Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!
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Posted on 05/02/2014 7:37:36 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The Air Force recently acknowledged that due to a “stigma” surrounding its drone program, many pilots at the controls of the deadly weapons are “less skilled” and officers overseeing them are “less competent” than their manned aircraft brethren, as alleged by the Government Accountability Office.
“Let’s be honest, when people dream about flying… People in this generation didn’t grow up and say, ‘I want to fly an RPA [remotely piloted aircraft],’” Air Force spokesperson Jennifer Cassidy told ABC News last week. “They were the ones that watched re-runs of ‘Top Gun’ and said, ‘I want to be a fighter pilot.’… So in fact the people that were lower ranking [in flight school], I guess you could say, are the folks that went to RPAs. It doesn’t mean they were bad pilots, or bad officers, it just meant you got to have some at the top and some at the bottom. That’s how that worked.”
Cassidy’s comments came in response to ABC News’ questions regarding a report from the Government Accountability Office, released earlier this month, that said the Air Force has “faced challenges in recruiting RPA pilots since it began this career field.”
The demand for drone pilots has exploded in recent years. While the Air Force had approximately 400 in 2008, the service now has more than 1,300, according to the GAO. The demand, however, is still higher and the Air Force has had trouble keeping up.
The GAO report says the Air Force has fallen well short in its recruiting goals for RPA pilots the last two years and nearly half of current pilots have been pulled from manned aircraft units or from manned aircraft training as temporary fill-ins. And the pilots that have been pulled over weren’t necessarily the best....
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
In the AF there are certain career dead enders. If you want to rise to senior command you must be a pilot, period. With SAC gone and Global Strike Command still not fully established then you must be either a cargo or fighter pilot. It is best to be a fighter pilot. No drone pilot will see this as an opportunity to rise to senior command. Solution, turn drones over to senior NCO’s. Professional, competent, responsible. Being a Master Sergeant drone pilot will not diminish their chances of promotion to Senior or Chief Master Sergeant.
My suggestion to the 4-Stars was to use Major and Lt. Col pilots coming off of staff jobs to fill the UAV (drone) pilot positions. Their are very few manned aircraft leadership positions that they, as a group, can be assigned to. If they don’t get one of these leadership positions, I can tell you that they would be very happy (or at lease medium happy) to still “fly” something and especially happy to put the crosshairs on a terrorist and schedule him for elimination.
Unfortunately, they went with something they know, a normal career track starting from Lieutenant and trying to have a typical pilot career track. But they quickly busted that concept with the promise of follow on manned aircraft assignments as a carrot. No Lieutenant pilot, fresh out of flight school, wants to sit on the ground while the UAV has all the fun.
Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!
To get onto The Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping List you must threaten to report me to the Mods if I don't add you to the list...
I think it’s wonderful that we have technology that allows us to defeat an enemy while putting fewer souls at risk. I hope we stay well ahead of our enemies.
However, it’s hard to imagine that flying a craft remotely will be taken as seriously as flying a craft with the pilot on board. There’s quite an incentive to return and land an aircraft when you’re in it.
Thing become a tad “abstract” if you know you are in a simulator. Especially if the “pilot” is brought up on video games.
Let’s hope we take the real destruction seriously.
O using them so much just helps diminish our military forces and their training.
Used to be that only the best were allowed to fly a RAV because they were usually one of a kind and proof of concept.....that was long ago and far away
pretty grim
So, the Air Force personnel are second best. Can you imagine the fat deputy sheriffs that are flying them?
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