ISR and business as usual

[Entropy]

Ron,

The main reasons are systemic and cultural. Part of the identitiy of the USAF is that pilots (primarily) are officers and pilots represent the leadership at the high levels of the service. I posted a link to a AU paper above written ten years ago that talks about all these issues (here's the link again - PDF file).

In some ways, predator for the Air Force looks like the Army's advisors and transition teams. For the Air Force it's currently viewed as, at best, a career broadening assingment, at worst a career killer. The current problem is that it's basically a temporary assignment, so when pilots rotate out they have to be replaced, but obviously every body that leaves creates a requirement for a replacement - a replacement that requires training. So much training is being spent on replacements that expansion of the total force of available pilots is slowed as a result. One can extend the pilot in the temporary assignment to alleviate that problem somewhat, but the longer the extension the more you're hurting his/her career and the more you'll have to force people to take predator assignments. So really, it's fundamentally a turnover problem and the way to solve it is to keep those pilots in place, but to do that the AF has to make sure their careers don't get screwed as a result. My suggestion is to make predator a primary weapons system like the manned aircraft which would allow them to spend the bulk of their careers with the platform which would allow them to promote through the system normally.

The other option is to open bring back warrants (which I would love) or create a new enlisted career field, but I don't think that is in the cards for cultural reasons.

The Army appears to be going the enlisted route, which makes sense for them. As long as those guys and gals receive the licenses and ratings they need and as long as their UAV's are rated to fly in controlled airspace then there will be no functional difference between a USAF predator pilot and an Army "warrior" pilot.

Given that it looks like the warrior and predator programs will be merged, I expect the Air Force will be poaching a lot of your Army enlisted pilots with promises of commissions. Perhaps that's how the AF will ultimately solve the pilot predator shortage!

[Ron Humphrey]

Ron,

Given that it looks like the warrior and predator programs will be merged, I expect the Air Force will be poaching a lot of your Army enlisted pilots with promises of commissions. Perhaps that's how the AF will ultimately solve the pilot predator shortage!

The Army always has been good at finding solutions to problems, especially those in the other forces