Is that it?” was my first thought, after being shown into the back of a caravan parked beside a two-lane highway, about 45 minutes outside Las Vegas.

The caravan was actually a US Air Force mobile ground control station, and the rather unimpressive-looking machine at the back of it — imagine a two-player arcade game from the 1980s — was the flight deck for a remote-controlled Predator aircraft, operating 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan. It was this kind of aircraft (the Air Force gets upset if you call them drones) that supposedly this week killed Baitullah Mehsud, the militant Taleban leader and Pakistan’s most wanted man.

It is hard to describe how surreal it is to watch two young pilots operating such a lethal device on a different continent to the battlefield. The advantages from a logistical standpoint are overwhelming: these 21st-century killers get to live essentially the same lives as suburban sales executives. They keep regular hours. They commute. Their workplace is clean, safe and air-conditioned, and there’s a nice sandwich place next door.

Predator warfare is also green: an unmanned aircraft uses 25lb of fuel per hour, vs the 5,500lb guzzled by a fighter jet.

But where is the soldier’s honour in killing an adversary from 7,000 miles away? What happened to looking your enemy in the eye? How can you understand the consequences of your actions? Surely killing shouldn’t be like sending an e-mail —otherwise where does it lead?

Still, having spent a day at Creech Air Force base in the Nevada desert, where the caravan-style Predator mobile ground control stations are lined up in a row, it is clear that the commanders do as much as they can to make things as real as possible. After all, the lives of American soldiers on the ground are just as much at stake as those of the Taleban chiefs being targeted for remote-controlled assassination