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The Air Force's Love For Fighter Pilots Is Too Big To Fail
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Just look at what's been going on throughout the Air Force. It's as if drones pose such a threat to traditional means of aerial warfare that the flying service's historically kneejerk resistance to anything too closely aligned with sweeping technological change finds it bristling today at prospective gamechangers of the unmanned sort. Nevermind that the AF's active remotely-piloted combat aircraft outnumber its active manned bomber inventory by about 2-to-1. For perspective, as Lt. Col. Lawrence Spinetta writes in the July issue of the Air & Space Power Journal, an official USAF publication, consider that 'RPA [remotely-piloted aircraft] personnel enjoy one wing command' while fighter pilots control 26. In other words, 'the ratio of wing-command opportunities for RPA pilots versus those who fly manned combat aircraft is a staggering 1-to-26.' Such personnel policies that seemingly favor manned standbys are part and parcel of deep-rooted, institutional stigmas. In a 2008 speech, General Norton Schwarz, who served as AF chief from 2008 to 2012, did not mince words when he said that this systemic obsession with all-things manned has turned the Air Force's swelling drone ranks into a 'leper colony.'"
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You have to be/have been a pilot or navigator to captain an aircraft carrier. (I wrote a paper about this in the 90s...) and the US hard-on for aircraft carriers ain't going away anytime soon.
You can have your god back when you are old enough to handle the responsibility.
The ease with which BHO will deploy drones to kill people without trial is scary, doing in countries we are not at war with is scary,
the number of Others that die in the attacks is indefensible.
They are not as accurate as they say. When the "Pilot" is thousands of miles away, they are a little quick on the trigger.
Well the point is that the media can't put a face on the pilot who blows up the kids.
Just another secrecy layer.
Btw. what the fuck is a "wind command"? I don't remember that from falcon 3.0
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Nobody wants to see some pocket-protector-wearing nerd trying to bed Kelly McGillis. Plus the fight scenes would've been incredibly boring.
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Sometimes, things need to be reduced to their simplest, most direct form to make clear their complete uselessness.
Drones are the military's Reductio Ad Absurdum.
Drones are effective for some things but I doubt they'd be effective in a real war vs a competent adversary.
As a former Naval Aircrewman, and an all around "flying is awesome" kind of geek (I knew I wanted to fly when I was 3), I have to say I understand the reticence. Flying is awesome. It's hard to give up something you love doing.
At the same time, the cost-benefit analysis is swinging/has swung towards unmanned craft. They can have performance envelopes that won't allow a human inside. They can have significant cost savings in not having to protect the human inside.
Situational Awareness is big, but we do that with the Electronic Battlefield now. Some years ago I was very much in the "you'll never replace a pilot in the cockpit" side of the argument. Now.. I think the F-35, a fighter I so desperately wanted, should be eliminated, and replaced with drones. Times change. Technology changes. We all love the Sopwith Camel and the P-51, but you wouldn't use either one in a modern war.
It's going to be a difficult political move, but it's the right move, long term. And it took me many years before I could say that without gritting my teeth first. :)
In a 2008 speech, General Norton Schwarz, who served as AF chief from 2008 to 2012, did not mince words when he said that this systemic obsession with all-things manned has turned the Air Force's swelling drone ranks into a 'leper colony.' That doesn't sound like deep rooted stigma to me, that sounds like a man with a plan.
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There are plenty of other reasons why you wouldn't want to tele-operate combat vehicles ranging from ethical to technical. Setting the ethical aside, one of the most glaring reasons why you would want to retain manned vehicles would be the mitigation of the risk that someone would jack or jam your drones.
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Plus those that fly tankers, and trasnport planes: They're constantly passed over for assignments and promotions in favor of fighter pilots.
Think it was John Brunner's "The Shockwave Runner", which had the phrase: "There are two kinds of fools -- one who says this is old and therefore good, and the other which says this is new and therefore better."
Nevermind that the AF's active remotely-piloted combat aircraft outnumber its active manned bomber inventory by about 2-to-1.
I can kind of understand only counting active aircraft, by why are you comparing combat aircraft to bombers? Why not, you know, compare remotely-piloted combat aircraft to manned combat aircraft.
Also... they way they label "militant combatants" now a days would probably get my $60 toy with a camera on it classified as combat aircraft. Comparing the capabilities of the B-2 to my quadcopter is laughable.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
And all that doesn't do a damned thing to country the thrust of the main idea that Air-force has a bunch of ego maniacs desperately trying to hold onto their out-dated jobs. It's like the battleship at any point past the start of WWII.
Both the USAF and the U.S. Army field Predators. The Army has them driven by sergeants, and has autoland installed. The USAF has them driven by officer pilots, and refuses to have autoland installed on their birds.
USAF drone crash rates are much higher than Army crash rates.
You do realize the difference between 'a holocaust' and 'The Holocaust', right?
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What are they going to do when the ENEMY's planes are all drones? Note that an enemy with a big pile of drones can, just like we do now, send them out with relative impunity without worry about casualties in the air. Right now we're fighting against low-tech forces so we've gotten spoiled. Low-tech forces may not always be the enemy.
Nobody wants to see some pocket-protector-wearing nerd trying to bed Kelly McGillis.
As opposed to a midget in elevator shoes?
Plus the fight scenes would've been incredibly boring.
I don't know. Seems to me that the whole video-game-that's-really-combat angle has worked in the past...
Besides, I'd say that since drones can pull g forces that would kill or incapacitate pilots, those fight scenes would kick ass.
A simple way to settle the debate is to have our unmanned forces attack our manned forces and see who wins. I'm putting $100 on unmanned, and I'll give you 2:1 odds.
No disrespect to C10 pilots, but aren't fighter\bomber pilots the top of their class? I'm not a USAF vet, but I would think most fighter pilots scored higher than other pilots at flight school.
Not to say that makes them better leaders...
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That sentence is an absolute mess.
This article is emotionally charged and poorly written with no real figures to back up your claims.. "In other words, 'the ratio of wing-command opportunities for RPA pilots versus those who fly manned combat aircraft is a staggering 1-to-26.'" No it's not. To tell us the ratio of opportunities for pilots you also need to take into account how many pilots there are in each field. If there are 26 times more fighter pilots than drone pilots then opportunities for a given pilot are roughly the same. The numbers you quote earlier don't even give us a hint as to the number of these pilots as you simply compare DRONE AIRCRAFT vs BOMBER AIRCRAFT then go on to compare DRONE WING COMMANDS vs FIGHTER WING COMMANDS. I don't care if your article represents the general spirit of what is happening in the U.S.A.F with regard to drone pilots, if you want to convince anyone with a shred of critical thinking don't go throwing around unrelated 'fun facts' then try and tie them together to shore up an emotionally charged train-wreck. On the upside you pissed me off enough to go and create this account....
I spent four years in USAF as an officer in the late 1970s.
It stands to reason that you'd expect your general officers in the military to have combat experience. As USAF has historically been a manned aircraft oriented organization, it stands to reason that fighter pilots would be the people who eventually become USAF generals. After all, the first mission of the military is to fight our wars and you want people who have first-hand knowledge as your leaders.
USAF is very adverse to losing fighter aircraft because they are trying to protect pilots. It only stands to reason. That's also why un-manned aircraft are so much less expensive. I believe there is a need for both manned and un-manned aircraft. Wherever you can, un-manned aircraft are preferable because they are so much less costly, but just as there is a case to be made for manned space travel, so there are times when you want humans flying combat missions.
But beyond all this, you still have the human issues of organization. It is the military's way that *ALL* officers are in training to become generals, and they only keep a small percentage of them around long enough to reach 20 years. In USAF, you go before the major's board at the 12 year mark. If you are passed over for major twice, you have to either leave USAF or accept demotion to the enlisted ranks, to finish out your 20 years and retire as a captain. This gets rid of well over half your officer staff. There aren't a lot of guys willing to take a demotion to enlisted for 6 years so they can stick around for a captain's retirement pension.
I don't know if drone operators are officers or enlisted. Either way, can you call a drone operator a combat experienced person you want to eventually become general? USAF has a problem here.
Wait, what? What planet does he live on? Historically the USAF has been quite the opposite - chasing sweeping technological change whether it made sense or the technology was truly ready for the prime time. You want kneejerk resistance, you want the Navy, especially my fellow bubbleheads in the submarine service.
This isn't about technology, it's about social change - and that has always been been a tug-of-war in the USAF between the fighter and bomber communities.
well drones are good for everything but thinking, and real time data processing. In case you didn't realize it but drones have a several second delay between button push and reaction. Something to do with Speed of light and satellite communications.
Drones are only good after an airspace has been cleared of enemy combat aircraft. Otherwise they are sitting ducks, easily jammed, easily spoofed, easily fooled by any technologically advanced group. Iran may not have stolen a drone but I bet it did interfere enough for it to crash in a given area.
Drones will be next to useless against Russia, china, Drug cartels(eventually), etc.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
'Weaponized Keynesianism' I've heard it called. About the only way you can get the top to give anything to the bottom is to scare them enough. Eisenhower wrote about it in his memoirs. The whole 'Military Industrial Complex'. Apart from that we run around the world ensuring corporations have safe, cheap labor (there's a general who wrote a book about being a Mob Enforcer for Fruit Companies).
Anyway, point is, automating our Military seems pointless. If we take away the pork all that's left is a particularly nasty way to make sure corporations get their way.
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You do realize the difference between 'a holocaust' and 'The Holocaust', right?
So the original poster was trying to say that the Air Force is performing a ritual sacrifice of Muslims, specifically by burning them on an altar?
Hello, UAV researcher here. The answer to all of your questions is "Yes".
Let's break it down:
1. A UAV is not limited by the g-constraints of human pilots
2. A UAV will be 300+ kg lighter than a similar manned fighter
3. A UAV does not get tired at night or during extended operations
4. A UAV benefits from the same targeting systems humans use
5. A UAV will unwaveringly sacrifice itself to make a kill if commanded.
6. A radio-silent UAV with preprogrammed orders and terrain databases is no more jammable than a conventional aircraft.
Within 15 more years of development, there will not be a manned aircraft that can survive against a UCAV.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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holo-caust = whole burn
It fits.
They are being consumed, and the means by which they are being consumed is often referred to as 'fire', so it's not an enormous stretch from the original literal meaning. For bonus points, it is a bit of ritual, since the targets are not neccessarily an actual threat, and the actions are being done to appease a powerful party that won't actually do anything for the benefit of those carrying out the ritual.
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holocaust of Muslims.
False. "War against jihadis" is what is going on. No-one is waging war against Muslims. While jihadis are all Muslim, not all Muslims are jihadis (thank goodness! look at how great the people in Egyptian and Turkey are as they struggle for freedom using peaceful protest). It would be better of people stopped using words like "holocaust" and "genocide" when they don't match their defined uses. Leave it for the real thing, please. Killing a few thousand barbaric jihadis is not a "holocaust" in any way (like the Jewish Holocaust in Europe, or the Armenian Genocide etc). It is simply a fight between 21st Century Enlightenment Culture defending itself from jihadis that would like to replace it with a supremacist 7th Century Culture (under the Islamic poltical order and Sharia - their stated goals).
All of this is happening again. We went through the same thing with the A-10. Probably the best ground support aircraft ever designed. The grunts on the ground love the things, but the Air Force keeps trying over and over to kill it because they have a hard-on for fighters and bombers and ostracize that pesky ground support role regardless of how effective it is. During the first Gulf War, the A-10 program was so neglected and underfunded the pilots figured out they could get night vision if they saved one of their Maverick missiles since it had the IR capability the A-10 lacked, and fed a live video image back to the A-10.
Well OK, that's Navy. But still; how will the image of the macho fighter pilot ever live up to that of Tom Cruise? Well maybe Tom Cruise from Tropic Thunder.
Have gnu, will travel.
That is a very obtusely worded summary.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
I'm used to seeing a slender article in the middle of a page flanked by white space where ads/junk are being blocked by my HOSTS file.
The link for 'leper colony' : http://www.airforcetimes.com/article/20080929/NEWS/809290335/Hundreds-of-Reaper-Predator-pilots-needed
has everything but an article, just the header "Hundreds of Reaper, Predator pilots needed"
Checking without a HOSTS file as I did want to read it: I'm shown:
The "Want to read more?" and subscriptions below, the "article" is part of the subscription
div id="premiumcontent-summaryparagraph" class="gel-hidden"
"The Air Force will soon have nonrated officers flying combat missions over Iraq and Afghanistan."
Now I'm not sure if there really is an article to read or not, pay a buck to find the above was it.
Just saying if you have to disable your HOSTS file to read something, it was meant to be blocked in the first place.
When manned anti-aircraft systems are deployed against drones, the value of unmanned combat aircraft is going to rocket into a toilet at about Mach 6.
While we are on the topic of drone pilots versus actual fighter pilots, in a skirmish, how difficult would it be for the other side to completely jam all frequencies that are used to carry control information from the drone pilots in home base to the drone itself? Is jamming such a huge frequency range unmanageable? If so, is there a way to "fast detect" active frequency ranges and jam those specific ranges? Do the drones "rotate" their frequencies (much like star trek shield harmonics) to make it difficult to jam? And if so, can the jamming be effectively adoptable?
Soon time for a straight up dog fight between the best fly boys and drone fighters.
Of course, the USAF is blimpish enough to accuse the drones of cheating by pulling too many Gs.
That "up or out" policy has always struck me as being bizarre.
Sure, not everybody has the chops to go on to be a senior officer. Sometimes, a guy is going to top out at Captain. But he could be a very *good* (or at least acceptable) Captain, and there's no shortage of jobs that profit from having a senior Captain in that slot. Why get rid of those guys?
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1. The UAV feed can be relayed to a room full of targeting analysts, legal advisors, and the highest level of command you need to have the authority to make the shoot - none of whom are in danger - which gives you the best possible chance of making the right "shoot/don't shoot" decision;
2. The UAV pilot isn't hopped up on amphetamines;
3. The UAV pilot isn't part of a culture that degenerates pilots who return home from missions without shooting, thus motivating human pilots to shoot at *something* before they go home; and
4. The UAV pilot cannot make a bullshit claim of "self-defence" before rolling in on an unauthorized target - like, say, a Canadian target range.
DG
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I believe the US military had the same problem making the switch from Horses to mechanical vehicles. Being a Cavalry officer was very prestigious. Driving a truck was not. I heard a story where some guy had to go out and shoot a bunch of horses to make his point. I suspect that if you check the records that the motor vehicles were not a command opportunity in the beginning either.
One thing about switching to all drones is that they might regret not having some human pilots around when some enemy either jams the existing drones rendering them useless or worse just takes them over right after launch.
If air superiority suddenly vanishes you can't retreat fast enough.
The AF has a long tradition of living in fantasyland when it comes to the mythology of 'single pilot as knight-of-the-air' machismo.
It's been long-since proved that 2 men in the cockpit are far more effective than one, that task-saturation has exceeded the capability of a single brain to comprehend and react to everything going on in modern air/air combat. And yet, the USAF is committed to having single-pilot fighters always.
HOWEVER, I will raise one point:
The current budgetary and technophile love-affair with UAVs is compelling. Note that we haven't fought a peer-competitor for SEVENTY years. It's very easy (especially for the USAF/Navy) to get addicted to weapons systems that are effective against cave-dwelling tribesmen with no navy, no subs, no air-support. The army, who still has to winkle these goat herders out of their hovels and caves, probably still has a better appreciation for the fact that ultimately it's a dirty, dangerous business because the infantry's main approach hasn't fundamentally changed since the days of the Assyrians.
But we had a faint taste of changed circumstances when we had missions against Serbia - a puny-but-still-2nd-world opponent, who had things like engineers and scientists who understand how ARM missiles work, the limits of EW, and extended intelligence gathering to leverage their limited resources, particularly against a lazy, lackadaisical foe underestimating their opponent.
Against a peer-competitor with the full resources of ECM and ECCM, an airforce, and/or a navy, I *suspect* that UAVs will largely be almost worthless unless they're made with scary levels of autonomy and AI. In this context alone, it will remain important to retain significant, human-driven assets that can function even when their comlink with HQ is shut down.
That said, not having autoland on your UAVs is just plain stupid.
-Styopa
Because captains are expensive, and captains lead lesser officers. There's a hierarchical pyramid. It doesn't work if it's a rectangle. If you have 50 generals, 50 captains, 50 lieutenants, and 50 privates, who leads who? Does everyone have just a single person under them? Do the bulk of officers not actually lead anyone? In short, they don't need to be top heavy.
Plus you have the culture that the best stay and the rest LEAVE. So you don't have incompetent officers. Or at least, you know, it helps with that.
The superiority of a drone is in its cheap and disposable nature. You can develop all the stealth planes you want, but when it comes down to it, isn't it just easier to overwhelm an enemy with quantity?
Sure, a handful of fighters would be useful for escorting questionable aircraft (hijackings/airspace violations/radio failure) where destroying a target was not necessary, but even our forty-year-old designs can handle that. Dogfights are obsolete, and the idea that we need the vehicle for carrying bombs or performing surveilance to actually get home is pretty much nonsense at this point.
It's hard for me to be this objective as an avgeek myself, but honestly, I can't justify developing new generations of aircraft that we just don't need and exist only to boost the Air Force's egos.
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Well a senior captain would of course cost more than a more junior captain. The way it works is that instead of keeping older officers you force them out hoping that the younger crop of officers will be more competent. Instead they should just focus on getting rid of incompetents through out the rank structure, keep the competent officers while actively promoting the stand outs.
Well, Mr Nusbacher[1], let's take a look at history, shall we? Specifically, WW1.
First the British (or Germans) had planes, and then the Germans (or British) sent up planes to shoot down the British (or German) planes. And so the British (or Germans) sent planes to shoot down the German (or British) planes that were trying to shoot down the other British (or German) planes.
So what do you think will happen?
[1] Sorry, Mrs.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
" Future drones will likely use unjammable line-of-sight lasers to a relay..."
Laws of Physics: There are no wavelengths of light that can get through most clouds.
You seem enthusiastic about U.S. government violence. All war, all the time? Every war makes us poor. And those who profit from war rich.
The up-and-out system does what you want, except perhaps for filtering out incompetent second lieutenants. If a soldier is good at one grade, he or she is likely to be at least competent one grade up, so there really aren't many incompetent officers. They aren't allowed to rise to their level of incompetency, because they're removed before then.
Now, consider a captain who's competent as a captain, but not selected for promotion to Major. Obviously, he isn't a great captain, or he'd have been promoted. Why keep him? You're getting a new crop of younger captains, who are mostly competent (or they wouldn't have been promoted to captain), so a good many of them will be better than the captain you're suggesting we retain, and most will be at least as good.
Now, if you retain people in rank, you diminish the promotion opportunities of lower ranks. This means you're reducing the pool of possible stand-outs, and making it harder for them to work up through the ranks. If you keep all the competent but not outstanding captains as captains, you're closing down most promotions. That means you don't get really good captains (since the ones left are good but not outstanding), and you don't get good candidates for promotion to Major. Eventually officers will retire, but that leaves promotion opportunities available only when the younger officers are getting awfully old for their ranks. (See the USN in the late 1800s.)
So, up-or-out may be hard on individual officers, but it keeps the promotions coming for the outstanding officers, and keeps officers competent.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The ease with which BHO will deploy drones to kill people without trial is scary, doing in countries we are not at war with is scary,
the number of Others that die in the attacks is indefensible.
They are not as accurate as they say. When the "Pilot" is thousands of miles away, they are a little quick on the trigger.
Possibly of interest: Out of Sight, Out of Mind: A visualization of drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004
UN to examine UK and US drone strikes [2013-01-23]
Excerpt from above article:
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Except that the Canadian experience refutes this.
We don't "up or out" - and we also have fairly stringent gateways and goalposts for promotion (specifically, courses that must be taken prior to moving up - courses that are ranked and merited, with only so many serials running each year)
We have plenty of Captains who will never make Major, Majors who will never make LCol, etc. Some of these guys are dead wood, but the majority of them are solid officers who perform productive work and who retain vast stores of corporate knowledge. They may not be rock stars, but they (mostly) aren't idiots - and they never get Peter Principled (where a solid Captain becomes a shitty Major).
It makes for a much more effective - and happier - organization.
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Yes and no. I've known plenty of people that are good leaders in small groups but suck at managing larger groups, and visa versa. The solution to stagnation due to retention of merely competent officers would be to not retain them in the same position and rank if you know you have a more competent person that deserves the position. Letting them go because you hope that the next guy is better is just dumb. And while people might think that crappy officers, especially in the lower ranks make little difference I would disagree. I've seen shops deliberately tank their performance in order to kill the career of an officer they didn't like. Depending on what the shop does that can have much further reaching consequences than just those dozen people. On top of that promotion is often determined by how well your golfing bud^H^H^H boss or commander writes your appraisals. I've seen people given medals where the wording of the award made it sound like they saved the world, when in reality they had broken something themselves and managed to fix it before a critical failure happened.
I'd like to see studies but my instinct is the adrenaline from danger would make a pilot quicker to fire.
Then the remote pilot is slower to fire, but slower to question. On a screen, they are COD MW or whatever. A pilot can identify them as humans. I hate to turn to fiction for support, but something like the opening scene in Running Man is less likely to happen with remote pilots. And Top Gun is closer to dogfight-trained jet fighters. You should really never have adrenaline going. Note the "best" pilot is "Iceman" and emotions/gut/instinct affect the choices of Maverick, but not his flying. Flight controls are delicate, and any mental edge you get from the stimulation is lost if it also brings over-control (something that has broken tails off multiple planes and many-a-helicopter). Perhaps less so in military fly-by-wire where over-control may be damped by the computer, but I've not flown such so I can only speculate.
Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan? There should be 3 options. Pakistan turns him over. Congress declares war on Pakistan. We do nothing. It might not be the most efficient way to do things but it is the right way.
We officially ask Pakistan for permission to operate independently without oversight for a single "mission" of catching him (catching him being executing him and catching the dead body as it falls)? Why is that not an option? We, and others here, conduct investigations with the full knowledge and cooperation of the government. There's no need to complicate things by considering any foreign act an act of war that requires explicit declarations. In many cases, it's as simple as deadbeat dads who fled the country to avoid supporting their children being tracked by the FBI and charges filed based on FBI information that may have been gathered in-country. The actual arrest and turning-over is done by the host country, but some (much?) of the leg-work was done by the US government. Same for parental-kidnapping.
I've traveled with children that aren't mine, and those rules and operational guidelines were required reading, in case there was some issue (it was theoretically possible that the parents could report a kidnapping after I started travel, which they wouldn't, but they could, so I spent a few hours reading over what would happen). The FBI investigates US crimes, wherever they occur, so does work outside the US. They should set up an office in Nigeria for 419 scams, but instead, the vast majority of their international focus seems to be drugs, money, and kids.
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Are you going to protect an airspace with drones ? ROTFL.
Yeah, pop up, get a lock, fire, superiority maintained.
Are you going to protect a country with drones ? ROTFL
Yes.
Are you going to wage war with drones (bombing campaigns like during the yugoslavia bombings in 1999) ? ROTFL
The US has abandoned "bombing" and gone towards missile strikes. UAVs are great for that.
Are you going to protect the 6th fleet, 7th fleet and the other us fleets around the world with drones ? ROTFL
Greater time in the air, better coverage, smaller footprint in a carrier's hold, yes. They can take off and land on carriers without a remote pilot even.
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Drones are not easily jammed. Try it. Jam one in a war zone and count the seconds until a missile lands on your and your transmitting gear. The AI isn't great, but it's good enough for that brief interruption.
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