I was a Pashto linguist in the Air Force. My re-enlistment bonus for 6 years would have been $90,000. I still walked and so did almost everyone I worked with. Money doesn't make up for this shit and The Air Force should know better by now. Drone pilots aren't leaving because of the money. The money is on the outside now anyway. I have a standing offer that starts at $80,000 a year just to do imagery analysis, which they do and fly the drone. If they were interested in the money they could get it elsewhere, but those jobs go unfilled because no one wants to do the job and the money doesn't make up for the monotony and the fact that it's getting really hard to believe in what you're doing when you pull the trigger.

Drone pilots do get a lot of shit from deployed members when they complain about 'having to switch gears from war to homelife' because so many people would love to sleep in their own beds at night, and not have to worry about being shot down, and not have to worry about being killed by a mortar. I know I have said they can go fuck themselves many times. I regret saying that now, but there is a kernel of truth there in what their hardships of war are in comparison.

They hear that day in and day out from people who don't want them to be eligible for the Air Medal. I don't want them to be eligible for the Air Medal because I have earned it with nine oak leaf clusters and I'll be damned if someone should wear it next to me who never left the country, but their contributions should be valued. The problem is that they have taken combat sorties and automated the danger out of it for the pilot. Yet the pilot is contributing in the best way possible for their mission. So if you give them the Air Medal it cheapens it for everyone who has been earning it since WW2, and if you give them something else it makes it seem like their efforts aren't the most important. I don't envy the men and women making that decision. They're going to piss off someone.