While thats true, the actual technical job of flying a drone can be done by enlisted personel, and the the decision to shoot can come from an officer overseing several missions at once.
While I don't know for sure about how things are now, When I was in the military no one under the rank of Lt. Col. could approve fireing on hostiles unless they where firing on us.

 

There are SO many things wrong with these statements. First of all since the inception of the USAF and prior, Lts and above have been empowered to employ tactical conventional ordnance IAW ROE (self-defense or not), and the interpretation of such was up to the individual.

Second, the success of the USAF has been rooted in centralized control/decentralized execution and you likely have no idea why your suggestion represents a significant step away from that. Here's a hint, anyone who's been in combat knows that having an individual who's supposed to maintain general SA over several combat missions and step in with tactical shoot/don't shoot decisions at the appropriate (not to mention the complexity of that process on top of the C2 process that already exists) is not a recipe for success. Making such a suggestion just to mitigate the responsibility issues of the shoot/don't shoot ignores the responsibility issue of execution.

Last, the simplicity of letting enlisted fly RPA as a cost-savings measure is notable, especially when the threat of doing so has been demonstrated so many times with multiple helicopter/small UAS and a medium UAS/C-130 collision that could have cost the lives of all aboard.

 

That's the way most of our adversaries operate (using soviet doctrine they got with their soviet hardware)...none of their operators can wipe their butt without a general's approval. Great system for maintaining tight control of the military arm of a totalitarian state, but it imposes significant, often crippling, operational delays.

Our system on the other hand is based on command by negation (related to centralized control/de-centralized execution). All the key operators and leaders understand the commanders intent and are authorized to use their judgement to achieve said intent (within ROE). The boss sits back and watches. He only intervenes if necessary to change something that's going wrong. Our opponents usually die while waiting for their commander to command them.

 

Ever heard of the concept of the STRATEGIC CORPORAL?

Read the opening chapter of a book called 'Making the Corps' by Thomas E. Ricks. The weight of making life and death TACTICAL decisions, some of which might have STRATEGIC implications, could rest with some 22 year old E-4 Squad Leader. Amazing responsibility .

USMCFLYR

 

Accurate statement for the most part. However, it's also important to note that in the USAF, the enlisted SO's (sensor operators) track/monitor/lase the targets, the RPA operator (officer) is always the one "pulling the trigger" when it comes to engaging the target.

 

In this cases on fireing missles from drones, we're not talking about fluid combat situations. We're talking about finding a high value target and then launching an attack to take out said target. A flying sniper if you you will.

 

You're kidding, right? You'd do better going to a medical website and pretending to be a doctor than you would convincing anyone here you know what you're talking about.

 

I'm not trying to convince people of any thing. Just putting my thoughts out there.

 

My bad, I didn't read any "I think" type statements in your posts; in fact, your one post made it sound like you actually knew what the requirements for the employment of lethal force was. Looking at your profile, I now see that you were in armor. Even in armor, I am pretty sure that once the battle was commenced, the individual tank commander was responsible for determining who got shot at (not some O-5). My understanding is that plenty of tanks shot before being "fired upon".

If you're not going to supplement what you don't know with the knowledge offered in posts from those that do know (reference the several responses to your first post), your subsequent attempts at just putting your thoughts out there will also fall short.

Just so you know, there is no situation in combat operations and/or employment of weapons that is not affected by (or potentially affected by) the fog and friction of war. So as to not hijack the thread, I'll summarize; those who shoot make the decision to shoot or not do so using as much information as possible. With today's technology, that information can come from many on-board and off-board sources. Because the services have congressionally-mandated manpower caps, they have been resorting to contractor support to augment mostly non-deployable positions (so as to free those bodies to man deployable/military-specific positions). Because those contractors can use today's technology to provide some of that information to the shooter real-time, they can also provide bad information (such as incorrect FMV analysis) that could lead the shooter to mis-employ weapons. Because these contractors are in the kill-chain (which has a legal definition), there is a large grey area as to what their liability (if any) should be. Again, this is all important because there is no situation in real-life that meets your idea of "we're not talking about fluid combat situations. We're talking about finding a high value target and then launching an attack to take out said target. A flying sniper if you you will."

 

This is a conversation best had someplace else besides the unclass internet.

Unless you've actually spent hours in the seat doing RSO, it's hard to have an accurate picture of what the Preds are up against. The list of technological challenges and SA drains in the system makes is unlikely that just anyone can do the job. A few return to active duty O4s and O5s recently washed out of the FTU because they could not grasp the concept. It's a demanding system; not built by pilots for pilots.

They may build better interfaces than the current GCS but you'll never get around the fact that you're staring at the world through a soda straw with almost no comms through a process of 13 consecutive miracles that happened 9,000 miles away 2 seconds ago.