Well, this should do wonders for recruiting:
The Los Angeles Times’ Julian E. Barnes reports that the Air Force “is preparing to graduate its first pilots of unmanned drones from the elite U.S. Air Force Weapons School — a version of the Navy’s Top Gun program — in a bid to elevate the skills and status of the officers who fly Predators, one of the military’s fastest growing aircraft programs.”
The article goes on to state that “until recently, pilots would work on the Predators and Reapers, then return to their assigned aircraft. But the Air Force would like officers to make a career out of flying unmanned craft and become experts at operating the drones.”
“I would love to go back and fly,” said Maj. Geoff Fukumoto, a F-15 pilot nicknamed “Admiral” who was one of the first to go through the Air Force Weapons School for the Predator and Reaper. “But I think I have found the place the Air Force needs me. Right now, I am committed to this job.”
“Right now.”
I’d think it would be kind of hard to get an airline job out of the military, if all your time was spent in a desk chair.
‘Course, the needs of the service and country come first, right?
Somebody please tell me them barco-jockeys don’t get flight pay, don’t wear flight suits whilst “flying” and don’t log flight time and landings.
Virgil – Dude, they need you back! “Right NOW!”
Now launch the ready barco-drone! bawhahaha
Somebody please tell me them barco-jockeys don’t get flight pay, don’t wear flight suits whilst “flying” and don’t log flight time and landings.
They get flight pay, they wear bags, they log flight time (usually 40+ hours of no-shit combat time per week), they shoot bad people regularly, and when they rotate forward into theatre to work the Launch and Recovery dets, they log landings. The Pred and Reaper are hard to land without pranging something.
VERY hard. It’s why everybody is moving away from man-in-the loop landings. Mishap rates are too high.
Can you call it combat when they are in absolutely no danger at all? I mean, not remotely? They aren’t eligible for aviation combat awards (AM / DFC) or combat awards in general (I believe), so how can what they do be called “combat”.
Like the targeteer on the CVN who is invaluable to the strike planning, or the TLAM guys… important? Yes. Combat? Hmm….
I mean it is a stretch calling what most aviators do in theater “combat” 90% of the time. But to call sitting outside of Vegas, going home to the wife and kids, sleeping in your own bed… combat?
I don’t think so…
Well, to be fair, they kill bad guys which a lot more than most people on “combat” assignments do, and if they screw up, they can kill good guys by mistake. That’s not exactly peacetime, either. I think there’s a lot of “whistling past the graveyard” going on in this thread. Is manned aviation over? No way. But the manned mission is getting smaller, and the Air Force has jumped on the unmanned mission, most likely under duress. Don’t think the Navy won’t see it as well.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-5XFmpo_QATA/air_force_baby/
all i can say….
Gman- as far as them getting flight pay- I guess it’s more of a special duty pay, than actual flight pay. In the Navy it’s called Aviation Career Incentive Pay and while only pilots and NFOs get it, it’s given when not specifically in a flying billet. They think we’d leave the service if they stopped the pay, which I’m sure some would, but most of us can’t believe they actually pay us to fly. For the UAV types, I guess the USAF wants those guys to stick around as well, seeing how the commercial UAV and RC Plane industry is stealing our highly trained UAS operators.
Slight correction: ACIP is granted for flying duty, but is also given when not flying, depending on the type of duty and total flight time previously logged.
Right now, I’d kill to do that. But 6 months over the age limit of 28. Sigh….
An AF Major, F-15 driver, named Fukumoto, callsign “Admiral”, says he’s happy flying UAV’s.
Dude’s confused. He’s totally fukumoto’d.
Steve, he’s not fukumoto, just adhering to the air farce party line and being politically correct. He probably got air sick when flying for real. Oh well, so did I. I loved the overheads but snap rolls would get to me in a heartbeat. What a weenie I am.
I wouldn’t *want* to do it, if I had a chance of even flying the proverbial C-9 full of rubber dogs#!t out of Hong Kong, but it’s a job that certainly needs to be done. It’s a job all the customers on the ground are glad to have done.
Those guys deserve all the flight pay and cheetos dust on their zoombags they get. Air medals? A bit excessive, methinks, but that’s another topic.
The seedy undercurrent of this article is that most of those UAV drivers were conscripts taken in under the “come here one tour, then we’ll send you back” plan, which is now being rethunk. It’s a big pickle a lot of guys are going to have to suck.
Yup. It’s a big Dirty Little Secret.
Personally, I like the idea of a separate UAV pilot track. Get your private ticket and instrument rating, then transition to UAVs. Service commitment of ~5 years.
Agreed. There is a large pool of applicants who would give the proverbial critical body part to be a USAF UAV driver. There is another, smaller pool who has always wanted to fly planes and be a heart breaker and a life taker. The problems come when you start pulling from the wrong pool, like the 1Lt in my winging class who found out 6 days before winging that he would not be going to be an AC-130 driver anymore.
Lex WOULD have to post that; really knows how to slip the knife in and casually twist, doesn’t he?
G-Man. I’m READY!–but ONLY if I can commute from home. Got to make a few mods to the barco-jet yet, but I’ll be ready when they call. Just as long as they don’t hook a breathalyzer up to it and put an ankle bracelet on me to make sure I don’t take my Alienware gamer laptop to the local “gentlemen’s club” to while away the hrs while the killing machine I’m flying/guiding/directing/ is transiting to the tgt area from launch site. (I can haul the joy-stick around to the club with the lap-top, , but what am I gonna do with the rudder-pedals and throttle rig?)
Reminds me, gotta go now, gotta lay in some extra Barbancourt 5-Star in prep for those long loiter times.
G-Man/
PS: I’ve got a great wireless connection, super security soft-ware mods and hide behind a wireless router as a physical firewall–all I have to do is re-activate my anonymizer account, change my call sign to “The Fighting Fossil” and get down to business.
VX: New market potential for Barco flying from home: Rent-A-Drone. If you can sell slots for space travel, why not drone rental. With missiles of course. Blow up targets on the range in China Lake from the comfort of home (or in your case, lounge). Of course you’d have someone to help land the thing. Can’t be any more expensive than a seat on Space Ship One.
I’ll get in touch with Sir Richard.
Army enlisted pukes fly UAVs. Mark Baker had a cartoon on his “Private Murphy’s Law” Website with him talking to an AF UAV type. Murphy tells him that enlisted men fly UAV s in the Army. The AF type says, “we’ve been briefed on that myth. It’s lies, all lies.”
I thought The Army would require UAV pilots to be manned pilots like the AF. Score another one for the good sense of the senior service. The Army also has auto land for their UAVs and prang very, very few of them. The AF has a very high loss rate and it’s attracting attention from higher on the food chain. They type of attention you really don’t want.
An aside, “Private Murphy’s Law” is hilarious. A visit to teh archive on his website is worth a good many laughs for anyone, regardless of branch. Baker has one with Murphy blogging in Iraq. I won’t give it away. Just understand, for those unfamiliar with Army lingo that B.C. means Battalion Commander.
http://www.pvtmurphy.com/index.htm
“…committed to this job”. Spoken like a company man begging for a bone.
Several points here…
First, it’s a lousy job. Demand is damned high, so you get to fly from the box six or seven days/week. Taxi1 isn’t overstating it one bit. And there is no coming off deployment, no returning from a tour of duty – just an unending grind of evening and night shifts.
Second, it’s a hard job. You get flag-level officers wanting their UAV imagery fix, staff weenies whining about your inability to work 25-hour days. Add to this ground stations that have poor human factors, and it’s not for the timid.
Third, it’s a critical job. EVERY unmanned aircraft built in the last fifteen years has been taken out of its test program and thrown into the fight. You don’t see that being done with TACAIR.
Fourth, it’s got career possibilities. Not great ones, to be sure. The Navy has a sad record of killing careers at O-4 if you get the UAV taint, but with a third of the P-3s being replaced by BAMS, this is likely to change.
Finally, there is a real need for manned proficiency aircraft. Preferably something more attractive than a C-12. Pitt S2Cs would be nice.
Mike, OMG! I can’t believe these poor guys have to work lots of 10 hour days in a row. I hope they don’t get a blister or something. If a USAF “Pilot” ever had to work as hard as a Navy guy at sea or any grunt, they would 1)Die. 2)Quit 3) Call their congressman and raise a stink.
Part of the prob is that the Chair Force demands that the “pilots” (that’s a joke, my 12 y.o. can do what they do) be officers and trained pilots. USA is doing same stuff with young E-Troops. USAF is making bad business decisions.
If you want to make the argument that “these things sling death, has to be an O then I’ll counter with, “Lets have one major on watch making those calls when needed.”
Don’t even get me started on USAF wanting to spend millions on a new F-16 type cockpit for the UAVs.
Dumbasses….
Must. Stop. Posting. After. Beers.
Sorry about the tone…
Air Force guys think a full week of flying in the combat zone is 10 hours a day, six days a week… hmm… ?
In birra veritas.
Part of the prob is that the Chair Force demands that the “pilots” (that’s a joke, my 12 y.o. can do what they do) be officers and trained pilots.
The Army drones are all point and click, with no stick at all (I believe). The MQ-9 goes up to 40K’, and can be hand-flown in a series of modes going all the way down to something with the stability of a Hornet in degraded mode, but with time delay and no seat of the pants feel. On top of that, you’re dropping gravity bombs practically from a standtill kinetic energy-wise, i.e., imagine dropping an LGB from a helicopter poised at altitude. Kind of restricts your run-ins and drop points. And you have crap for sensory feed to build SA. It takes pulling from all that real flying air sense to fill in the gaps and know what the plane is doing. Kind of like being an LSO, flying a plane you’re not in with a time delay between when you tell it to do something and when it does it.
A surprising number of winged aviators “hook” rides in Pred land, and not for a lack of trying. It is hard to fly, and really hard to fly well.
I think the real argument to be made is not whether enlisted can fly them, but why aren’t enlisted flying pointy-nosed jets.
Nose, you know what a UAV tour is like? Get on the ship. Go to sea. Do NOT come into port. Ever. No leave, no liberty, no port calls.
Do this for three years straight…then get told that you get to do it for another three or four years straight.
And when you’re operating 25-35,000 lbs of airplane in national airspace, you need a qualified pilot. The real question is whether you need to get that pilot through the orthodox training pipeline, or get somebody with a private license and an instrument rating and transition him to unmanned aviation. The full skill set of a TACAIR pilot isn’t needed.
No argument on the F-16-type cockpit. There are some people who just don’t grasp the idea that these are NOT tactical aircraft.
Define “TACTICAL” aircraft? Then go to Nellis AFB and watch what these guys do in UAVs for the guys/gals on the ground. I would say they can perform the KCAS/SCAR mission very well in some theaters. No I haven’t drank the Kool-Aid but I’m not opposed to a better cheaper way of doing business to help wage war effectively. I can’t tell you the number of times I had to tell a JTAC or a ground FAC I was unable to contribute until I got back from the tanker….
No leave, no liberty, no port calls. Oh, but you get to go home every night.
I have friends who have done Pred tours. Fwd deployed and at Creech. I know what it is all about. Not any worse than anyone else has it.
I’m a little worried that this crowd isn’t reading the writing on the wall. If you think it’s bad now, just wait til the unmanned fighters debut in 15 years. I can’t wait for the day when a 19 year old enlisted Soldier rocking a souped up video game hands an expert manned fighter pilot his ass in a dog fight.
Nick Scott/
They had better have had experience in how real aircraft handle. I’ve never seen a simulator nor video game yet that flies like a real aircraft. Close, but not really the same–and although I’m a fossil, I can speak for even the very the latest games, and the feed-back I get on the sims is that they’re not there yet either. In 15yrs? For fighters? File under: I’ll believe it when I see it. Possible? Yes. Probable? Not likely–especially against heavy air superiority opposition except for limited, “one pass, haul ass” strike applications.
The one joker is that if somebody finds a way to churn them out cheaply like sausages in huge numbers (no small feat–even for the PRC) and hang a bunch of super long range versions of AAMRAMS (a lighter Phoenix) such that clouds of UAV/E fighter-types with LOTS of AA missiles can sweep the opposition Air Superiority fighters from the skies at the onset of battle with massed volleys. And if both sides are mirror images? Well…. And what about control signal jamming? In short, LOTS of things have to fall into place before the “play-station” fighter becomes a reality–if ever.
Amen! The complexity of anything more aggressive than motoring around in a racetrack is a lot more demanding than people think.
Especially when you figure that we know from digitial flight control system development that a delay of more than 150ms in the control loop will lead to dangerously bad flying qualities. And speed-of-light considerations mean that any satellite link involves a 200ms lag each way.
Which means that if you are doing any sort of OTH tactical maneuvering , you’re talking about an autonomous aircraft. And the software for that sort of thing is very, very hard to write.
Tuna
Understand flight pay, got it for 22 yrs. The point being as others have made – why take a highly trained very costly to produce fighter jockey and throw him in an air conditioned shipping container and fly drones? If you want to see drone talent go to any local RC club – you will be amazed at what the munchkins can do. And landing Predators/Reapers/drones? Auto-land works very well thank you, and not hard to integrate into their avionics suite. Pretty soon some enterprising TV station is gonna have drones for their eye-in-the-sky traffic coverage, and it is just a matter of time before you have drones for crop dusting, pipeline surveillance, etc. But sticking a $2 million dollar pilot into the lounger? Money spent better elsewhere. Let’s call this one a dead horse and quit flogging the poor thing.
As a SWO, I don’t understand what you airdales are b!t#ing about. Long hours? Check. No extra pay? Check. Stay on the boat when the birds are gone? Check. No cool gear? Check. Thankless job from everyone? Got it. Can’t sit down onna job? OK. Airdales as COs? Yep. 8 hours sleep? Sure. In a week.
Wish I coulda drove the boat from a Barca, even if it was just behind the windows
/snark off :-B
‘Bat Out.
Sheesh.
No one ever failed out of SWOS, when you guys had it, that is…
And when you think of impending collision in an airplane, we count it in tenths of seconds, not tens of minutes like on a boat…
You fall asleep at your job, somebody wakes your exhaused butt up. Aircrew fall asleep and the plane crashes (aka, “runs aground in shoe speak…). Plus there is no coffeemaker in the jet, or toilet, or 25 other dudes on watch looking at the whatchamajigs or whereisgoings-things…
Translation complete.
Them 25 other guys was a pain in the azz. Try flying with the rest of crew disagreeing on your performance or decisions every second, and with CAG sitting 10 feet away waiting for an infraction. Anyway, getting bent once meant no low pressure games according to NAMI and no more rebreathers neither…where ya gonna go? Home?
I like bashing the AF as much as the next guy but I would argue that their QOL has dramatically changed over the past 8 years. Perhaps before we bash their crew rest/crew day policies and living conditions because we in the Navy abuse ours as practice, we should take note of how they do business in some respects. Perhaps we’d wreck fewer airplanes while still getting the mission done?
bdgerjmn,
I read every MIR/SIR I could when I was in. Because of some stuff I do on the side, I still see them. We don’t wreck airplanes due to crew day very often (Last one I remember was 1996) and I have never seen a mishap where “crew rest..lack thereof” was a causal factor.
And on a sortie for sortie basis (as opposed to per-flight-hour), we have a better safety record than our blue suited sisters.
Nose, my point was that our (the Navy)culture in my opinion contributes to a lot of human factors as causal factors. We can debate all we want about our mishap rate but the USAF has a lower mishap rate per 100,000 flight hour which IS the DOD standard as you well know. I too have done alot of work on the safety side in my current line of work outside the Navy lines. You’re right crew rest/crew day are rarely if ever listed as causal factors…that is assuming the human factors associated with the mishap that are listed as a causal factor weren’t also due in some part to the crew’s level of performance, for whatever reason. Our culture while underway by definition forces us to work outside the ‘normal’ confines of crew day/crew rest. We often carry that culture back to the beach and it becomes the norm. I think we can learn a few things from our brothers in blue and in turn they could learn a few things from us. By the way….same NOSE that was the Roman Empire CO in 2000?
Badger-
I know that rate/100,000 hours is the “DOD standard”. Ever ask why? I’m pretty sure it is because USAF has lots and lots of planes that fly lots and lots of hours at a time and we fly very very few per sortie…
Just like I have said in previous threads, I’d rather hire a 1500 hour Hornet pilot than a 10,000 hour C-17 pilot because straight and level time doesn’t interest me. Time with wheels down, or time upside down are where you learn. Using rate/flight hour unfairly skews the data in the USAF’s favor.
Add to that these figures:
1. 60% of Naval Aviation is rotary wing (and therefore damn scarily unsafe).
2. 80% of that 60% operates off of ships at sea.
3. 100% of TACAIR operates in the CVN realm.
4. 85% (that’s a WAG) of USAF sorties land on 200′ X 10,000′ parking lots.
It’s apples and oranges, but if you try to find common denominators (like sorties) we operate safer in a more demanding environment.
No, not that Nose. He is smart, I am (okay, used to be) handsome. He has a very successful Naval Career, I’m a quitter. And when we cruised together, he was “Big Nose” and I was “Little Nose.”
He just made Admiral. Me, I’m still hoping…maybe I’ll get the call next year!
Nose
Interesting issue.
http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/media/approach/issues/mayjun09/May-June09.pdf
They don’t have to wear flights suits. I mean the Cheetos stains will show up on whatever, right? On the serious side though, if this helps us get the job done, lets get on with it.
bdger
I can’t equate a rate per 100,000 flight hours for USAF and USN as “apples to apples”. Look at community to community since those C-5B and C-17 missions tend to skew the flt hr rate towards the safer side. And maybe you were – benefit of doubt ack.
http://www.afsc.af.mil/library/2009.asp.
Of note, the dronies were high-man with a 6.76 mishap rate! But ….. NO FATALITIES!
Oh yeah
“This is the final edition of Flying Safety Magazine as a stand-alone publication. Since 1944, FSM has served Airmen as the flagship periodical promoting aviation safety. Future aviation-safety content will appear in a dedicated section of Wingman, the magazine of Air Force safety, starting with the spring 2009 edition. Each safety discipline — Aviation, Ground, Space, and Weapons — will occupy a portion of that quarterly Air Force Safety Center product.”
A good read in the old ready rooms.
Very valid point G-man, aviation mishap rates are by type/model/series, even in the AF. So it would be apples to apples for instance in the case of the F/A-18 to the F-16/F15. Another issue in comparing the two is culture. It’s no secret that we(Navy) are probably less conservative in our approach to some missions than our brothers in blue, whether its weather, readiness etc. Food for thought.
Guys, while we’re on the topic of debating the utility of barco-jets, I’m thinkin’ that Cheetos Corp. is missing a billion $ worth of publicity here. Man ‘o Man, if I was their Ad man, I’d have “choice of predator pilots everywhere” plastered all over those bags. I’d sponsor “squadron” parties, adopt–with great fanfare–a unit/squadron of the month/quarter or some such and plaster it’s insignia (well, maybe not the “shocker” kind
) on the bags as well–same for TV ads, etc. Man, I’d ride that PR horse as far as it would take me. (Now whether the AF would approve or cooperate is a horse of an entirely different color)
PS: While I warm to the subject, if they can have “Power-Point Ranger” patches, why not unit insignia with the “Cheeto-Bandito” patch? Or any one of a million variations of the Cheetah theme? Fits right in with the double entendre aspect of it all–a predator animal for swift kills for those who fly the predator, as well as a riff on the “orange-stain” aspect of the “experience” of operating/flying the bird.
GOT to happen…(Or has it already?)
Nope. Energy Drinks are where the money is.
“When you’ve got to fly a 24-hour mission, coffee won’t cut it. But Blue Elephant will let you fly morning, noon, night…and the next morning, too!”
MikeM/
“Blue Elephant?” What is it, 90% liquid dexedrine? And does it work like the blue pills? I’m 65, remember.
Just 65? Why you’re old enough to be my older brother.
Blue Elephant Energy Drink, a product of the Blue Sun Company.
The U.S. Air Force Weapons School doesn’t only graduate combat pilots…they have graduates in nearly every category, Intel people for instance can be Weapons School Graduates, maintenance people, ect. They’re the strongest performers. It’s a tough program. Difficult to enter and to finish.
Thought I’d add to this thread…the Airforce Weapons School is graduating its first F22 class this week! Just two graduates, small class, but noteworthy occasion.
Advice for the USAF if we gotta have these contraptions:
Hire contractors with attack pilot experience. Pay them more than starting airline pilots. Make ‘em swear the oath again and put ‘em to work .. It would be a helluva lot cheaper than training a bonafide pilot and subjecting them to this living hell…By doing this they are morphing the pilot species. It’s unnatural, even for the AF.
b2
You really don’t want to get into a world where non-government employees are releasing weapons. I could see hiring retired rated aircrew as GSs to do this. The AF, around 2000, realized they had too few rated officers to fill all of the staff requirements they had. So they created a slew of GS13 positions for former rated O5s & up, and hired ‘em. Problem solved — could do the same thing here.
New USAF flight demonstration team:
http://www.strategypage.com/humor/articles/military_jokes_200551221.asp
Navig8tr/
You REALLY know how to hurt us blue-suiters, don’t you?
Cute!
That was funny.
QM/
Which reminds me, I haven’t even gotten around to filing for SS yet–I’m a month late!