Flying UAV's - So easy a cave man can do it...

I didn't really read any of the other posts I just really wanted to say that and it kind of pertains to the original topic?

 

Notice that I was not saying you were not working hard, I was responding to your comment about us who YOU said were sitting pretty - as if we were born into that privelege. Remember, we joined during Desert Storm 1 and were dealing with multiple contingencies worldwide, so we knew that we would be busy also. Many of us were still on AD during 9/11 and transitioned to the current ops tempo. I realize you joined knowing about the Iraq war, but that does not give you special privileges. You join when you reach the appropriate age, what is happening at the time is beyond your control.

Don't confuse crappy commanders with mission accomplishment. I have never been a fan of our peacetime leadership - and, although we are at war, it seems we are still dealing with peacetime leadership. For example, our current leadership is considering putting non-rated and inexperienced rated personnel in a MWS that is flying combat missions every day. They are putting more effort into designing a new uniform and figuring out when we should wear blues vs. who should we man the UAS with and how can we keep the flow of the most qualified pilots going to the UAS.

If you are recognizing these things, you are showing that operational maturity that I talked about. A brand new Lt in the right seat would not consider those things, his thinking would not extend far outside the aircraft cockpit and his immediate tasks at hand. "Cool, a trip to Germany"

You mentioned AETC, staff, etc. Do you think those assignments take priority over sending guys to an asset that is providing real-time combat support to our warfighters on the ground? How about we send the new and non-rated guys to those jobs? AFPC has been robbing brand-new AC's and IP's from squadrons (especially fighter squadrons) since the '90's and the pace of that has not changed. As far as your CAF friend is concerned, he is one of the few who got ops-ops. By the way, TAMI-21 was not a program to fill UAS slots per se, it was a program to take care of the over-manning (yes, it was over-manning) in the CAF and redistribute those pilots to where they were short. The CAF had been over-manned since the mid-90's, and the situation was not correcting itself with more and more fighters going away to pay for the F-22.

This is your biggest mis-statement and I am going to call you on this one. UAS pilots DO NOT operate at 0/0. I don't care what you think, but what you do in the aircraft is the same as what you do in the sim, it depends on what the asset is doing - if you were flying the C-5 remotely, what would you do differently on your last sortie than what you did in real-life? The fact that your butt was in that cockpit makes no difference - you do what you do to get the JET on the ground. 0/1 (it is 0 knots / 1 g - not 0/0) refers to the speed at which your thought process is ocurring and usually refers to the fact that you have the luxury of stopping and re-evaluating your thought process or actions without fear of catastrophy. UAS pilots do not have that luxury. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, there is an actual airborne asset carrying several thousand pounds of ordnance, over enemy territory, operating at the same airspeeds as the A-10's out there, integrating with other airborne assets, coordinating with the troops or assets on the ground, coordinating with command authority, and potentially delivering ordnance against an enemy in close contact with friendly troops. There is no stopping to re-group. You see, it is you in the C-5 that has that luxury. At any point you can call a "timeout", you can take any approach around, and you can discuss things with your crew in holding. The USA can't. When operating over an objective, time andquickness of action are of essence. Besides, who is the sole UAS pilot going to discuss things with? He is making the calls on his own, no copilot and 3rd, 4th, etc pilots to call into the cockpit and take opinions. If the UAS pilot took a timeout, the delay could cost troops their lives or could cause enemy troops to live and fight another day (and cause even more Americans to die).

Don't know where you were going with this, but I will try. Every warfighter has to start somewhere, and that somewhere should not be in the role of hte sole decision-maker of an actual airborne asset providing actual support of troops on the ground. As far as the UAS thing, I don't think I have called them the wave of the future, but here is what I have said. They are, unfortunately, at this time the backbone of the aerial support that we are giving troops on the ground. The bulk of ISR missions, and the bulk of ordnance being delivered is coming from the UAS. You may think it right or wrong, but it is what it is. And as long as it is THE support we are giving the troops on the ground, we are obligated to give them the BEST support we can give them. Again, this is part of separating the mission from the poor leadership that you may see. We may disagree that our leadership has decided to switch the bulk of our ISR and CAS support to the UAS, but do you propose to have it be the troops on the ground that suffer from that? http://blog.wired.com/defense/files/...___Flt_Hrs.ppt The leadership has spoken, the UAS is it at the time being, now it is time for our Col's and lower ranking Gen's to make sure that we man the asset with the most qualified people we have. Despite what the leadership does, the minions work to accomplish the mission 100% - and THE MISSION is support of the troops on the ground - for all of us.

I mentioned WWII because you attempted to express your service at a higher level than mine - as if your service is more valuable than ours and your sufferings are greater than ours. As far as the family thing, that is what we all joined into. I delayed getting married for that very reason, others don't. But, just because someone joins with a family, they should not expect to be able to avoid the ops tempo that comes with being a young line pilot in an ops squadron. The family time comes later with the staff job, the AETC tour, or even the UAS tour (although they are working a pretty high ops tempo themselves - just not deploying so often).

To each his own - I probably phrased it a little differently. My stay in decision was based on how much I could contribute to a mission that I saw as worth the effort while not causing my family to sacrifice too much. I didn't rely on the USAF to treat my family any way, that is not their concern - that was my job. To be more exact, I knew that if I did rely on the USAF to treat my family in any way, I would be disappointed. I didn't trust the leadership to do much - that is why my focus was on what I could do to contribute to the mission. And, right now, the mission is supporting the troops on the ground. And, right now, we are supporting the troops on the ground with the UAS.

 

This is like a game of chess...I like it.

The UAS is the wave of the future, but leadership has not, and in my opinion, will not change doctrine to support that. With the upper echelons of leadership having been hardened by combat during their time in the cockpit (read cold war, DS1 and Bosnia), it takes a great visionary to see the writing on the wall and implement change. Current leadership is not doing this, and I argue that, until they do, we can't sacrifice our highly trained CAF & MAF pilots to employ a weapon system that I could train an 18 year old airman to do, and do well.

0/0 was refereing to 0 airspeed and 0 altitude. Yes, they are dropping bombs and shotting missiles, but they do not have than terrifing realization that they could be dead at any second due to their airplane being blown out of the sky. They sit in a trailer, in a highly guarded location, surrounded by support personnel and with others around to help a situation. The UCAV community is as close to a "crew" fighter as one could get.

"Take some, not all" is an idea that I heard. By that, I mean, take a solid core of aviators that can train the "new era" of warfighters and then let this new breed train the next ones, and so on and so forth. Being rated is a mater of changing an AFI, so don't try to think that being rated has anything to do with the capability of the person dropping the bombs and shotting the missiles.

When I say that a warfighter has to star from somewhere, I am simply saying that you started out as an airman that was trained to be a fighter pilot. Why can't we take that "same" airman and train them to be a UCAV pilot? Why do we have to send people out into the UAS service that have been trained to be fighter pilots, it is just a waste. I was trained to be a pilot in the cockpit, not to sit there and fly a drone around. You were trained to be an interceptor pilot, not to fly a drone around. It is a monumental waste of resources to yank either one of us out of the cockpit to be a UAV pilot.

I find it ironic that the CAF was overmanned, and yet I see that F-16s rank right up there with UAVs in being undermanned. When AF leadership decided to start pulling Viper pilots away from their airplannes and fly UAVs they created a vaccum that no one wanted to admit that was there. The Raptor is having retention problems, and yet we still pull more pilots into a program that "we" are not accepting as being the next step.

In 1982, when the AF created Space Command, they had to pull airman from everywhere to make it happen. The difference is that they understood that space was going to be the "wave of the future." They didn't just pull people from every which where and not address the change. My point is that if the AF really is going to use the UAS as their backbone for combat and combat support, then they need to address this and create a new force of warfighters that will be specific to this new task.

You want the best to be leading the way? You want the grunts on the ground to be covered by the finest combat air forces in the world? Then lets train people who can do this, and make it their AFSC from day 1! Lets make the UAS a rated position, if that makes you happy, it's just words to me. Give them a bag, give them wings, give them flight pay, I don't care. None of that matters if we save lives and make sure bombs are on target.

And to address a minor point of contention between us... I have been shot at. I fly an airplane would make WORLD news if ever shot down. My $180million dollar airplane has delievered 24 MRAPS now, so how many lives have I saved? How much have I helped the war effort with the 3 million pounds of cargo I've delivered? There are always going to be people who have done more and I get that. I just don't want YOU to think that my contribution is any less than you orbiting at 30K feet keeping an eye out for the bad guys.

 

WAFP -

Why not hang around and be in a position to fix the things that you say are broken. You might certainly have some good ideas, but without the complete pictures and factors that might play into the decisions that you are unaware of it is pretty tough calling out decisions. Hang around - put yourself into a situation to be a decision maker outside of the cockpit. If not - take your experience with you to the civilian world and be proud of the work and the contributions that you made and be proud that you did more for your country than most ever will; but go easy on ground that you did not see.

USMCFLYR

 

USMC -

I appreciate it. I want to stay around to make a difference, but you know how it gets. I'm frustrated by the direction that the AF is taking. It is true, we have wartime leaders with peacetime attitudes.

War has become our business, the norm, not the exception to the rule. We have GOT to stop acting like we are not at war and focus on getting those bombs on target.

...go to my happy place......

 

From 'Wings of Gold' Fall 2008:

On the subjoect of UAVs, the evolutionary approach is not dissuading the Navy from investing. One day not too far off we will see a carrier based UAV working with and integral to the carrier air wing aboard ship. The Fire Scout UAV will operate along with helos from smaller ships and shore based UAVs will be part of the carrier battle groups. These will not replace manned aircraft so much as they will augment them at various times and places.

USMCFLYR

 

Guys, can we cut the weinie wagging over who deployed the most, or who got shot at? It’s kind of embarrassing and totally non-germane to the discussion at hand. We going to start throwing down OPRs next?

MEM—I like the debate but have got to say this, lay off the “troops in the field” argument. It’s insulting. No one on here wants fielded soldiers/marines to get anything less than the best. You keep throwing that out there and implying if we disagree with your UAV manning concept that we somehow don’t care if they die. It’s insulting, and a cheap ploy, and wrong.

You have strong, well-articulated opinions. You may get better results airing them at UPT or fighter bases than on a online forum where pilots may have other interests (seriously, airlinepilotforums?). Back on point, your opinions are just that, opinions, not facts. You’re welcome to them, many of us on here don’t share them.

While I know the A10 ain’t the fastest machine out there, I’m kind of surprised to find that Predators operate at the same speeds, you sure about that?

You think only highly experienced aviators should “fly” UAVs, I don’t buy it. We routinely take Lts out of UPT, put them through training, and send them off to fly combat, single seat, in A-10s, F-16s, etc. I haven’t seen many arguments that we should only send 2000+hr field grade officers into combat in those airframes, why can’t we take a newby and put them in UAVs? You think it’s a horrible idea. I agree with you that post UPT SA is low but the way you build aviation experience is….experience. Why should it be any different in UAVs?

As for sending non-rated guys through, again we disagree. I think it’s worth looking into. They will not have much experience, true. See my argument above for young pilots. They won’t be pilots, true. I’m not sure it matters. I in no way shape or form equate operating a UAV with an airplane. I don’t think it’s the same thing. I think you can take a smart young officer, train them, and build them up the way we do smart young officers (and plenty of not smart ones too) in the flying world.

Bad analogy but one worth thinking about, we don’t train people to fly airplanes before sending them off to “fly” satellites, why should we with UAVs? Ultimately you regard UAVs as airplanes; currently myself--and I think many on this forum--aren’t convinced.

Separate issue, I’m not sure UAVs are all they’re cracked up to be. Anyone else find it odd that about the same time the DoD decided we needed a dramatic increase in ISR (leading to new UAV opportunities for all) we suddenly got several new small airframes—RC-12 anyone? Seen the projected numbers for that? And the AT-6 is suddenly looking closer to reality as well.

 

The deploying had nothing to do with the UAV argument, just to that of my sacrifice is not as worthy as MEM's and that I hadn't "paid my dues."

My OPRs suck. I've made to many enemies and all my friends think the way I do and hate the "establishment." I don't believe in kissing butt to get ahead, just do the best job that I can so that I can make a difference.

As to the rest of your points, I completely agree, 1000%!

 

Sputnik - Don't try to make those statements into something they very clearly were not, especially when taken in the context of the entire post. I thought long about whether to post my "There I was" routine - note that I have never made mention to it before now. In the end, I figured the most effective way to answer this quote from WAFP: "You sit pretty in your Reserve/Guard job not worrying about that next drop down 365 or getting selected for convoy duty as a pilot. I'll tell you what, you take a year remote to Iraq as a convoy commander and then tell me that you are "happy" with how you were employed."

This sort of attitude is typical of the new USAF, this is not the first time I have seen this. Because you aren't out there sucking up as many bad deals as me right now, you don't know what it is like with your high and mighty attitude. While these guys were in high school and college, we were out taking care of the business that needed to be taken care of. But, that fact is of little concern - this is a new generation. Now they show up, see the older guys soaking up some perceived good deal (of course it is a good deal that they are just as qualified to man) and whine about how they have to go out and do all the work while we just sit and bark orders from our high throne. Sound like I summarized it accurately?

I didn't even know who WAFP was, but he obviously takes offense to the view that the young officers need to do their time at the bottom before enjoying the perks that come from having been there and done that. I was a UPT instructor for a few years a while back - want to know the most often asked question from USAF students? "How many days a year does that MWS deploy?" What? First of all, that question can't even be answered with any accuracy - who knows what will happen in the future. Second, you are not even 1 year into a 11 year USAF commitment and you are already asking how much will you be gone? Why did you join the USAF - most wars that I know of in recent history have been fought on foreign soil. These guys were certainly not destined to be those Lt's in the squadron at the scheduling desk trying to get in on every deployment they could, learning as much as they could as fast as they could. In case you were wondering, questions about how the MWS contributes to the mission and how do we do the mission ranks a distant last. In contrast, most USMC students state that their number 1 choice is based on supporting the grunts. I actually had to convince some of my good students that an F-18 can provide an equivalent level (albeit a different type) of support to the troops as a CH-46 and it was OK for them to pick jets. For the record, I never had one USMC student ask about how many days a particular asset deployed each year, not once.

And that brings me to why I keep mentioning the "troops in the field." As of now, our entire war effort is supporting those troops in the field. Everything. All of our air cover over Iraq is dedicated in support of them, all of our airlift is in support of them, everything we do related to the war is in support of them. The entire purpose for the existence of air power in Iraq and Afghanistan is to provide for the troops, keep them safe, and allow them to do their job unimpeded. I emphasize that because, if you are a USAF leader making a decision on how to proceed, the number one question you need to ask is yourself is "how does this improve or detract from our wartime mission?" Unfortunately, how many decisions of the USAF leadership have you seen with this as the Number 1 concern? None, they talk about rank spread in a squadron, they talk about enlisted/officer ratio, they talk about career progression, they talk about minimizing costs - but it never seems obvious that our number one mission (supporting the troops on the ground) is the primary concern. And, in discussing who should the USAF man the UAS with, how many people have used the effect of our support of the troops in their posts? They have talked about robbing experience from the cockpit and wanting to send someone else to the UAS, but no one has articulated how their view impacts the support of the troops. And there are varying degrees of support for the troops. The pilot bringing the pallet of canned corn to the theater doesn't have nearly the direct impact on the lives of the troops as the A-10 laying down 30mm on an enemy in close contact with our troops. Everyone always thinks their MWS needs the most qualified personnel, but the other system can take the new guys - they don't include that "support of the troops" in the equation. Until it is obvious that the USAF is putting the "troops on the ground" at the top of the decision matrix, I will keep mentioning it.

As for the speed of the UAS, the Reaper may be more capable than you think - and while as fast as may have been a slight exaggeration, it isn't that far off.

I am not a proponent for replacing all aircraft with UAV's and I am not a defender of UAV's in particular - just a proponent of placing mission first. And since the UAV's are currently the mission, I am proponent of sending our experienced people there. As for the other aircraft, you need to look at the capabilities and (more importantly) the limitations of each. The details are not appropriate for public discussion, but one can imagine environments where each of those airplanes individually or all of them would not be suitable for the mission. It has nothing to do with UAV's not living up to the expectations.

 

MEM -

I think I have finally lost my patience with the whole "I am better than you" argument. IF you REALLY believe that the best way to support our troops on the ground is to have the best of the best right there to support them, then I challenge you to come back to AD, pickup a weapon (whatever it may be, desk, M-16, F-15) and get you ass in the fight. Don't sit there and tell me that I need to pay my dues, while you sit there and enjoy being able to accept or decline a mission based on YOUR availability.

If you are on orders and are flying the line in support of our troops, then I apologize, but I don't see that to be the case. By your own definition, you are a more highly experienced officer than I, so how come you are not leading this new group of UAS aviators?

"I was a UPT instructor for a few years a while back - want to know the most often asked question from USAF students? 'How many days a year does that MWS deploy?'"

I think it is shameful that you tell me that I shouldn't be concerned with how my family is going to be while I'm gone. Yeah, I asked the question, but you know what, I've done the EXACT same thing as the USMC pilot and gone wherever Uncle Sam has told me to go, and I do it willingly. Because I care to ask questions doesn't make me any less of a professional than the Marine.

I also find it humorous that you seem to forget that when the CAF was training to fight a war, the MAF was 24/7/365 flying cargo around the world in support of every situation and in this age of war, we do the same thing day in and day out. When the Vipers, UCAVs, A-10s and F-15s leave the AOR, C-5s, C-17s and C-130s will still be flying in all day everyday. My good buddy flying C models will probably NEVER see combat, because there is no need, so by your definition, he provides nothing to the war and is expendable to the UAS service.

This rant may seem over the top, but that is how I feel. I have seen to many people get grounded because their OPR was due and the OG was screaming for it. Really? Are you kidding me? Where does the priority lay? I think this highlights the fundamental problem with leadership, don't you?

Thank you for your service. You have been there done that and I'm sure you have the t-shirt.