Brandon Bryant speaks with NPR’s, Kelly McEvers, about the psychological effects of firing missiles into Afghanistan from a Las Vegas control room. Now, homeless and suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder at just 27 years old, Bryant delves into the far-reaching effects of executing people with the push of a button.

“The missile hits, and after the smoke clears there’s a crater there and you can see body parts from the people,” Bryant says. “[A] guy that was running from the rear to front, his left leg had been taken off above the knee, and I watched him bleed out.”

Click here to listen to the audio report and read the transcript.

Although the drones that carry out these targeted killings are called “unmanned vehicles,” there’s always someone at the controls.

As a former sensor operator for the U.S. Air Force Predator program, 27-year-old Brandon Bryant was one of the people sitting in the pilot’s seat.

Bryant originally joined the military to pay off college debt. In 2006 he found himself wearing a flight suit, sitting in a kind of trailer in Las Vegas. He was surrounded by monitors and the low hum of computers and servers.

On his very first sortie as a pilot, Bryant watched from the drone’s camera as American soldiers got blown up in Afghanistan. There was nothing he could do.

Bryant’s “first shot” came later, as he watched a group of insurgents who had been firing on U.S. troops. He was ordered to fire a missile at a second group of armed men standing away from the others.

“The missile hits, and after the smoke clears there’s a crater there and you can see body parts from the people,” Bryant says. “[A] guy that was running from the rear to front, his left leg had been taken off above the knee, and I watched him bleed out.”

Bryant, who was watching on an infrared camera, says he watched the man’s blood rapidly cool to become the same color as the ground. Then, he watched the man he just fired a missile at become the color as the ground he died on.

Though the men he fired on were armed, they weren’t using their weapons at the time, Bryant says.

“These guys had no hostile intent,” he says. “In Montana, everyone has a gun. These guys could have been local people that had to protect themselves. I think we jumped the gun.”

The follow-up report simply stated that there were enemy combatants with confirmed weapons, Bryant says.

Bryant’s second shot is another he won’t soon forget. On a routine mission, he was ordered to fire a missile at a house with three suspected militants inside. Moments before the missile hit, Bryant says he saw something run around the corner of the building.

“It looked like a small person,” he says. “[There] is no doubt in my mind that that was not an adult.”

The missile hit, and afterward there was no sign of the person. It was the end of Bryant’s shift, and as he walked out into the early morning sun in Nevada, he says he didn’t feel distraught like he did after his first shot. He felt numb.

“This was the reality of war,” he says. “Good guys can die, bad guys can die and innocents can die.”

One day in 2010, Bryant was looking at a wall of top al-Qaida leaders and said he asked himself: “Which one of these guys is going to die today?”

“I stopped myself, and I said that’s not me,” he says. “I was taught to respect life, even if in the realities of war we have to take it, it should be done with respect. And I wanted this guy to die.”

Bryant says he tried to talk to a couple of people about it, but people in the drone community don’t talk about the things they’ve done. So, he remained silent, and then he quit.

“I couldn’t do it anymore,” he says.

Bryant is now going to school, and receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. But like other veterans, to kick in.