Training the Top Guns of Drone Aircraft

Training the Top Guns of Drone Aircraft – Julian Barnes, Los Angeles Times.

The Pentagon is preparing to graduate its first pilots of unmanned drones from the elite US Air Force Weapons School – a version of the Navy’s Top Gun program – in a bid to elevate the skills and status of the officers who fly Predators, one of the military’s fastest growing aircraft programs.

The elite flight schools of the Air Force and Navy are most closely associated with smart, tough fighter jocks. But over the course of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the MQ-1 Predator and more heavily armed MQ-9 Reaper craft have become, to many in the Pentagon, the most important aircraft the US has deployed.

In 2006, the Air Force was able to fly only 12 drones at a time. Today, the service flies 34 regular combat air patrols. As the program has expanded, the job of keeping the best pilots flying drones has proved to be a challenge.

Until recently, pilots would work on the Predators and Reapers, then return to their assigned aircraft. But the Air Force would like officers to make a career out of flying unmanned craft and become experts at operating the drones…

More at The Los Angeles Times.