What does it take to be a drone pilot?

Essential linkage: Get a look inside the future of modern, remotely operated, combat.

You wouldn't often expect a magazine and website that has as it's main interests Women and Style to come up with the high tech goods. But US men's style mag Esquire recently bucked the trend with an awesome, high-level access, story on the pilots of the United States military's drone squadrons.

You read about them all the time, and often see them on the news, but how drones like the now near ubiquitous Predator are operated is one of the last great military secrets. But this article, now online, opens it all up:

The top middle screen shows the view from the Reaper - in this case Afghanistan at rest. The sun has already set, but the infrared lens illuminates a darkened world in a palette of black and white. Down the hall, Nelson and Anderson step into the Ground Control Station, a windowless room ten feet wide and twenty feet deep, with beige walls and a drop-tile ceiling. At the far end, two men in flight suits and radio headsets sit in bulky tan faux-leather chairs before a cubicle cockpit of joysticks, throttles, and ten monitors. They stare at Afghanistan's roads and schools and markets and homes, as they have for the past several hours. Nelson and Anderson, their relief, slip into the seats as the Reaper flies on. Nelson checks his cargo, shown as neon-green silhouettes at the bottom of his center screen: four Hellfire missiles and two five-hundred-pound GBU-12 laser-guided bombs. Another shift of remote-control combat has begun.

There's about five long pages of this stuff, and it makes for gripping reading for any observer of cutting edge military tech. Follow the link to get the goods.