Four former drone operators who are speaking out against the U.S. military's ongoing targeted killing program—and risking federal prosecution for doing so—appeared on Democracy Now! Friday morning, alongside renowned human rights attorney Jesselyn Radack, for their first extended interview on air.

"We have seen the abuse firsthand, and we are horrified," former Air Force Staff Sgt. Brandon Bryant said at a press conference Thursday.

As Common Dreams reported earlier this week, the Air Force pilots-turned-whistleblowers issued an open letter to President Barack Obama warning that the drone program "is one of the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world."

"We witnessed gross waste, mismanagement, abuses of power, and our country’s leaders lying publicly about the effectiveness of the drone program," the operators wrote in their letter. "We cannot sit silently by and witness tragedies like the attacks in Paris, knowing the devastating effects the drone program has overseas and at home."

Watch their interviews below:

U.S. drone operators are inflicting heavy civilian casualties and have developed an institutional culture callous to the death of children and other innocents, four former operators said at a press briefing today in New York.

The killings, part of the Obama administration’s targeted assassination program, are aiding terrorist recruitment and thus undermining the program’s goal of eliminating such fighters, the veterans added. Drone operators refer to children as “fun-size terrorists” and liken killing them to “cutting the grass before it grows too long,” said one of the operators, Michael Haas, a former senior airman in the Air Force. Haas also described widespread drug and alcohol abuse, further stating that some operators had flown missions while impaired.

In addition to Haas, the operators are former Air Force Staff Sgt. Brandon Bryant along with former senior airmen Cian Westmoreland and Stephen Lewis. The men have conducted kill missions in many of the major theaters of the post-9/11 war on terror, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“We have seen the abuse firsthand,” said Bryant, “and we are horrified.”