Airforce may be be going out of business

[Entropy]

Agree on the "valor" thing.

I work in the predator/reaper community now and 95% of the time pilots are just bus-drivers supporting the sensors and the intelligence collection mission.

The clash between the old and new Air Force was especially apparent in the aftermath of the 2006 strike that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq.

Predator crews spent more than 630 hours searching for Zarqawi and his associates before they tracked him to a small farm northeast of Baghdad.

Minutes later, an F-16 fighter jet, streaking through the sky, released a 500-pound bomb that locked onto a targeting laser and killed Zarqawi.

The F-16 pilot, who faced no real threat from the lightly armed insurgents on the ground, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the same honor bestowed on Charles Lindbergh for the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

The Predator pilots, who flew their planes from an Air Force base outside Las Vegas, received a thank-you note from a three-star general based in the Middle East. Senior Air Force officials concluded that even though the Predator crews were flying combat missions, they weren't actually in combat.

As is typical, no mention is made of the analysts who actually solved this puzzle and put the pieces together to find this guy. If anyone deserves credit, it is them.

[carl]

As is typical, no mention is made of the analysts who actually solved this puzzle and put the pieces together to find this guy. If anyone deserves credit, it is them.

No mention was made of a lot important things in the article. It was a collection of facts without context. God help the man who had to make a reasoned decision based on this article.

No kidding Maj. Bright, you have to constantly coach an inexperienced guider driving a dreadfully slow machine. The Army seems to have done quite well with, God-forbid, enlisted men guiding those things around.

A Pred saved the day when it first used the Hellfire. Perhaps that was due more to the characteristics of the Hellfire rather than what it was mounted on.

One fighter pilot was unhappy because training drone guiders to be only drone guiders was something akin to a "puppy mill"; the implication being that the resulting "canine" was inferior to the pure bloods coming out of pilot school. He should watch some to the simulator techs at the simulator training centers like Flight Safety, do some of the wonderous things they do in the sims. They learned by just dinking around. They guide the sim via a computer. How is that different from guiding a drone by computer? Those "puppy mill" products at least have the benefit of formal training.

As far as recognition goes, the people who directed convoys around wolfpacks, radar guided night fighters close enough to a target so the night fighters short range radar could be used, manned the Red Crown aircraft, etc., etc. were recognized for the vital work they did in some way. Why can't the drone guiders be recognized in the same way?