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The Air Force will train more drone operators than fighter and bomber pilots combined for the first time this year, signaling a fundamental shift for the 61-year-old service.
The growing ranks of drone operators mark a turning point for the Air Force as it looks to a future that relies increasingly on unmanned aircraft. Over the next few decades, the Air Force plans to develop drones that would serve as fighters, bombers and tankers, the heart of its manned fleet, according to its Unmanned System Update. The document says piloted aircraft will be used in concert with drones…
The Air Force will train 240 pilots to fly Predator and Reaper drones compared with 214 fighter and bomber pilots for the budget year that ends in September. Overall, there are 550 drone pilots compared with 3,700 fighter and 900 bomber pilots. The current emphasis for drones reflects the need for persistent, eye-in-the-sky surveillance to track and kill insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The capability provided by the unmanned aircraft is game-changing,” Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, told USA TODAY in an e-mailed statement. “We can have eyes 24/7 on our adversaries. The importance of that is clear in the feedback from the ground troops — this is a capability they don’t want to be without.”
Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute, said intelligence gathering has been a weakness for the Pentagon for years but has improved recently. “The Air Force has now gotten the message that it’s important to be responsive to the war fighters on the ground,” he said.
Will this lessen the number of required fighter and bomber pilots – or simply involve an increased number of gamers/drone pilots? It looks like the reduction has already begun.
“INSTEAD of pilots?”
These things have two people running them: A pilot and a camera operator/weapons officer. They get to work 9 to 5 and go home between trips to the battle field.
What is prevented is pilots getting shot down and killed.
Makes sense to me. It’s safer and it’s effective. Eventually, it will all be a push button war.
There is actually a Star Trek episode where two planets fought a war completely by computer. Not a single person gets killed. The agreement is that the “war-ing computers” decide the victor.
#42 Yeah but the computer decided who had died during the attack, those people had to report to suicide booths.
A good example of how man influences technology then technology influences man. Obviously drones will be cheaper to build and maintain plus it’ll be safer for the pilots. Not only that they can be designed to be faster and more manuverable, no pilot suffering G forces. Current UAV design was based on recon with extreme autonomy and range, this will change.
Yup, nice and clean. Maybe a little too clean. Star Trek covered wars that are too clean in the first season show “A Taste of Armegedon”.
http://tinyurl.com/mz3pkz
#43 good point . I forgot about that part where citizens had to report for extermination! That was the big deal for cap kirk to sort out!
#38, JimR,
Patrick, are you really that ignorant?
Not surprisingly, yes.
Killing civilians through conventional air-strikes does put you at *some* distance from the carnage you’re wreaking — but this technology will finally completely detach the U.S. from any troubling sense of moral responsibility.
# 47 Wretched Gnu
I don’t think you get it.
With a kill ratio of infinity, no loss of American life; the cruel, amoral, Machiavellian neophyte people (of Karl Rove ilk) of USA won’t and don’t care, so long as we WIN the WAR.
The bomber pilots probably stay just long enough to get the training and experience to qualify for the Commercial Airlines jobs, which pay better. The fighter pilots get into it for the thrill, until they start getting shot at for real. And then they want out. So the drones will take some of the heat off the human pilots, in missions that the risks are known (or a deadly certainty). And theoretically, the drones will cost less to lose, than the manned fighters.
It’s a logical progression (not an evil plot by Skynet), that unmanned planes would be factored in service. After all, orbiting satellites replace spy planes, when the technology made it possible. So it’s the same with unmanned drones. Just as long as anything that’s capable of killing, isn’t computer controlled, rather than human controlled. They can relegate that little chore up to unarmed surveillance drones. Or at least have the drone’s armaments strictly under human control. The “killer” drones are probably already under some computer aided direction. A kind of Auto-pilot system. So the operator doesn’t have to be as skilled as a real jet pilot, to keep from crashing the drone. Compensating for common operator errors. Basically all the drone’s pilot will do is direct its flight path, according to mission orders. They will take off and land themselves, with little, if any, human skill.
Someday our cars will operate this way as well. We will just give it it’s destination, and it will handle the finite skill of negotiating traffic alone the way. Leaving human the free hands to text message their brains out. Or finish their breakfast or lunch (or afternoon delight).
When all cars are capable of this, the danger posed by the rouge, unskilled human driver causing an accident, will be greatly minimized. Each “Auto-drive Car” will know that others are coming near it, and which way they are likely going. The only loss will be the spontaneous “impulse” shopping trip (sudden stops and turns). Yeah, mainly women will hate it. But if all the small stores get put out of business by the Walmarts. Then there won’t be as many sudden destination changes.
1. Destroy the comm satellite, lose control. Don’t you think the large potential enemies are working on this?
2. The fly by wire planes crash occasionally. I suspect the stress of combat with an equal opponent will show a few areas of human superiority.
# 38 JimR said, “Patrick, are you really that ignorant? “Everything” doesn’t necessarily mean “every thing””
ROFLMAO! I’m going to blog this elsewhere. Talk about liberal double speak. Thanks!
BTW- Since you were making an intentionally false accusation you now need to explain why you are delusional, or, are you just another dishonest lib?
The CIA is not allowed to assassinate people, but I don’t believe that there are any restrictions against the DoD doing so. Nice loophole. And with no pilots at risk, the threshold for committing what any nation could legally and rightly consider an act of war has been greatly lowered. U.S., the land of “Do what we say, not what we do.” No wonder the rest of the world looks upon us as hypocrites. We are.