This Week at War: The Drones Take Over

What the four-stars are reading -- a weekly column from Small Wars Journal.

BY ROBERT HADDICK | AUGUST 14, 2009

Drones are taking over the U.S. Air Force

The U.S. Air Force will reach a milestone this year: For the first time it will train more pilots for unmanned aircraft than for manned aircraft. A decade ago, unmanned aircraft were hardly known. Now they dominate the Air Force's pilot training system, and it is very unlikely this trend will ever reverse. In fact, it is not hard to imagine that within another decade unmanned aircraft operations will dominate day-to-day Air Force operations, force planning decisions, and budgets.

 

We can see how the Air Force's drones will soon crowd out manned aircraft inside its aircraft hangars. By 2013, software and communications improvements will allow the Air Force's unmanned-aircraft pilots to simultaneously fly three drones at one time, and four in an emergency. Another factor supporting the likely proliferation of drones such as the Predator, Reaper, and Global Hawk is their low cost compared with new manned aircraft such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

According to the Government Accountability Office, $24.5 million will purchase a set of four MQ-9 Reaper hunter-killer drones plus a ground station and satellite relay. (See page 117 of this report.) The latest guess of the price for a single F-35 fighter-bomber is $100 million. (See page 93.) This gap in cost led Defense Secretary Robert Gates to demand the cancellation of the manned F-22 Raptor program in order to fund the purchase of more drones for service in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The F-35 and the Reaper obviously have different roles and are not direct substitutes for each other. Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, the officer in charge of the Air Force's unmanned-aircraft programs, admitted at a recent news conference that the Air Force's current unmanned systems might be vulnerable to air-defense threats, electronic attack, and satellite communication problems.

But at the same briefing, Deptula made it clear (see this presentation) that the Air Force expects unmanned systems to transform the service's doctrines, force structure, organization, and culture. Drones are taking over the Air Force -- this year's graduates from Air Force pilot training can explain that.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

 

Robert Haddick is managing editor of Small Wars Journal.

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NSPLAYR

12:43 PM ET

August 15, 2009

Innacuracies

Dear FP,

The Air Force will train more UAV pilots than fighter and bomber pilots, NOT more than all manned aircraft. Such a statement forgets to take into account all transport, tanker, helicopter, and special operations aircraft. The Washington Post article that served as the source of this statement did indeed make the inaccurate claim in it's headline, but if one actually reads the Post article it corrects itself within the first paragraph in quoting Gen. Lorenz.

In the future, please be more in choosing sources to cite. The Washington Post article you link to is wrought with inaccuracies that may not be apparent to outsiders, but to readers with intimate knowledge of the subject matter, the false claims and predictions are glaringly obvious.

Overall, don't judge an article by it's title and please remember that the Air Force flys more than just fighters and bombers.

Thank you,

A Loyal Reader