The New Norm ??????
 

An interesting read. I can remember the 1960s when the ICBM guys used to tell us the days of the "airplane" are over. This article "implies" the future for pilots is limited.

Are RPA Pilots the New Normal?

To be fair, the article doesn't even approach implying that the future of pilots is limited; there is absolutely no pilot vs RPA in this article. It talks about the normalization of the RPA career field and the fact that, it the author's opinion, it is becoming accepted as a stand-alone fully vested career field vs just an "alpha" or similar career field.

Honestly, notwithstanding whatever this article says, the future of the career field is still not as solid as the future of RPA themselves. Even now, ACC is still considering a way to jettison their share of RPA operations to whomever will take it.

Livinginmem....what the heck would you know about UAVs? Dork. :D

ACC is going to end up with one airplane in inventory, it will be a fighter, and it will cost 1 trillion dollars. They'll have four pilots: a pilot in training, two operational pilots (one of them a spare/IP), and the fourth will be the four-star CDR of ACC.

But those four will be really, REALLY good! :D

Albie, shouldn't you be in Paris? As to the other posts, ACC will somehow find a way to make your scenario the GOOD option compared to their choice.

Sounds like the RAF's Eurofighter pilot cadre two years ago.

Seems like you would replace people who drive trains and container ships before you would replace pilots wholesale. Not sure the facination with remote controlled/self controlled aircraft. Where are my drone trains?!

Several of the larger airports come to mind. Trains run around between terminals all day with no operators.

Unmanned makes a lot less sense in civilian aviation. The pilots salary is only a few bucks of the ticket price so not much cost saving available. For the combat aviator, you have an american life at risk. Or the could get shot down, punch, and wind up on an AQ YouTube vid getting their head chopped off game of thrones style. Plus, somehow we get away with murder (pun intended) with drones that wouldn't fly with manned sorties.

That is a pretty heavy statement.

I'm not against killing bad guys with drones. I find it interesting that we can release weapons from drones in countries that we would never do with manned aircraft. I am concerned that using drones and not risking an american could make it to easy to employ lethal military force. There's been some interesting writings on why removing the risk of lives from the war decision equation might not be a good thing.

I was commenting more on your use of the word murder when referencing what I asumed were various drone strikes around the world -sometimes causing unintended civilian casualties.

Pentagon plans to replace flight crews with 'full-time' robots - Washington Times

This seems to apply to the conversation. Will be a long while before the mass public will be convinced to fly on uav's in my opinion

FlyFast, you have no clue what you're talking about. We (the US) do not employ weapons one way or against specific target sets with RPA that we don't with manned assets; any differences are capabilities driven only. ALL US weapons employments are driven by ROE, international and US law, and the operational capability of our weapon systems. Good job parroting the propaganda; it's especially disturbing given your supposed military credentials (if true).

I'm sure the RQ-170 was required in AFG to defeat Al Qaeda's robust IADS.

Yeah, that was it. If your thinking is that small, good on you; why would I enlighten you or our enemies on a public forum?