Small Wars Journal

The Details of Drones, From a Pilot Who Flew Them

Fri, 11/06/2015 - 5:38pm

The Details of Drones, From a Pilot Who Flew Them - National Public Radio interview.

NPR's Kelly McEvers talks with Lt. Col. T. Mark McCurley, a retired drone pilot who wrote the tactical manual for the Predator. His new memoir is called Hunter Killer.

Retired lieutenant colonel T. Mark McCurley wrote the book on how to fly the U.S. military's predator drone. As a pilot in the drone program from 2003 to 2012, he wrote the first tactical manual for the predator. In his new memoir, "Hunter Killer," McCurley talks about a program he says went from an aviation backwater joke to the tip of the spear in the war against terrorism. And he describes in detail the missions he flew or oversaw in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. On one mission, McCurley is sitting in the cockpit in a cold, dark room on base in Nevada watching the every move of a man he calls The Facilitator 8,000 miles away in Afghanistan. McCurley doesn't give the man's real name. Details of the mission remain classified…

Continue on for the transcript and audio.