Predator : the remote-control air war over Iraq and Afghanistan : a pilot's story

The Nintendo generation has taken to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan where remotely controlled aircraft are killing America1s enemies and saving American lives. Matt J. Martin is considered a "top gun" in the world of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). For nearly four years, he has flown hundreds of missions on two warfronts in a new kind of combat that, until recently, was largely classified Top Secret. He and his fellow Predator pilots have been actively involved in virtually every facet of the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan: tracking Osama bin Laden; capturing top al-Qaeda leader al-Zarqawi; fighting with the U.S. Marines in Fallujah; and rescuing aid workers kidnapped in Afghanistan by the Taliban. This is Matt J. Martin's story and that of his aircraft, the 27-foot long Predator.

From the book:

 

From ten thousand feet in the sky I peered down upon . . . a technical college taken over by insurgents in the heart of Baghdad. It was after midnight. Streets were unlighted or poorly lighted. . . . Using an infrared sensor to register heat signatures, I picked out machine-gun and rocket-propelled-grenade fire coming from top windows of the college, a blink-blink-blink of muzzle flashes that pinned down a squad of U.S. Army mechanized infantry on the wrong side of the Euphrates River.

I carried a pair of Hellfire missiles beneath my wings, but my task was not to engage the enemy directly. Instead, I was to coordinate with and mark targets for an AC-130U "Spooky.". . . As soon as the gunship reported on-site in the night below me, my sensor operator and I began to "sparkle" targets with our infrared marking laser, lighting them up for IR sensors to detect. The Spooky opened fire with the sound of skies ripping apart on doomsday. . . . 

Hostile incoming suppressed, the army ground commander came on the radio and thanked me and the AC-130 crew profusely. . . . I stood up to stretch and regain my bearings in the "cockpit" of my aircraft. . . . Then I remembered that Trish had asked me to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home.

You see, I wasn’t in Iraq. Not yet. I was at Nellis Air Force Base, in Nevada, 7,500 miles from  Baghdad.