A June 5 Wall Street Journal article titled The Physic Toll of Killing with Drones documents the mental and emotional wounds suffered by crews of Remotely Piloted Aircraft, RPA. Like other warriors some suffer gravely from PTSD experiencing flashbacks, recurrent memories and difficulty sleeping. It a subject covered in my recent book, Beyond Visual Range.
Beyond Visual Range uses the pending impeachment of the President as a backdrop, and its main character is Major Samantha Miller (aka Sam or “Sparks”). Major Miller earned the nickname Sparks as an F-35 fighter pilot before a terrible crash put her in a wheelchair, forcing her to leave airborne work to become a pilot of a MQ-9 Reaper drone or what the Air Force now calls a Remotely Piloted Aircraft or RPA.
Here is an excerpt where Major Miller is explaining what it is like to hunt and kill a high value target.
“Finally, I have him alone and in the open. There is a nearby alternate safe target if for any reason at the last minute I need to abort the kill. I fire my missile. Seconds before the missile will strike home, a little girl runs out of the house and wraps her arms around his legs. I prepare to send the missile to the safe site only to discover that it has now become a soccer field full of little boys. There is nothing I can do. I watch the horror on my victim’s face. I see it in his eyes as he looks up in the direction of a faint whining noise that he hears for the first time. Then nothing. After a few minutes, I look down on the spot where he and the little girl had stood. There is only a smoking hole—a crater in the ground. Then I see his wife running from the house, her arms flailing over her head, and she’s screaming. Of course, there is no audio, but I hear her screams anyway—even if just in my head.”
Beyond Visual Range is available in print, digital and audio formats from amazon and other online retail outlets.
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For signed copies of books by Tom Collins, go to TomCollinsAuthor.com. Unsigned print and eBook editions are available on Amazon, Google Play, Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and other online bookstores. Audio editions are available on Amazon, iTunes and directly from Audible.com. Check out the latest book by Tom Collins, Stories from Applewood Manor, that explores Asheville, North Carolina’s History, Mysteries, Ghosts, and Tall Tales.
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