Posted on 11/30/2012 11:02:45 PM PST by Seizethecarp
The U.S. Air Force drone, on a classified spy mission over the Indian Ocean, was destined for disaster from the start.
An inexperienced military contractor in shorts and a T-shirt, flying by remote control from a trailer at Seychelles International Airport, committed blunder after blunder in six minutes on April 4.
He sent the unarmed MQ-9 Reaper drone off without permission from the control tower. A minute later, he yanked the wrong lever at his console, killing the engine without realizing why.
As he tried to make an emergency landing, he forgot to put down the wheels. The $8.9 million aircraft belly-flopped on the runway, bounced and plunged into the tropical waters at the airport’s edge, according to a previously undisclosed Air Force accident investigation report.
The drone crashed at a civilian airport that serves a half-million passengers a year, most of them sun-seeking tourists. No one was hurt, but it was the second Reaper accident in five months — under eerily similar circumstances.
“I will be blunt here. I said, ‘I can’t believe this is happening again,’ ” an Air Force official at the scene told investigators afterward. He added: “You go, ‘How stupid are you?’ ”
The April wreck was the latest in a rash of U.S. military drone crashes at overseas civilian airports in the past two years. The accidents reinforce concerns about the risks of flying the robot aircraft outside war zones, including in the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Well, regarding union implemented breaks and restrictions at least.
"At least as good??"
More like 100x better. These drones are just RC planes. They are probably taking kids who are "proficient" at MS Flight Simulator and making the fly the drones.
It seems to me that Reaper training requires the equivalent of an advanced instrument rating where the pilot can “fly blind” relying only on instruments. Try that with an RC model aircraft or an Army Raven! Ravens appear to be flown essentially VFR, not IFR.
I am not a pilot, but I did successfully complete the extensive pre-enlistment paper test battery for Marine Corps Aviation OCS before washing out for a heart condition. The test battery is essentially a glorified IQ test with an aeronautical aptitude overlay. The US military selects officers from above normal on the bell curve and pilots are chosen from test subjects way off in the right tail of the IQ bell-curve much further than most officers.
No training can significantly increase IQ and IQ is what is needed to stay alive or keep a drone in the air under extreme IFR conditions in all weather and at all altitudes near other aircraft and over civilian areas.
Enlisted men and women who can score that high on IQ (high enough to qualify for IFR heavy drone training) should be tracked into OCS to begin with to achieve their full potential, IMO.
The union for most civil service is more of a work-conditions and representation when someone is being disciplined type deal. Once a civil servant reaches GS-11, there is no direct union "support" and the rules for working are really pretty strict. Folks where I work are allowed a total of 30 minutes "breaks" during the day and they fall in several 5 - 10 minute sessions that allow them time to hit the can between teaching sessions (we train new military for their career fields).
I think he is a total incompetent whose only talent is screwing things up, which makes him perfect for his first goal of "overwhelming the system," but once he has to actually start making something work things won't turn out very well for him. Mussolini's end comes to mind.
Does anyone know if the drone pilot yelled all achbar,
Complete incompetent hires Complete incompetent,par.
I was steered into OCS at a time when the IQ was higher for enlisted Special Forces than it was for officers, they have since lowered it for SF, not increased it for officers, the military is full of enlisted IQs that meet officer standards.
It isn’t as though it is a high IQ job, they merely require a little above average.
The officer nonsense doesn’t hold up, that is why the other branches went with common sense and effectiveness. Drone flying is a sitting at a computer screen specialty, and a career line, it is a skill set, and a personality set, of it’s own.
Here are some highlights from a 2008 article. The Air Force is doing it’s usual effete, glamour boy posturing, glamour that is fading as they start realizing that piloted planes are becoming a thing of the past, besides, women do the job now.
“”The Air Force is desperate for UAV pilots, yet it stands alone among the services in its policy that only officers are allowed to fly large unmanned aerial vehicles.””
“”Critics, however, say that by restricting the UAV pilot career field to officers, the Air Force has unnecessarily limited its UAV growth potential — and point to the Army, in which enlisted soldiers fly UAVs in the war zones, track insurgents and fire on targets.
Those critics include some in Congress. The more congressional funding that goes to purchasing UAVs and training operators, the more lawmakers and their staffs are studying UAV operations.
One congressional staff member sitting in a defense authorization committee that has studied both Army and Air Force UAV pilot programs said questions arise about why the Air Force can’t have enlisted pilots.
“It’s difficult for us to come right out and say, ‘Air Force: You shall not use officers as pilots; you shall use sergeants,’” he said, asking not to be named. “But it’s perfectly obvious to everybody except senior levels of the Air Force that that’s what they need to do.”
Some critics point to enlisted UAV pilots as a potential cost-saving measure. Rated pilots, proficient after years of expensive training and flying hours, are cycled into UAV slots for two to three years at a minimum. When pilots return to manned aircraft, requalification training comes with a big price tag. It costs roughly $700,000, for example, to send F-15 pilots through a requalification course, according to a Rand Corp. report published in November.
Air Force leaders argue that comparisons between its programs and the Army’s are misleading because enlisted soldiers fly smaller UAVs that don’t carry the same weapons load as Air Force Reapers and Predators.
But that argument has lost weight as enlisted soldiers are set to fly the Sky Warrior — a UAV that is a foot longer and can carry 325 pounds more than the MQ-1 Predator — in Iraq this summer.
Four Sky Warriors armed with four Hellfire missiles will be deployed this summer and another four will be shipped a year later, said Maj. Jimmie Cummings, an Army spokesman.
The Navy also plans to add new maritime UAVs similar in size to the Predator and Sky Warrior, and Navy officials are considering establishing an enlisted job specialty for UAV pilots.
Maj. Hilton Nunez, Army UAV Division team chief, said the debate over whether a UAV pilot should have a commission is moot as long as that pilot receives the right training.””
I believe that pilot IQ standard is much higher than base-line officer standard. The military is properly inclined to entrust the most expensive, powerful and catastrophic equipment (in the event of human error) to those proved to be of the highest available raw intelligence on whom they lavish the most expensive training.
Should drone piloting increasingly involving huge, jet-powered airframes flying in all weather over populated area be left to less then the most intelligent available drone drivers? BTW, the Israelis have a drone the size of a 737, IIRC.
I don’t know what your connection is between IQ and flying drones, or why you think that the appropriate IQs are not being chosen by all services except for the Air Force, to fly drones, or why you want to waste $700,000.00 to retrain a pilot who has had to first train to fly fighters, then train to sit at a desk and fly a drone, and then has to be detrained to go back to learning how to fly a fighter.
You now drag McCain into this? You seem to have some personal animosities and jealousies, that have nothing to do with the flying of drones.
When I look at a chick or guy who flies fighters, I think in terms of eyesight and other physical attributes as being what cause most people to be rejected for the job, not that they didn’t have the IQ.
Do you have any data showing that all the other services are wrong, and that the Air Force is right to be wasting all these millions and pilot man hours?
Do you realize that this Air Force only removed that “flight status” requirement, (the twisted ankle that even you agree is insane for a desk sitting computer screen driver) under pressure? In other words they made that argument as long as they could get away with it.
If you want crackerjack drone pilots, then get career full-timers, not part timers that bounce back and forth and have to be retrained each time, because the jobs are so different.
Is there a reason that you think that while you (the actual you) couldn’t fly aircraft for physical reasons, that you wouldn’t be a good candidate to go into a drone MOS?
For some reason, you have some weird ideas about IQ, high IQs are common enough in the military, and they are not the reason that people are asked to become officers.
For starters, most drones are slow-moving turboprops, not jets.
All I expressed is my opinion that it would be very beneficial for drone drivers to have some level of pilot certification and minimum number of hours flying, probably including IFR. There are a whole lot of levels below F-16 qualified that would satisfy that level!
The heavier, faster, more expensive and more dangerous a drone is, the greater the safety factor would be in having more “real” pilot certifications and hours, IMO. It is just my opinion.
There are lots of physical stresses that a real pilot must tolerate that a drone driver will never be subjected to, so requiring that level of physical fitness doesn't make sense.
I stand by my statements about flight training being traditionally reserved in the military not just for officers but for those officers who can score highest on tests that are the functional equivalent of IQ testing.
Well, no service is more devoted to wasting money on it’s officers lifestyles and self interests at the expense of combat effectiveness, than the Air Force, so they will string this out as long as they can.
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