Come fly our friendly deadly skies.

… said the United States Air Force. Only, not in an attempt to recruit new airmen.

Oh, no.

Rather, in a move that’s currently hiring — for the first time ever — private civilian contractors to pilot MQ-Reaper drones to “help track suspected militants and other targets in global hot spots”.

Their primary job will be to collective video and other intelligence via the air, in daily round-the-clock flights. The USAF is calling them “combat air patrols”.

This from the Los Angeles Times:

Contractors control two Reaper patrols a day, but the Air Force plans to expand that to 10 a day by 2019. Each patrol involves up to four drones.

Civilians are not allowed to pinpoint targets with lasers or fire missiles. They operate only Reapers that provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, known as ISR, said Air Force Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, head of Air Combat Command.

“There are limitations on it,” he said. The contractors “are not combatants.

As you may have guessed, this seemingly desperate move by the U.S. military has raised quite a few eyebrows. And maybe more.

It’s no secret that recruiting new drone pilots within the armed forces has become increasingly challenging (according to the Times the Pentagon is several hundred short of its goal of 1,281 pilots) and this seems to be a shrewd solution to that problem.

However, many military lawyers are saying that not only is it probably ethically wrong — it’s illegal. Their argument is that civilians are now a link in the USAF’s self-proclaimed “kill chain”, where surveillance eventually leads to an airstrike.

They say the association violates laws that prohibit civilians from taking a role in an armed conflict.

Predictably, a spokesman for the Air Force denied that the hiring violates any such legislation.

“Planning and execution of these missions will be carried out under the same oversight currently provided for military aircrews, and the resulting sensor information will be collected, analyzed, transmitted and stored as appropriate by the same military intelligence units,” said Benjamin Newell, via email.

Currently, the U.S. has the Air Force flying 60 combat air patrols with Predator and Reaper drones every day. By 2019 they hope to get that number up to 90.