In Blackhawk Down, the dramatized events of the 1993 assault on Mogadishu, US Army Blackhawk Super 61 is struck by an RPG and begins spinning to the surface.  As the alarms blare and the helicopter loses altitude, the pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Cliff Wolcott, calmly asks his co-pilot, CWO Donovan Briley, to silence the annoying caution lights:

“Hey, Bull, you want to pull those PCLs off-line or what?”

The pilot knew his capabilities; he knew the status of his aircraft.  He likely knew he was about to die; yet his voice was calm and procedural, betraying not a hint of emotion.

In perhaps the most widely watched example in recent history, American Airlines pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger calmly told the taken-aback Air Traffic Controllers

“we’re going to be in the Hudson.”

By all accounts, the crew was calm and methodical as it executed its emergency procedures, saving the lives of all on board.

How can pilots be so stoic during life-threatening catastrophes that might bring screams and panic from others? 

Aircrew “Compartmentalize”

First, fighter pilots and those in similar roles compartmentalize very well, meaning they intentionally focus on certain things and ignore others in order to place their full attention where it is needed.  They leave their “baggage” on the ground and focus all of their efforts on flying.  Not only are they not distracted by a fight they may have had with their wife, they are also not distracted by their own emotions.

In some respects, they do not react with fear or panic because the possibility of their death is “compartmentalized” into a separate area, where they remove events over which they have no control.  Are they scared they may crash or be shot down?  Perhaps, but aside from flying their aircraft as best they can there is nothing they can do about it.  So, they file those feelings away and execute the mission, often with a matter-of-fact attitude incomprehensible to outside observers.

Training

The second and perhaps more obvious answer to “how can they do it” is training, though many who give that answer don’t necessarily understand the extent of what it means.

Aircrew, both civilian and military, go through intense emergency situation trainers designed to simulate virtually every possible in-flight emergency they might encounter.  Bird strikes, battle damage, engine failures, even belligerent passengers are situations aircrew experience hundreds, if not thousands, of times in training prior to ever flying actual sorties.

One evident benefit of such training is the practice of the procedures themselves.  When a fire breaks out or an engine quits, pilots already know what they have to do, almost to the exact detail, in every possible instance.  That ‘foreknowledge’ breeds a calm and confident response.

One less-realized result of the training is that it removes virtually all emotion from the event.  The first time a pilot sees a fire warning light come on in his cockpit in the simulator, he may feel a rush of panic; he may wonder if he’ll survive; he may fear throwing the wrong switch or making a bad radio call; he may even wonder if he’s got the “right stuff” to be a pilot.

After the 300th time he sees that warning light, though, the philosophizing and emotion are gone.  The pilot either works through it–and comes to a philisophical understanding with himself–or he simply “shelves” it in the “can’t do anything about it, so don’t waste time worrying about it” category.

This “training out” of emotional response has other impacts.

Training to Kill, Compartmentalizing Death

Every day, US military men and women who prepare for combat do one thing over and over:  they train to kill people.  Fighter pilots practice dropping bombs on buildings, groups of people, and military vehicles.  They practice strafing targets declared “hostile,” whether they be hardened military vehicles or personnel in the open.  They practice shooting down aircraft so far away they can’t see them, and they practice rolling in on aircraft at close range and putting bullets into the pilot they can see sitting in the cockpit.

Contrary to some idealistic visions, the training is not without “picking sides.”  Fighter pilots train with ground forces, listening to the sometimes desperate calls for air support to prevent friendlies from being overrun.  Fighter pilots don’t just train to defend a generic target; they train to “defend the BX;” they protect their wingman and battle buddy.  They train to defend hearth and home, peace, Mom, apple pie, and the American way of life.

As a result, they take a measure of pride when they successfully execute the results of their training in an actual combat mission.  When a fighter pilot strikes his targeted building and sees it collapse in a cloud of dust and secondary explosions, he feels good about accomplishing the mission he was sent to achieve.  When ground forces taking fire plead for an airstrike on an enemy position, and a fighter pilot silences it with a well-placed 500-lb bomb, the feedback is immediate.  The bad guys are dead, and the grateful friendlies thank the pilot for his skillful destruction.  Should an initial attack be less than totally successful, the fighter pilot will continue to attack with lethal ferocity until the threat is neutralized and ground forces are secure.

To the fighter pilot, his cause is just.  He does not take pleasure in the act of killing, but he takes great pleasure in accomplishing his mission and saving American lives–even if it requires killing.  Some fighter pilots may still consider the grave nature of their profession after they land from a sortie, but few will do it in the cockpit.  While at the controls of their aircraft, they are stoic, methodical, and lethal.

Those attitudes bleed over into other aspects of their job.  As fighter pilots weaponeer their targets (that is, design attacks to achieve the intended destruction), it would not be uncommon to hear them discuss the relative benefits of fusing schemes against hardened vehicles and “pink squishies,” or human bodies.  Some might be shocked to hear a pilot casually describe how he intends to bomb the first vehicle in a convoy in order to block the remainder, so he can make pass after pass of strafe and kill every enemy soldier in the formation.  It would not be unusual to hear a fighter pilot, focusing on a site in his targeting pod, mock the futile efforts of an enemy soldier running away from the imminent bomb impact that will surely kill him.

It may be important to communicate what should be an unnecessary cautionary aside:  There is no intent to imply military training trains the morality out of a fighter pilot or aircrew.  He is still expected–even required–to assess whether a particular strike is right or wrong.  Perhaps more than any other instrument of the US military, fighter pilots know they will be individually held responsible if they commit an immoral act, even if the rules of engagement allowed them to do so.

Application to the Baghdad Helicopter Video

The lack of understanding of this fighter aircrew paradigm by those outside of the military (and some inside it) has been highlighted by the reaction to the “leaked” Wikileaks gun camera video from a 2007 mission in which a helicopter gunship kills a group of men, among whom was a Reuters cameraman.

The attitudes and words of the helicopter aircrew in the video were no different than those of any fighter pilot in similar combat situations.  (Even Josh Stieber, who was in the helicopter unit at the time and is now an “Iraq veteran against the war,” said that “militarily speaking,” what they said wasn’t “out of the ordinary.”)  Ground forces are under attack; a group of military aged males carrying weapons is identified in the area, and they are struck with lethal force.  They are attacked continuously until their ability to threaten friendly forces is neutralized; the aircrew even watch the wounded, prepared to reattack should they obtain a weapon and once again present a threat.

The aircrew are glad they killed the enemy, because they successfully defended the lives of the ground forces.  They should be glad.  They did their job well.  Had they not, they may have been legitimately punished for failing to do so.

Was their commentary out of line?  Absolutely not.  Crass?  Perhaps, but the only intended listener was the other crewmember in the helicopter.  Single-seat fighter pilots have made equally colorful comments out loud, even though the only person who could hear them was…themselves.  The commentary is understandably incomprehensible for those who have never trained to save the lives of fellow Americans by killing others. 

It is important to note that no matter what the aircrew said–good, bad, or indifferent–it had absolutely no bearing on the appropriateness of their conduct.  Their conduct was judged purely on its merits–including details not necessarily captured on film–and the military reported it found their actions appropriate.

Conclusion

War is an ugly thing.  It can wrench the heart and turn the stomach of even the most hardened observer.  But governments still call on their citizens to fight those wars.  For aircrew, they meet those expectations by compartmentalizing and prioritizing their mission, and by training to the point their conduct is rational, if seemingly unemotional.

The terminology, attitudes, and color commentary of fighter pilots, helicopter gunship pilots, and others in combat are “insensitive” or “inhumane” only insomuch as war itself is insensitive or inhumane.

It is merely a job they have trained to do–and do exceedingly well.