00:01Striking distance.
00:12This may look like a video game, but it's real and it's deadly.
00:18Individuals presumed to be terrorists are targeted from the air and destroyed.
00:23The aircraft that fired the missile flew thousands of feet overhead,
00:32but the person who pulled the trigger sat thousands of miles away
00:36in a military trailer like this one in Nevada.
00:40This is 21st century warfare, part of a revolution in robotic technology
00:45that's transforming the way we work, travel, heal,
00:52and fight.
00:56It's pilots like these, remotely controlling planes like these.
01:00The military calls them unmanned aerial vehicles.
01:03They're more commonly known as drones.
01:07Most drones are designed for spying rather than killing.
01:10They patrol skies that are too dangerous for planes with pilots on board.
01:15They track enemy movements from the air for hours.
01:18They scout locations before ground troops move in.
01:22These spies in the sky come in all shapes and sizes.
01:26There's the three foot long Raven, which can fit in a soldier's backpack.
01:30There's the stealthy Sentinel, designed to be invisible to enemy radar.
01:33And there's the giant Global Hawk, which can stay aloft for 35 hours at a time and survey up to 40,000 square miles a day.
01:44But the most famous drone is this one, the Predator.
01:47It weighs no more than a pickup truck and flies just 84 miles an hour.
01:54But the Predator, as you can guess from its name, is deadly.
01:58It carries a sensor ball with powerful cameras inside.
02:02From five miles high, it can differentiate targets from civilians,
02:07trace their movements, and direct laser-guided missiles to make precise strikes.
02:16The Predator has been so effective that the US military now trains more drone operators than actual pilots.
02:24And the skills they look for are the skills it takes to do this.
02:27Drone operation and video gaming are so similar that the military actively recruits gamers and trains them with video game controllers.
02:38That has some people worried about the future of war.
02:41Drones protect pilots by keeping them away from the battlefield.
02:45But when soldiers pull the trigger by remote control, an ocean away from the target,
02:50does killing become too easy?
02:55Too much like a video game?
02:59Some former drone operators say it's hard to have empathy for human life,
03:03when the enemy is just a silhouette on a screen.
03:08But drones can also be used to save lives.
03:11In 2011, the Global Hawk helped survey damage after a devastating tidal wave in Japan.
03:16Much tinier drones may soon be able to scout a building for firefighters,
03:23or help locate survivors in the wreckage of an earthquake.
03:27In the meantime, the military continues to develop new drone technology.
03:33From tiny surveillance robots, to giant solar-powered spies that can stay airborne for years at a time.
03:40We're going to make more, we're going to make them better, and we're going to employ them more.
03:44I mean, that is the future.
03:47And it is not a game.
