As Air Force Academy cadets dream of soaring into the wild blue yonder, they might want to stop and contemplate taking that trip from an office chair instead of a cockpit.
That's because the Air Force's focus has shifted toward Unmanned Aerial Surveillance (UAS) via Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPAs) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Drones, they're commonly called, and the Air Force needs more capable people to operate them.
While the academy has been the quintessential incubator for the next generation of fighter pilots since it opened 55 years ago, the evolving demands of war have brought a sharp turn toward a different kind of flying. It's not likely these days that pilots will engage in air-to-air dogfights. Now they're locating and destroying ground targets or conducting search operations — missions that can be handled with RPAs hovering over the Middle East but piloted from two Air Force bases in Nevada, Creech or Nellis.
"It's changing the way we conduct war as an Air Force," says Col. Dean Bushey, who helps teach RPA classes at the academy. "It's important these cadets are exposed to what's out there."
Some academy applicants and cadets have raised questions on blogs about whether their future as pilots rests with a joystick.
One wrote, "There is a great deal of debate about if those UAV pilots will ever be released from that career path, even the active duty getting the UAVs wonder how long they will fly by remote control."
One response might lie in the following statistics: The number of Aerial Achievement Medals awarded by the Air Force to drone operators since January 2009 outpaced the number awarded to pilots of manned aircraft 3,497 to 1,408, according to Air Force figures recently cited in Harper's magazine.
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It is easier and less dangerous (for the Americans of course) to kill Muslims from several miles away (even a continent away) rather than to actually fly the aircraft.
ReplyDeleteGood luck on your mission boys and girls
We will all be praying for your success