And the future, I learned, is like the past: In matters of war, there is tension between what members of the military feel is right and what their work requires. I observed this in the discord between trainers' rhetoric about how much they disliked killing people—they repeated this to me frequently—and their unabashed excitement, also expressed frequently, about the times they were able to launch strikes and kill "bad guys." Hating killing, but enjoying the chance to kill. The competing impulses may have seemed irreconcilable, but they were everywhere.

* * *

About an hour into class, Patrick told his students that different units would allow them different degrees of control over their attacks. “Sometimes you’ll be handcuffed,” he said. “They’ll say, ‘Run in from this specific angle, and drop a guided bomb unit on that specific point of impact.’” Other times, he said—and this is more enjoyable—“They’ll go, ‘I want you to kill those guys right there,’ and you’ll get to tailor your options to what makes sense to you.”

“So what makes sense?” Patrick asked Paul and Justin. “If you want to disable a car, or kill the people inside, you might have different aim points, right?”

Paul, a former security forces officer with experience in Afghanistan, was square-jawed and broad-shouldered, a classic linebacker physique, and patchy brown hair. Drone pilots saved his life at least four times in Afghanistan, he said, and he wanted to return the favor. He’d only had a six-day break between his last deployment and drone pilot training school.

Justin had joined the Air Force partly for money—he was in the third year of his bachelor’s degree in business, and already $20,000 in debt. An intelligent perfectionist, he talked proudly of his 4.0 GPA. (You could watch him berate himself in class whenever he made a mistake.) He styled his hair and wore expensive black-frame glasses.

“To disable the car?” Justin said. “I’d go through the engine.”

“What if we want to kill the passengers inside the car?” Patrick asked.

Paul thought for a moment. “It depends on which person you’re trying to kill,” he replied. “But if it’s all of them, I’d aim for the center mass of the roof.”

Patrick gave an emphatic yes. “And roofs are so small,” he said, “that most people will tell you to go center mass of the roof no matter what. Even if there’s a high value individual in the back left seat, the roof is so small, you want to make sure your sensor hits it. Because if he slips off to the side and he lases glass, what’s going to happen?”

Paul started to answer: “The laser’s gonna be reflected all over the glass and—”

Patrick jumped in. “It ain’t gonna work, right? So if all of your high-value individuals are inside, hit the center mass of the roof and you’re gonna kill everybody in there. The car’s gonna blow up.”