No White Silk Scarf

From the Wall Street Journal:

"The U.S. military’s increasing demand for drones has forced changes in the Air Force’s “flyboy” culture over the years, plucking pilots out of the cockpit and sending some to high-tech desert trailers to operate remotely piloted aircraft, leaving their proverbial white scarves at home.

As the need keeps rising for drones and their valuable ISR—intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance—due to the rise of Islamic State and other threats, the Air Force is embarking on yet another cultural shift. For the first time, it is allowing enlisted personnel, not just officers, to pilot some drones."

You do not wear a white silk scarf when piloting a drone;

you're in a darkened quonset hut where tumbleweeds are grown.

The glory and the glamour of an F-16 flight plan

are naught to you while looking at a digital screen scan.

You target little blips of light, you push a button so,

there is a glare, then nothingness -- that is the whole darn show.

It's grunt work with a little bit of cybernetic twist;

taking human life with but the flipping of the wrist.

No wonder that the Air Force has a problem filling seats

with psychopathic murderers who function with spread sheets.