UAV Pilot Shortage & Military Intelligence

A recent New York Times’s article, “Drones Are Weapons of Choice in Fighting Qaeda, ” added to the mounting evidence that Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are changing the face of military aviation. This is especially true in the U.S. Air Force, an organization run by pilots for pilots. Herein lies the problem: with a growing number of missions (they’ve nearly tripled over the past three years), there’s a shortage of UAV pilots.

This is where the military intelligence comes in. The Air Force says UAVs must be flown by pilots who are trained to fly manned aircraft. (I’m not sure why; I’ve tried flying remote-controlled models, and nothing I learned in the cockpit helped me.) So it has been re-equipping squadrons, like the NY ANG’s F-16 flying 174th Fighter Wing, with the MQ-9 Reaper. (I imagine the the pilots were thrilled to hear they’d soon be trading a cockpit for cubicle with a joystick and computer screens.)

On the one hand, this makes sense.  UAVs, made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems,  cost less than F-16s and other flying hardware like it. Powered by a Rotax 914F, the MQ-1 Predator is 27 feet long and ca cruise at 25,000 feet for more than 20 hours. With its ground control station, it costs $7.6 million. The Reaper is slightly. Powered by a TPE 331 turboprop, it’ll cruise at 50,000 feet all day long. It costs $13.4 million (and unarmed versions now patrol U.S. borders from bases in North Dakota and Arizona.)

On the other and, retraining fighter pilots to fly UAVs makes no sense at all. A recent article in the Air Force Times, “UAV pilot career field could save $1.5B,” showed why. It takes more than a year and $2.6 million to train a fighter pilot. It takes 20 weeks and $135,000 to train a UAV pilot, who doesn’t need to be a fighter pilot, hence the savings.

To be fair, the Air Force is considering this option, as a FlightGlobal.com story explained in  “USAF tests non-aviators for unmanned air system operations.” But it seems clear that the generals in charge (all of whom are, most likely, pilots) are trying to sustain the heroic status earned by 20th century pilots. Training non-pilots to fly UAVs could be a solution, they say, but “it raises debate around issues such as whether operators will be awarded wings and earn flight rates of pay.”

Like it or not, 21st century aviation is all about clinical and economic efficiency: technology rules and our master is the bottom line. You train to do the job at hand, no more, no less. It’s time to face reality. Professional pilots today, military or civilian, are systems operators. UAVs are just the next step in this process; they move the system operator from the cockpit to the cubicle. The military gets more bang for its bucks. Pilots give up g-forces–and the chance of a hostile death.

It will be interesting to see how the UAV pilot shortage shakes out in the short term. The long term seems clear, however. UAVs will be flying an increasing percentage of military missions, and as the need for UAV pilots grows, the bottom line will ultimately issue the training orders. — Scott Spangler