normally black and white, often from a plane that took it the day before,” Lt Colonel David Haworth, director of combat operations at the US’s Combined Air Operations Center in Qatar, told the bureau. “It’s like being able to talk on a can and a string before, and now I have a smartphone.”
The number of daily drone combat air patrols (CAPs) – that is, the ability to observe a particular spot for 24 hours – went up from five in 2004 to 65 in 2014 as demand for the intelligence they offered soared in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Colonel Jim Cluff, the commander of the drone squadrons at Creech air force base in Nevada, said the recent campaign against Isis had led to a new surge in demand.
“We’re seeing just an insatiable demand signal,” he said. “You cannot get enough ISR capability to meet all the warfighters’ needs.”
Meeting this demand is not simply a question of having enough aircraft. By 2010, according to a presentation by David Deptula, a now retired three-star general who was asked to oversee the air force’s rapidly evolving ISR expansion in 2006, the average Predator or Reaper CAP required 10 pilots and 30 video analysts. “We’re drowning in data,” Deptula said.
Private eyes
In the air force at least, contractor analysts are still in the minority of the workforce. An estimated one in 10 people working in the processing, exploitation and dissemination (PED) of intelligence are either a government civilian or a contractor. John believes they represent about an eighth of the analysts working there in support of Special Operations.
John argues that taking on even a small number of contractors helps ease the strain on the uniformed force without the expense of pensioned, trained, health-insured employees. “Contracts are used to fill the gap to give enough manpower to provide flexibility necessary for military to do things like take leave,” he said.
Contractor analysts are invariably ex-military, but the framework of their employment and their incentives are different in the private sector.
“In the military no one’s obligated to respect your time,” said John. “There were months you’d never get off days – if they need you to clean the bathroom on your off day, that’s what you’ve got to do.”
“As a contractor you’re not as invested in the unit … your motivations are going to be more selfish.”
John and other analysts stressed, however, that contractors were highly professional, and able to provide a concentration of expertise.
“By the time an airman has built up enough experience to be competent at the job it’s usually time to change their duty location. Age also has a lot to do with the professionalism of contractors. Most contractors are, at the youngest, mid to late 20s, whereas airmen are fresh out of high school,” said one analyst. “As an FMV [full motion video analyst], you cannot identify something unless you’ve seen it before.”
Screening for trouble
According to John, the PED units at Hurlburt Field were much smaller than those of regular air force crews, usually comprising only three or four people.
As well as an analyst to watch the video in near real-time, and the screener making the call on whether to type an observation in to the chat channel, units typically also need a geospatial analyst to cross-reference the images on the screen with other data.
Sitting watching a video screen sounds simple, but the herculean amount of concentration involved requires real discipline and commitment. According to analysts interviewed, 80-85% of the time is spent on long-term surveillance, when very little is happening. “You can go days and weeks watching people do nothing,” said John.
Another contractor interviewed said that because of the “long durations of monotonous and low activity levels”, a good analyst needed “attention to detail and a vested interest in the mission”.
“Many of the younger analysts view the job as a game,” he said. “It is critical to understand everything that happens, happens in real life. When you mess up, people die. In fact, the main role of the FMV analyst is to ensure that does not happen.”
The screeners type their observations in to a chat channel called mIRC, which is seen by the drone pilot and sensor operator, who are usually sitting in a different base. The mission coordinator, or mission intelligence coordinator, typically in the same base as the pilot and operator and communicating with them through a headset, helps ensure they do not miss anything important in the mIRC.
Follow this summary of events before and after a US air strike on a convoy of trucks in Uruzgan,Afghanistan in 2010. The strike targeted people believed to be militants but instead killed up to 23 civilians, and wounded a further 12.
This summary is based on information in a declassified US military investigation. The report pinpointed the “inaccurate and unprofessional reporting of the Predator crew” as the cause of the error. No fault was found with the screeners, including the private contractor.
Teams involved
A Predator drone pilot, sensor operator and mission coordinator at Creech Air Force base in Nevada.
Imagery analysts or screeners at Hurlburt Field Air Base in Florida. The lead screener was a contractor.
A helicopter crew and special operations ground patrol who communicate with the Predator crew but not with the screeners.
“We are eyes on the first vehicle; observing to try and PID [positive identification] on the pax [people] in the open.”
“I bet; DGS [imagery analysts] is not calling anything for us, right?”
Asks if tubes or cylindrical objects are being carried by people getting off trucks. The Predator crew relay this message to the screeners, who don’t report seeing anything.
Screeners report seeing at least one child in the convoy.
“I really doubt that children call, man I really [expletive deleted] hate that.”
“Calls out” [ie flags up] a weapon
Says that the screeners called out two weapons
“Hey, that dude just put a weapon downright above the truck. See it?”
“See it. See if DGS [imagery analysts] will call that.”
“They’re [the screeners] saying one MAM[military age male] passed rifle to another MAM.”
“Be advised, our screener did see one MAM pass a rifle to another MAM. Other than that nothing else PID outside the vehicles yet.”
“Are you able to ascertain the demographic of all the occupants in the vehicle? Over.”
“Check with the screener on that.”
“Our screeners are currently calling 21 MAMs no females, and two possible children. How copy?”
“Roger. And when we say children, are we talking teenagers or toddlers?”
“I would say about twelve. Not toddlers. Something more towards adolescents or teens… Screener agrees. Adolescents.”
Around 0840 the target details were provided to two OH-58D helicopters. According to the report, “the Predator crew did not mention children or adolescents at the target site. Instead, the Predator crew only noted PID of military age males, weapons and tactical manoeuvring, as well as the location of the target.” The helicopters fired their Hellfire missiles at 0848.
“Tell uh DGS [imagery analysts] that we need to get some uh…”
“See if anybody’s got uh anything …weapons.”
“DGS [imagery analysts] not call anythingyet, huh?”
“Not yet. No.”
“Exiting from that vehicle was probably about four personnel. Believe possibly two of those, maybe three, were female.”
“Screener said there wasn’t any women earlier.”
“Just be advised, uh, our DGS is calling out, uh, potential three females and, uh, two adolescents, uh, near the center vehicle.”
“Looks like, uh, one of those in the, uh, bright garb may be carrying a child as well. Uh, be advised, uh, DGS is calling that this time. Uh, they did not call it prior to this.”
“Since the engagement we have not been able to PID any weapons.”
Sometimes, John said, the analysts and mission coordinator would communicate directly in what is known as a “whisper chat”.
“It gives you a way to say ‘this is what we think we saw’,” he explained, adding dryly: “A large part of the job is an exercise in trying not to kick the hornets’ nest.” According to John, once you have influenced the thinking of the pilot and operator by typing something that could signal hostility, it is hard to retract it.
He likened his role to that of a citizen tipping off armed police about criminals. “As a civilian I don’t have authority to arrest someone, but if I call the police and say ‘this person’s doing something’, and say ‘I think that guy’s dangerous’ … the police are going to turn up primed to respond to the threat, they’ll turn up trusting my statement,” he said. “It could be argued that I was responsible, but I’m not the one shooting.”
John said that in his unit, image analysts usually took a back seat once the use of force had been authorised.
Because there is usually a slight delay between the drone crew receiving the feed and the analysis crew seeing it, according to John, “in a situation where it gets high-paced they’ll [the military operators] cut the screener out entirely”.
The other analyst, however, said that in his experience the PED unit still maintained its function for “identifying and confirming Imint (image intelligence) lock on the target” once force was authorised. Video analysts, he said, had the capability to tell other crew members to abort a strike under some circumstances, and the analyst could receive “blowback” when things went wrong.
The video analyst was the “subject matter expert”, he explained. “As such you have an important role in all the events that have led up to the determination for using force on the target. While you are not the one firing the missile, a misidentification of an enemy combatant with a weapon and a female carrying a broom can have dire consequences.”
Inherently governmental?
Given the air force’s efforts to keep contractors out of sensitive, decision-making positions, the contractors’ role in supporting targeting seems surprising, at first glance.
Charles Blanchard was the air force’s chief lawyer between 2009 and 2013, and advised the officials spearheading these efforts.
He described himself as a “purist” when it came to contractors flying armed drones. But for a function such as image analysis, his view was more flexible. “I’d be comfortable with some contractors sprinkled into this framework because you have so many eyes on one target usually,” he said.
“I’d be uncomfortable with contractors advising the commander ‘here’s where the target is’, unless the data collected and analysed was so clear that the commander could confirm this for themselves, as often happens.”
The constraints on using contractors were often more to do with command culture than the “mushy” legal framework surrounding inherently governmental functions, Blanchard explained.
“A commander in the military justice system has a lot more authority to take action where mistakes are made. Someone in blue uniform – or green or white – is someone they feel they have authority over.”
The consensus seems to be that contractors taking targeting decisions is undesirable. One analyst interviewed said contractors were already relied on for their greater expertise and experience, in effect placing them in the chain of command.
“It will always be military bodies or civilian government bodies as the overall in charge of the missions … however, you will have experienced contractors act as a ‘righthand man’ many times because typically contractors are the ones with subject matter expertise, so the military/government leadership lean on those people to make better mission-related decisions,” he said.
‘Growth industry’
The military has always used the private sector to help operate its drone programmes. According to the defence writer Richard Whittle, General Atomics – the manufacturer of the Predator – even supplied some of the pilots for the aircraft’s first sorties.
The defence industry’s supply of equipment to drone operations is well known, but the private sector’s role in providing a workforce has been harder to pin down. Through extensive research, the bureau has traced the contracting histories of eight companies that have provided the Pentagon with analysts in the past five years (the CIA’s transactions remain classified). Two more companies have been linked to the image analysis effort.
In 2007, the defence industry behemoth SAIC – later rebranded Leidos - was contracted to provide services including imagery analysis to the air force’s Special Operations Command (Afsoc). A contracting document described SAIC’s involvement as “intelligence support to direct combat operations”. Its 202 contractors embedded in Afsoc were providing “direct support to targeting” among other functions (in military-speak, targeting can refer to surveillance of people and objects as well as lethal strikes).
In a bidding war to renew the deal in 2011, SAIC lost out to a smaller defence firm, MacAulay-Brown.
According to a copy of the contract obtained by the bureau under a freedom of information request, MacAulay-Brown was tasked to “support targeting, information operations, deliberate and crisis action planning, and 24/7/365 operations”. The company asked for $60m to perform these functions over three years.
Afsoc required MacAulay-Brown to provide 187 analysts, some of whom were sourced through partnership with another company, Advanced Concepts Enterprises.
A portion of this work was to be carried out outside the US, according to the contract. The bureau found two CVs posted online by people who had worked for MacAulay-Brown in Afghanistan. Both were embedded with special operations forces supporting targeting.
In January this year the latest award for Afsoc intelligence support went to another company, Zel Technologies. According to a document describing the scope of the contract, Zel was set to provide fewer overall analysts than MacAulay-Brown, but more image experts. Zel was also required to offer experts “in the areas of the Horn of Africa, Arabian peninsula, Somalia, Syria, Iran, north Africa, Trans Sahel region, Levant region, Gulf States and territorial waters”. Afsoc has paid $12m for the first year, with options on the contract due to last until January 2018.
Although Zel Technologies is now the prime contractor, MacAulay-Brown is providing some of the intelligence specialists the contract demands. Indeed, it is not unusual for analysts to move from company to company as contracts change hands. They market themselves on recruitment sites with a surreal blend of corporate and military jargon. One boasts of having supported the “kill/capture” of “high value targets”. Others detail their expertise in areas such as establishing a pattern of life and following vehicles.
The air force is not the only agency that employs contractor image analysts.Intrepid Solutions, a small business based in Reston, Virginia, received an intelligence support contract with the army’s Intelligence and Security Command in 2012, scheduled to run until 2017.
In 2012 TransVoyant LLC, a leading player in real-time intelligence and analysis of big data based in Alexandria, Virginia, was awarded a contract with a maximum value set at $49m to provide FMV analysts for a marine corps “exploitation cell” deployed in Afghanistan. TransVoyant had taken over this role from the huge Virginia-based defence company General Dynamics.
In 2010, the army gave a million-dollar contract to a translation company,WorldWide Language Resources, to provide US forces in Afghanistan with “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance collection management and imagery analysis support”.
In the same year, the Special Operations Command awarded an image analyst services contract to New York-based firm L-3 Communications, which was to net the company $155m over five years.
Defence industry giants BAE Systems and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s former employer Booz Allen Hamilton are also involved in the US’s ISR effort.
BAE Systems describes itself as “the leading provider of full-motion video analytic services to the intelligence community with more than 370 personnel working 24 hours a day”. The bureau has traced some of the activities it carried out through public social media profiles of company employees. People identifying themselves as video and image analysts for BAE state that they have used real-time and geo-spatial data to support tracking and targeting.
A job ad posted on 10 June by BAE gave further insight. The posting sought a “Full motion video analyst providing direct intelligence support to overseas contingency operations” to be “part of a high ops tempo team, embedded in a multi-intelligence fusion watch floor environment”.
Booz Allen Hamilton has also aided the intelligence exploitation effort for special operations command at Hurlburt Field. Its role included “ongoing and expanding full motion video PED operational intelligence mission”, according to transaction records. A recent job ad shows the company is looking for video analysts to join its team “providing direct intelligence support to the global war on terror”.
The profit motive
Although it is hard for the military to discipline contractors, they are monitored and given an incentive to do their jobs well.
John said the knowledge that “you can get fired” was a motivational factor. In theory, the possibility of losing the contract should also encourage the contractors’ bosses to field the best possible staff and manage them closely.
Jerome Traughber of the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy is a former programme manager for airborne reconnaissance acquisitions in the air force. He said that in his experience of intelligence support services, a company’s bid and performance would be scrutinised closely, with incentive fees built in. “If a contractor wasn’t measuring up we’d make a change very quickly,” he said.
A large part of the monitoring is done through contracting officers, who liaise with other personnel in the warfighting unit to evaluate contractors’ performance.
Traughber acknowledged, however, that during the surge in Afghanistan, when thousands of contracts needed to be overseen, contracting officers and their counterparts inside military units were overwhelmed.
Nor is it clear that poor performance would necessarily prevent a company getting another contract. Daniel Gordon, a retired law professor and previous administrator of federal procurement policy, said the past performance criteria that contracting officers were supposed to look at when awarding bids might not always be rigorously assessed.
“As soon as you start saying the contractor didn’t do a good job you risk having litigation, lawyers are going to get involved, it’s just not worth it, so … everyone’s OK, no one’s outstanding, which makes the rating system completely meaningless,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the air force said ISR was “vital to the national security of the United States and its allies”, and in “insatiable demand” from combatant commanders. She said this demand was the reason for increasing use of contractors, which she said was a “normal process within military operations”.
On the issue of whether private contractors’ assessments risked pre-empting the military’s official decisions, she said the service had thorough oversight and followed appropriate rules.
“Current [air force] judge advocate rulings define the approved roles for contractors in the AF IRS’s processing, exploitation and dissemination capability,” she said.
“Air force DCGS works closely with the judge advocate’s office to ensure a full, complete and accurate understanding and implementation of those roles. Oversight is accomplished by air force active duty and civilian personnel in real time and on a continual basis with personnel trained on the implementation of procedural checks and balances.”
The Pentagon declined to comment.
Transparency gap
Contractors such as John pride themselves on their professionalism and skill. But as ISR demand continues to rise, robust oversight is needed to ensure that the job is always done with professionalism and skill, and more importantly, to make sure contractors do not stray into decision-making roles.
Laura Dickinson said the lack of information about drone operations made oversight much harder. “We urgently need more transparency,” she said.
The Department of Defense now publishes a quarterly report on the number of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a breakdown of their functions, but Dickinson said she was not aware of any such information being released on contractors in drone operations.
“There are tremendous pressures for that ratio of contractors to governmental personnel to swell,” she said. “If that ratio balloons, oversight could easily break down, and the current prohibition on contractors making targeting decisions could become meaningless.”
• Further details, data and supporting documents on this story are available from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
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