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.
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.””