Fortissimo, I'm afraid I don't fundamentally agree with some of your opinions - the facts in my experience don't really bear them out. I am not saying you can build immunity to PTSD, but you can raise the threshold to trauma.
There are all types of psychological tests and stress tests that can predict peoples likely succeptibility to depression and other mental illnesses. What they can't do is predict or guarantee that any one person won't get PTSD or depression at some point - if the stressors are big enough even the toughest will crumble. I don't really see the drone operators in that category but neither will they be completely unaffected.
How do you reduce someone's succeptability to a stress reaction to a traumatic event? You make that event seem to be non-traumatic, even commonplace and acceptable. This goes on naturally all over the world, usually in third-world countries where death and hardship are a way of life and infant mortality rates are extremely high. We have all seen the reports of 14 year olds stabbing each other in London estates over trivial turf-wars or drug disputes; they've grown up in a brutal, uncaring culture with a completlely different set of values to most of society.
I am not proposing that the RAF recruit the dross of society, pyschos or people who have been brutalised through hardship; but they could do more to prepare these pilots so that their trauma threshold is raised and they are more mentally ready for what they are going to see. I admit I have difficulty in imagining a harder group than trained RAF pilots to be able to tailor a specifc course for, but I am sure a suitable package could be put together - there is enough expertise out there.
Some people will no doubt be traumatised by this sort of training and battle inocculation but for the majority it is perfectly possible to change their perspective to a meaningful degree. My experience in the Army (where this sort of training is far more prevalent it seems) has shown me that the right training does make a difference, certainly in terms of being able to continue doing the job. It is vital that this is done as group otherwise the effect on the individual can do more harm than good. A fair few Regiments such as the Paras do select and train along these lines, they look for and test for aggression, and mental and physical toughness. I would say that there is more of a problem with PTSD when a serviceman leaves the services and doesn't have the group support, or when the exposure to trauma goes on too long.
Someone mentioned the 'tour' lengths of drone pilots, and we have all heard about the '20 mission' rule for bomber pilots during WW2. The top brass should be thinking along these lines for the drone pilots and not just considering it to be more always less stressful than a deployment to theatre. Nevertheless they do need to select and prepare them better and not start to treat it as another day in the office or rely on their intelligence to somehow 'ignore' what they are seeing.
Flug