My fear about this particular case is that there was a drone operator who did this out of boredom or fatigue, and then there was a coverup.
Putting 21 year old kids* brought up on video-games (esp the "Call of Duty" and "Battlefield" crop) all their lives in charge of drones with very video-game like setup and interactions sounds like a pretty good recipe for disaster[1].
* Yes, I know they are not all that young but I have seen photos in the news and I would be surprised if they were any older.
[1] "Scenario fulfillment" implicated in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
The Iran Air disaster had nothing to do with "video games" and "21 year old kids". It was a case of mistaken identity during a very turbulent time in the region. I think it is a red herring to refer to that disaster when talking about drone strikes.
Being trained in various scenarios combined with a high-stress situation resulted in one of the crew misinterpreting the data and claiming the plane was diving (like an attack run) instead of climbing (which it was really doing)
Basically it is scientific way of saying something like "force of habit" (with more to it, that is a bit of a dumbed-down view)
Which I can easily see transferring to drone pilots raised on a diet of CoD, Battlefield etc.
(There is a very good documentary about the entire Iran Air thing which talks about it, you can see it on youtube.)
It was posted three days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6617732