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Really dude? Welcome to the world outside the AF. We have close to 2200 pilots being paid 2/3 what their commission brethren make while flying more, doing menial duties like washing trucks, and receiving no aviation incentive bonus beyond flight pay. I present to you the aviation warrant officer corps. Yet we never have a problem filling slots. Hell we are firing 400 people in the next two years. 4 year adso for enlisted guys out of high school some 10 thousand dollar or such signing bonus and a what maybe 4 month tech school all while paying them enlisted pay/benefits, or a bunch of studs who take over a year or two to train not counting no flight stuff and cost over a million pulled out of UPT to go to drones when there is a fighter pilot shortage and draw major pay and bene's by the time they are allowed to leave.... Which one is costing more in the long run and from recruits from a more shallow pool? You guys act like your manning problem is predicated on one answer, "how do you keep captains and majors who have been given the blue dick and convince them into staying a little longer?" What you don't realize is there are thousands of guys who aren't trying to be fighter jocks that would love to do something besides just wrench on your birds or make up another tracker at personnel. The Army figured that out decades ago. It doesn't take college degrees or 4 years of eating with only one hand at the zoo to make somebody that can drive a drone from launch point Y to Orbit Z and steer a flir pod.

Oh c'mon dude nobody is coming out of high school to fly airplanes or drones for 6 figure salaries. That's the thing lost here. The military by and large is the highest paying "feeder" into the civilian aviation world. Yes I could make 6 figures as a helo pilot for Erickson, but I've gotta get 2500 hours to even sit down at the interview. Drones and airlines are the same. 1500 hours to get looked at by a regional and make waiter money. Nobody is sitting on their ass out of highschool thinking "hmmm... 60k to be an airmen or I could go work for these contractor dudes and make 3x that." Everybody is screaming about drone pilot shortages. Well when your only source of restock is from 4 year degree commissioned officers who have to spend 2+ years in training to even show up to the job yeah your gonna have issues filling rapid losses. Your 2 years away from effecting any kind of change to man power on your current system because you want to pay as you said fair/competitive wages to what they would make on the outside. Except remember these are entry level guys the day they show up. Nobody on the outside will touch them until that adso is finished. The other option is something like the Army model. Realize that a lot of guys are sitting at 6-8 years and E6 going "no F'ing way I do this a day longer." But suddenly you make them warrants and give them a different job with x number years of adso and the next time they make that call they are so close to the pay check of the month club they think, "4 more years for a pension.... Ok start the suck." That's what the Army has been doing forever. And the coast guard does it to us with the DCA program. You've got enlisted guys crewing bombers and gunships, shouldn't they be paid more than some jack ass who sits 10-1600 m-thur closed Friday for training in CE? Of course, but you don't seem to have a problem filling those spots. Hell look at the Navy with nuke guys. That job pays 6 figures the day they leave the Navy with a graduate degree paid for by the Navy but dudes still stay for their 20 weird as that is.

You want enlisted flying drones? Fine. But you better get a stronger union, cause it won't take long for that enlisted man to figure out he's getting paid piss poor wages by the AF to do it. Then after his relatively short commitment is up, that enlisted man will bolt (probably with his ATP in hand, or at least a thousand hours of drone time) and join a real company that pays real wages for his technical work. Retention problem solved! Oh, wait...

It's easy to fly and has an auto land feature so you don't have to do it manually unless you want to. I'd recommend shelling out the extra cash for an extra battery and the hard shell back pack. I worry on occasion but as long as you're flying with a full battery, you're ok.

You call it a novelty, I call it the coolest goddamn fucking thing I have ever had the incredible luck to do.