Sputnik - look at those PM's that I sent a while back. They included a case where Army dudes were put in danger becuase of what the crew in the capsule did or did not do and a case where the intel analysis was severly flawed most likely due to inexperienced or first-term intel personnel. I have additional instances if you'd like - they are all of the same type. I also have stories where experienced operators who did what they thought right probably saved the day.
If you look at my posts, I have always emphasized using only experienced pilots, not just fighter pilots. Of course, as a fighter pilot I tend to use that term since I are one.
The first step to a solution is to get past the vision of what most people see as the pilot's role. The pilot is commanding an ISR and CAS platform, and needs to function in that role - we need a single point final decision maker in the capsule. He isn't there to only fly an ILS. To that end, we need competent and experienced operators filling these seats. The wingman that you mentioned or a copilot is not a decision maker to this extent, they are under the control of a flight-lead and have the direct supervision that no UAV operator has. Have you flown with a recent UPT grad? I do on a daily basis, and I can ensure you they will never be mistaken for competent decision-makers. It takes years to develop airmanship, SA, and judgement. With over 4500 military flight hours and 17 years service, I can attest that I probably spend about 2% of the number of brain cells on the specific task of flying the jet than I did when I was a 2LT. I am confident that if we operated any fighters as single-ships in an actual combat environment providing ISR and CAS support to the ground troops, there would be no new UPT grads or wingman going into these positions.
The USAF point that the UAS will rob the cockpits of qualified pilots is false. Ask any current fighter guys how many hours they are getting and how many pilots are getting ops-ops assigments. The USAF has been robbing the cockpits of experience long before UAVs came around. There have traditionally been a myriad of jobs filled by rated pilots, when all they really needed was someone with common sense. How about ranking these non-flying billets and filling them by priority - with impact on the combat mission being priority number 1. If we took every pilot assigned to command posts, to general's aides positions, to OSS positions (full-time, not additional dut), etc we would have more than enough pilots to fill the billets. To accomodate the experience, the typical UAV squadron makeup should be inverse of a traditional squadron - they should have more O-5's than O-4's than O-3's and more MSGT's than TSGT's than SSGT's and very few Airmen. Even if we had to rob the cockpits, we could take 10% of the qualified and experienced pilots from every airframe across the board without as much of a hiccup to the war effort. But, if we put those 10% of experienced aviators into the UAV, we would well more than double the number of UAV's crews available to support actual real-world going on right now combat ops within a matter of months.
The last thing I will say to this is who came up with the number of UAV pilots we need? If you are going to try to maintain a level of quality, will you look at how many pilots you can produce and strive for that goal? Or do you come up with some end number and then compromise selection criteria and training to get there?
If you go with option 2, you will see reports like this:
Human Error Cited in Most UAV Crashes
And you will see quotes like this: "In the early Predator program, the typical sensor operator arrived with midlevel enlisted rank and had at least two previous assignments, many of them aviation-related, Herz wrote. Today, half of new sensor operators "have come directly from basic training as their first exposure to the professional workforce," Herz found. Col. Chris Chambliss, commander of the 432nd Wing at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., said in a telephone interview that many of his sensor operators are 18 or 19 years old."; or "Predator pilots, too, are less experienced than before. In the past, they typically had two, three or more tours with a warplane before coming to the drone. Now the average Predator pilot now has one tour, Herz found. Herz reported that most Predator mishaps were the result of three types of human errors: inadequate skills and knowledge necessary to operate the aircraft; lack of teamwork; and lack of situational awareness. The result, Herz wrote, is that operators are less able to conduct "real-world operations."
If there were an unclassified study concerning the operational errors with respect to combat support (not just Class-A mishaps), it would definitely be a lot more enlightening.
While that is what I have to say about the UAV in particular, my larger point all along is how combat capability was never mentioned by anyone with respect to how to man this asset - not on this board and not by the CSAF. While every officer in any service has to weigh the needs of the mission and the needs of the individual when making these decisions, the replies to this thread have been typical Air Force - 100% needs of the individual. Every USAF pilot signed up knowing that needs of the service come first, and combat capability should be number one among the needs. While very few people would want to leave a cockpit to fly a UAV, every officer should understand that ANY decrease in combat capability (especially with respect to the troop on the ground) is an unacceptable trade for the ability to not suck up a tour in a capsule. Whatever you fly, you fly because the USAF decided we needed someone doing that job to further the defense of the nation. No one came in with a signed contract saying "I agree to only fly the F-15, etc".