For US soldiers, war turns into entertainment.
Maximum distance from the enemy (the UAV operator and the enemy is thousands of kilometers apart), a continuous “video game” in virtual reality can cause a serious psychological disturbance, which completely changed the modern look of the war.
The American military no longer distinguishes war from entertainment. Any American soldier can, by pressing the buttons on the control panel of modern high-tech weapons, destroy the Taliban. After this combat duty, the military rest, and then again continue their game with a joystick, killing the enemy in video games this time.
Tyler Sandusky, an 21-year-old American soldier, is already a veteran of the Afghan war. When patrolling the northeastern province of Kunar, Tyler sometimes has to destroy targets located at a considerable distance using the joystick and the CROWS remote module screen with an 12,7 caliber machine gun. “It's pretty funny to watch the Taliban. They are far from you and do not suspect that you are watching them, ”says the soldier. “It feels like video games: you just press a button and the enemy is destroyed.”
Indeed, it’s very similar: the CROWS operator is protected by vehicle armor, the image is displayed on the monitor of the imager both day and night is the same, and the shooting process even up to 2 km is an elementary alignment of the intersection of the sight on the screen and a simple button click on the joystick. As the servicemen expressed, such combat missions are practically the same as the computer shooters before the end of the barracks.
Professor Dean-Peter Baker of the US Navy Academy says that this similarity is not accidental. Manufacturers of modern weapons with might and main use "generation of gamers". But there is also the other side of the medal: remote-controlled CROWS installations and armor significantly increase the soldier’s degree of protection: he no longer needs to lean out of the car and shoot a machine gun when bullets whistle around his head. As a result of such a war, the so-called dehumanization of the enemy occurs: the figures on the CROWS monitor are not perceived as living people. Soldiers have no sense of danger; they cannot see pain, blood, or hear the cries of the dying.
For the operator "CROWS" - only on the screen all the death and pain
The morale of soldiers plays an ever smaller role in such a "war of gamers", and most military personnel do not experience any emotional shocks from participating in remote destruction of the enemy. This is good, on the one hand, because it reduces the severity and amount of post-traumatic stress disorder, which is associated with contact with death. Although, on the other hand, there is a steady decline in the bar for the use of force. Now a large number of unmanned bombers make daily flights over enemy territories with absolutely no risk to operators, causing a huge number of civilian casualties. The UN has already expressed some concern that such UAV strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan violate international laws on the use of the death penalty without trial. This practice, perhaps, would have previously been called ordinary reprisals, but the highest accuracy of the inflicted aviation impacts and the very direct involvement of the human operator make it difficult to legally define such a practice.
Psychological changes in the state of military personnel cause apprehensions and, in fact, are signs of new, remote wars. In Afghanistan today, two completely different forces have clashed: US Army soldiers who are “playing war” and the Taliban. They, in turn, sacrifice themselves and see death not through camera lenses.
The war in the XXI century has not become more humane, just the soldiers have moved away from its most unattractive manifestations. Although American officers believe that this is only for the benefit, since the experience of all previous wars shows that terrible atrocities occur when confronting the warring parties. This is evident both in relation to each other, and to the civilian population. But still, the officers came to the conclusion that the "video walks" of the soldiers do not cause rejection, and today it is easy for them to start a war. You are safe behind a video monitor, and after such a “work shift” you can safely relax in a circle of relatives or friends.
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