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See, drones are actually "piloted" by a team of people on several different continents. Planes get a shitload more complicated when the dude running them is 6,000 miles away. Since you can't safely launch an aircraft with so much lag in the signal (more on that later), every drone is actually launched by a separate pair of operators on the ground somewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq.

So two different crews means four operators per drone. But if you think that's all it takes, you haven't been to the DMV in a while. Every crew also has a mission coordinator who gives us our intel and a "customer" who has some very good reason for our $16 million robot to circle wherever it circles. There's also a screener who writes down a summary of each mission for our bosses, because they like to read the drone equivalent of the Twilight series every day of their lives.

Scott J. Ferrell / CG-Roll Call Group / Getty

"... the Drone sparkled in the sunlight, like the penis of some huge gray vampire."

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The point being, it takes a short bus full of people to decide whether those farmers hauling missile-shaped boxes are nefarious or not. Add it all up and drone pilots work half-day shifts with few breaks and no phone privileges, and 85 percent of the time there's no action. My greatest accomplishment as an operator was being part of the longest Predator mission ever flown. It had no missiles, just a buttload of fuel. We launched, flew the entire shift, left for the night, came back the next day, and jumped in on that drone -- which was still in the air. I flew it my entire shift and landed it that night.