UAV`er - The way ahead

With shift to drones, war is often waged from home

Critics say the move to unmanned aircraft blurs battlefield boundaries and makes it too easy to drop a bomb. The transition also is creating a major cultural shift for the Air National Guard.

July 29, 2012|By Brian Bennett, Los Angeles Times

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Col. Scott Brenton, with the Air National Guard at a base in Syracuse, N.Y.,… (Carolyn Cole, Los Angeles…)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Strapped into the cockpit of an F-16 jet fighter, Air Force Col. Scott Brenton has dropped bombs over Bosnia, screamed over the desert in Iraq and strafed Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. But on a recent morning, Brenton flew his combat mission from a leather easy chair in a low-slung cinder block building on the edge of Syracuse.