Oh man, where to start...
I've been in the Army's UAS field for over 14 years now. Seen the whole UAS field change hands from Military Intelligence to the Aviation branch. Quite a bit of headache and hassle for awhile but its getting there. The RQ-7 Shadow was...marginally reliable when I first trained on it. Through the years it received several aviation-spec upgrades to make it more robust, though it is still the only thing flying in the Army that runs on AVGAS. Several attempts were and still are being made to carry munitions, but seems to be too costly for what Department of the Army is willing to Pay The MQ-1C Gray Eagle program, a turbo-diesel version of the Predator, came about to answer the need for an armed platform. I've been flying it since 2012. When I was in Iraq in 2016, Army UAS and Air Force RPAs were the primary shooters, with the "sense-to-shoot" time being far less than anything else flying. That was definitely the highlight year of my career to date, as I'd never thought I'd see unmanned platforms utilized that way.
The Air Force is facing a big deficit in its unmanned program; so much so that pilot programs (no pun intended) are being conducted using enlisted operators to fly the RQ-4 Global Hawk. There's nothing wrong with it on the whole: Army has been doing it for over 20 years successfully and proved that enlisted operators can employ munitions successfully. But all is not so bright and sunny. There are still many shortcomings in Army UAS compared to its manned conterpart.
-Initial Training: Rotory wing basic flight training in the Army last from 15 months to two years, with follow-on training from there depending on airframe. Much On-the-job training happens at the unit level, but pilots exiting Ft Rucker with their wings are fairly competent.
UAS operators leave Ft Huachuca after only 24 weeks and, dispite a heavilly automated system, still know barely enough to not crash. Friends of mine who have left the Army to work at schoolhouse at Ft Huachuca tell me that class content is constantly being trimmed to shorten the course and crank out operators, placing the burden of training more and more on the unit who, 9 times out of 10, are trying to train up for upcoming deployments. We get Soldiers who have the aviator academic equivelancy of a 3rd grader (I had a Soldier come to my last unit who couldnt draw a cross section of an airfoil) and received no training on critical skills like weapons employment. Since I've been in, I've also seen the prerequisite ASVAB and GT scores drop in order to bolster class sizes, and the end product reflects.
-Unit training: Manned aviators typically receive additonal duties to help occupy their time and help keep the unit rolling, but for the most part, their focus is on flying and flight related training.
UAS Operators? Details....mow the grass, occupy the staff duty desk at brigade or the barracks, man the airfield gate, and whatever menial task comes down the tasking pipeline. This also has to do with...
-Pilot/Operator Prestige: Now I cant think of anyone who is going to have any luck picking up a date at the bar on saturday night with "yeah I fly drones" as their pickup line. Thats not the argument. The problem is how the Army itself looks at UAS operators versus manned aviators.
Helicopter pilots are pretty well respected throughout the Army. CH-47 Chinooks and UH-60 Blackhawks insert and extract ground troops from hostile areas and AH-64 Apache pilots get to blow stuff up. How cool pilots are. They receive incentive pay and can be awarded their own commendations (Air Medal and Distinguished Flying Cross) for doing an awesome job.
UAS Operators are looked upon as computer geeks. "Its just like a video game" "It flies itself" "UAS operators arent real pilots". You name it and I've heard it, and that attitude continuously does damage. It damages morale as well as retention. An MQ-1C operator, most likely a 18-24 year-old Private First Class or a Specialist is sent out to Iraq or Afghanistan, is charged daily with flying a $10 million dollar aircraft and expected to deliver $100,000 munitions with pinpoint accuracy, and whose skill and abilities have DIRECT impact on the battlefield, receive absolutely no more pay or commendation then the cook who is counting heads in the dining facility. Now for someone like me, who is an aviation enthusiast who would probably do this job for free if it came to it, its not THAT big of a deal. But the rest of the kids see this and become disenfrancised and dont want to reenlist. Army is currently offering reenlistment bonuses in excess of $45,000 to MQ-1C operators. Almost noone is taking.
-Career Path: For those of use who do stay in and climb the ladder, doing so is very difficult. The field is so shorthanded that the chance of getting out of the line unit, and off the deployment trail to further develop one's resume is just about impossible. This becomes a problem when competing for promotion to Master Sergeant (which I will be doing next year) against other operations MOSs within the Army such as Air Traffic Controlers, Aviation Administration Specialists, and so on. Those career fields are able to get out and seek other assignments which look favorable in a promotion board packet. I was accepted to go to the Aviation Noncomissioned Officer's Academy at Fort Rucker as an instructor last year. Between me and the Acadamy, we both lost to branch management, and I was sent out to another line unit.
-Pilot/Operator life span: The average "life" of a career Army aviator, in my estimation, is 26 years. Pilots either come in directly from high school or go to Warrant Officer Canidate School or Officer Canidate School after a few years as an enlisted Soldier. Those that stay in are in the field for an average of 26 years. That's 26 years of building critical experience that is retained and then shared with the rest of the field. 26 is the average, with some pilots staying in as long as 30 and even 40 years before retirement.
Conversley, the average "life" of a career UAS operator is about 8 years at the most. The high end being those at the 12-15 year mark who promote to Sergeant First Class. Anyone reaching that rank, being Aircraft Commanders, Instructor Operators or the like, spend alot less time flying and more time attending meetings, updating excel spreasheets, and otherwise become more adminstrators than operators. Get promoted to Master Sergeant/First Sergeant and all flying stops. Again, thats the high end. The low end is, of course, the horrible retention rate. There are also those that go on to be Warrant officers at the 4-6 year mark. Those that are accepted as a Warrent Officer so early in their career are often the best, brightest and possess the most knowlege and experience. Warrant Officers serve as subject matter experts and are advisors to the unit commanders. While they are still physically in the field, they take no active part in training operators. A lot of knowledge is lost on an alarmingly regular basis, and I see units make the same mistakes, year after year.
-Post-service employment: For manned aviators, this used to be a problem but is steadily improving with the increasing need for commercial pilots. From some of the things I've read, airlines are starting to become more willing to take rotory pilots and give them the needed transition training. Things are looking up for retired Army pilots.
Not so for UAS operators. 10 years ago, jobs with manufacturers like Textron or General Atomics were out there but the market was saturated and a job callback was highly unlikely unless an aplicant posesseed at least an instructor rating. Same with instructor jobs down at Ft Huachuca. Those gigs typically paid between $70k-90K per year. Folks who accompanied units on deployments could make $120K easily. The UAS industry is now seeing an influx of what I refer to as "2nd generation operators", those who are leaving the Army between 2015 and the present. They are being offered less by these companies, are willing to work for less, and are quickly replacing the now overpaid operators. In other non-military applications, the focus right now is sUAS and people with 1000+ hours on big, fixed wing platforms arent as compeditive as one would expect. I predict that we are another 15-20 years from seeing larger unmanned aircraft used prominently in the NAS. There are quite a few hurdles that the FAA needs to clear for that to happen and, well...its the FAA.
Hope all that provides a glimpse into some of the challenges that the enlisted UAS operator concept faces. 6 more years...
Topic: Drone Degree? (Read 2400 times)
