PUBLIC LECTURE, 7:00 PM, MARCH 9, 2017 Featuring: LISA LING

Lisa Ling is one of the whistleblowers whose story is documented in National Bird. Whether you are able to see the film or not, this is an opportunity to hear her story and ask questions.

PUBLIC LECTURE, 7:00 PM, MARCH 9, 2017

Featuring: LISA LING Former Tech Sergeant, Drone Surveillance Program

TOWN HALL ROOM, LEADERSHIP STUDIES, K-STATE

This lecture is a follow up to the screening of National Bird on February 28th.

Ling joined the military in 1991, serving as an army medic and nurse before transferring to the Air National Guard (ANG). In the ANG, she became a communications technician working on various types of electronic equipment. Besides her overseas deployments, Lisa was mobilized, during a partial unit mobilization of the 234th intelligence Squadron to the 48th Intelligence Squadron, at Beale Air Force Base from Oct 2007-Sep 2009. The 48th Intelligence Squadron provides ingarrison and deployed communications and logistics maintenance for the DCGS (Distributed Common Ground System) – basically the “brain” behind the drones. She served 6 years on active duty and over 14 years as both active and inactive guard. She has served during peacetime and supported operations from the first Gulf War through the Global War on Terror. She has received numerous awards for her service. She was honorably discharged in September 2012. The DCGS is basically the brain behind the drones

“I lost part of my humanity working in the drone program,” says Ling, contemplating the military action she was a part of as her friend meets with a family who lost loved ones in an attack near the village of Shahidi Hassas in Oruzgan Province on February 21, 2010.

Mission: The Air Force Distributed Common Ground System (AF DCGS), also referred to as the AN/GSQ-272 SENTINEL weapon system, is the Air Force’s primary intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) planning and direction, collection, processing and exploitation, analysis and dissemination (PCPAD) weapon system. The weapon system employs a global communications architecture that connects multiple intelligence platforms and sensors. Airmen assigned to AF DCGS produce actionable intelligence from data collected by a variety of sensors on the U-2, RQ-4 Global Hawk, MQ-1 Predator, MQ-9 Reaper and other ISR platforms.

Originally published in the MAPJ NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY/MARCH 2017 p. 2.