Drone Pilots: We Don’t Get No Respect

[nrodgsxr]

Do you have a better idea for rapidly increasing RPA pilot production, while meeting COCOM requirements?

Use Army RPAs.. at least for Army missions please.

[Jaded]

When they give you the "opportunity" to reclass AFSCs, do not fall for it. The few guys released back to manned aircraft all had maintained their 11 prefix.

This is secondhand, so please correct me if my info is out of date.

[sqwatch]

When they give you the "opportunity" to reclass AFSCs, do not fall for it. The few guys released back to manned aircraft all had maintained their 11 prefix.

This is secondhand, so please correct me if my info is out of date.

this is correct.

when i was non-vol'd no one told me they wish they could fly driods- my bosses knew it would suck and suck it did. they also believed that the only chance i had of getting back in the jet was to finish out my adsc and find a guard unit who was hurting on manning/felt sorry for me and get hired. they turned out to be wrong on the latter.

right now, manning is in the shitter for driods, what will happen in three years is anyones guess. I escaped because fighter manning was worse off than driod manning. with what they've done to AMC manning, who knows what will happen in three years, which brings me to the final point that jaded brought up-

your leadership at creech WILL tell you to "recat" into the UAV AFSC. you will be pressured into signing on with tactics well known to interrogators, examples being "you're not being a team player" and it's better for your career". There is some truth to both of these, but if you sign, you will not go back. It is easier to excel in the droid community, and if you do well, leadership opportunities are possible. I gave it some honest thought- "do i recat and potentially have an easier time in the airforce? will it be better for my family?" Then, I had what addicts would call a moment of clarity and remembered how bad gates and schwartz ed the driod community up in the first place and i continued to resist as I still had the means to. Also, answer yourself honestly on how well you were doing in c-17s. if you do go back, you will be behind your peers by three years. If you were struggling when you left, it will be next to impossible to recover if you go back.

Not everyone made the same decision. Some folks who re-catted are doing great. a lot of them are out of active duty air force.

good luck.

[TnkrToad]

Use Army RPAs.. at least for Army missions please.

So...your solution for solving very real manning issues in the Air Force RPA community is to tell Army ground units that they will only get support from Army RPAs? You're right; it definitely would reduce the workload for the Air Force. I'm not sure all your deployed Army buddies would be happy with the natural consequences of your plan, however.

[Breckey]

Why can't the Army conduct split ops and help the fight from CONUS?

[Majestik Møøse]

question to the more informed members of this tread

Im a first assignment C17 pilot that just got told I'm getting non vol'd to remotes. I am trying to find information on what implications that will have for future assignments.

Obviously I'm planning on doing anything I can to get back to a cockpit, is that realistic? Of course my commander gave me the speech about how he wishes that he could go fly a drone and it's an amazing way to contribute to the fight.

I always used to be amazed at how AF pilots could have the best job in the world and seem so jaded and disillusioned... I'm definitely starting to understand.

Nice name dude. You spelled it wrong. Edited August 1, 2015 by Majestik Møøse

[M2]

Nice name dude. You spelled it wrong.

Wait. there's two Majestik Møøses (Meese?)?

[Magellan]

Nice name dude. You spelled it wrong.

Internet drink off GO!

[MajestikDroid]

I'm already taking part in the drink off, so I'll take that as a win! sorry to encroach on your turf Majestik, I'll shack myself and change that to MajeticDroid or something. Thanks for the info to those who replied...even if it's bad news. I'm not the best pilot in my SQ, but certainly not the weakest. I guess I'll just hope for Beale and make the best of it. Follow up question: anyone know of a flight school near Beale who would hire a part time CFI?

[nrodgsxr]

So...your solution for solving very real manning issues in the Air Force RPA community is to tell Army ground units that they will only get support from Army RPAs? You're right; it definitely would reduce the workload for the Air Force. I'm not sure all your deployed Army buddies would be happy with the natural consequences of your plan, however.

No they just need to share the workload. They have a huge organic drone fleet. Why is the AF's drone fleet getting crushed to support the army's mission while the army's fleet is chilling at home ?

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[MooseAg03]

Majestic #2 - I can second what everyone else is saying about the RPA lifestyle. It sucks when compared to my former C-17 life, rotating shifts and being tied to a work schedule- I joined the AF to have variety in my work and this is definitely ground hog day. The leadership will pressure you to re-cat permanently to RPAs. Last year during the force shaping debacle they tried to play on everyone's fear of being RIF'd by saying the only way to guarantee that wouldn't happen would be to re-cat. I told them no thanks and went for the VSP option instead, to no avail. I'm no dummy, they were going to pay me $60K to leave RPAs and active duty behind, I was all for it. Now I have a more realistic viewpoint, I know it is highly unlikely that I will ever sit in a C-17 again, or any manned AF aircraft for that matter. I'm hoping to sneak through after this assignment and be able to go teach UPT, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm fully expecting orders to Holloman next, where I will want to gouge out my eyeballs every day teaching the same boring syllabus rides in the same boring airspace. As soon as I get there, my new CC will receive Palace Chase paperwork, and when that is declined he will continue to receive new PC applications until I'm either allowed to leave active duty or my commitment is up. Then I'll go hate life for a few years in the right seat of a regional jet, but at least I'll be flying airplanes.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Edited for grammar

Edited August 1, 2015 by MooseAg03

[TnkrToad]

Why can't the Army conduct split ops and help the fight from CONUS?

No they just need to share the workload. They have a huge organic drone fleet. Why is the AF's drone fleet getting crushed to support the army's mission while the army's fleet is chilling at home ?

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The simple answer is that the Army way is grossly inefficient, and in a time of huge budgetary constraints, is moronic.

The Army concept, as I understand it, is that their RPAs are organic to their divisions, and hence their RPAs deploy and redeploy with the rest of the divisions they support. Like most Army programs, this makes their RPA operations way more manpower-intensive for the effect achieved, and puts more boots on the ground in harm's way when they are being operationally employed. While it's really neat that they use enlisted and/or warrants to operate their RPAs, the fact the operators deploy to theater rather than remaining at home and conducting split ops inherently makes the Grey Eagle way more costly on an effects per dollar basis than Air Force RPAs.

Bottom line, this RPA discussion reflects differences between the Army and Air Force approaches to aviation that go way back to the interwar period. We figured out in Northwest Africa in 1943 how screwed up penny-packeting of airpower was, and George C. Marshall's approval of FM 100-20 in July or so of that year should have helped settle this issue, but we're still fighting the same battle seven decades later.

I would love to see an apples-to-apples comparison between Army Grey Eagles and Air Force Preds/Reapers: given the total cost of manpower, equipment, bandwidth, whatever in the Army's and Air Force's respective programs, how much does one hour worth of CAS orbit cost?

I suspect the split ops method is way more efficient, and thus provides way more operational effects to the deployed warfighter than the grunt way.

Here's a suggestion, since as I understand it a huge amount of our RPA ops support ground units:

- Make Air Force RPA squadrons joint organizations

- Train Army warrant officers to fly Air Force RPAs

- If feasible (again, I'm not an RPA guy), equip Air Force Preds & Reapers with the same auto land system the Army uses, since apparently it will save both airframes and downrange manpower

The Army warrants would be intimately familiar with ground force commander requirements, it would preclude creating a whole new warrant officer corps in the Air Force (the only viable career field in the Air Force where warrants might be used is RPAs), and all those Army Kiowa pilots would have somewhere to go.

Edited because I accidentally posted before I finished my thought.

Edited August 1, 2015 by TnkrToad

[guineapigfury]

Ugh, fuck autoland. Launch and Recovery is the one break guys get from the neverending suck of Ops. It's worth the manpower bill for that reason alone.

[Guest ThatGuy]

The simple answer is that the Army way is grossly inefficient, and in a time of huge budgetary constraints, is moronic.

The Army concept, as I understand it, is that their RPAs are organic to their divisions, and hence their RPAs deploy and redeploy with the rest of the divisions they support. Like most Army programs, this makes their RPA operations way more manpower-intensive for the effect achieved, and puts more boots on the ground in harm's way when they are being operationally employed. While it's really neat that they use enlisted and/or warrants to operate their RPAs, the fact the operators deploy to theater rather than remaining at home and conducting split ops inherently makes the Grey Eagle way more costly on an effects per dollar basis than Air Force RPAs.

Bottom line, this RPA discussion reflects differences between the Army and Air Force approaches to aviation that go way back to the interwar period. We figured out in Northwest Africa in 1943 how screwed up penny-packeting of airpower was, and George C. Marshall's approval of FM 100-20 in July or so of that year should have helped settle this issue, but we're still fighting the same battle seven decades later.

I would love to see an apples-to-apples comparison between Army Grey Eagles and Air Force Preds/Reapers: given the total cost of manpower, equipment, bandwidth, whatever in the Army's and Air Force's respective programs, how much does one hour worth of CAS orbit cost?

I suspect the split ops method is way more efficient, and thus provides way more operational effects to the deployed warfighter than the grunt way.

Here's a suggestion, since as I understand it a huge amount of our RPA ops support ground units:

- Make Air Force RPA squadrons joint organizations

- Train Army warrant officers to fly Air Force RPAs

- If feasible (again, I'm not an RPA guy), equip Air Force Preds & Reapers with the same auto land system the Army uses, since apparently it will save both airframes and downrange manpower

The Army warrants would be intimately familiar with ground force commander requirements, it would preclude creating a whole new warrant officer corps in the Air Force (the only viable career field in the Air Force where warrants might be used is RPAs), and all those Army Kiowa pilots would have somewhere to go.

Edited because I accidentally posted before I finished my thought.

The MC-12 program went joint in order to turn the planes over to the Army. The Air Force and Army were flying missions together downrange. Then the Army tried to pull a fast one. MC-12 leaders had back up personnel ready to deploy just in case people had to come home. The Army decided they were going to try and cut off the number of people they were going to send downrange. Its no big deal, the Air Force can cover us.. MC-12 leadership said WTH!

[Homestar]

I'm already taking part in the drink off, so I'll take that as a win! sorry to encroach on your turf Majestik, I'll shack myself and change that to MajeticDroid or something. Thanks for the info to those who replied...even if it's bad news. I'm not the best pilot in my SQ, but certainly not the weakest. I guess I'll just hope for Beale and make the best of it. Follow up question: anyone know of a flight school near Beale who would hire a part time CFI?

Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about... But... It seems like the one guy I know at the RPA school house likes his life more than the guys flying missions. Maybe the goal is to get to the schoolhouse?

edit: spells bro.

Edited August 1, 2015 by Homestar

[guineapigfury]

Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about... But... It seems like the one guy I know at the RPA school house likes his life more than the guys flying missions. Maybe the goal is to get to the schoolhouse?

edit: spells bro.

MQ-9 schoolhouse is just south of Alamogordo, NM. It is a shitty location, especially if you're single. However, it does offer a normal length commute (as opposed to Creech) and a days only M-F work schedule. Quality of life is therefore significantly higher than on Ops.

[MooseAg03]

Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about... But... It seems like the one guy I know at the RPA school house likes his life more than the guys flying missions. Maybe the goal is to get to the schoolhouse?

edit: spells bro.

Actually, the goal is to make it back to an actual airplane. Volunteering to teach at the FTU will all but guarantee that will never happen. While I may end up there anyway eventually, it will not be by choice.

I will endure the constant suck of RPA Ops for an extra year or 2 just for the possibility. Getting back into a cockpit is the best QOL improvement I can think of.

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[HU&W]

MQ-9 schoolhouse is just south of Alamogordo, NM. It is a shitty location, especially if you're single. However, it does offer a normal length commute (as opposed to Creech) and a days only M-F work schedule. Quality of life is therefore significantly higher than on Ops.

Hence the need to add entire AD squadrons to March and Syracuse. Doing so would boost throughput at existing FTUs to cut the bottlenecks and provide PCS options for career dev/QOL/retention.

[TnkrToad]

The MC-12 program went joint in order to turn the planes over to the Army. The Air Force and Army were flying missions together downrange. Then the Army tried to pull a fast one. MC-12 leaders had back up personnel ready to deploy just in case people had to come home. The Army decided they were going to try and cut off the number of people they were going to send downrange. Its no big deal, the Air Force can cover us.. MC-12 leadership said WTH!

The point of recommending a joint unit is that it either 1) actually helps increase capacity, or 2) demonstrates that the Army isn't all that serious about supporting ground forces downrange . . . and if the Army doesn't even care about ground forces it's hard to say the Air Force isn't doing enough.

- From our Army brethren who frequent this forum, I gather that the Army has quite a few former Kiowa warrant officer types who 1) are now free agents, and 2) would apparently be happy as clams to do the RPA mission. If that is in fact so, and given that these guys are already aviators, it sure looks like a great way for the Army to help support its own folks downrange, while taking care of their own folks.

- If the Army balks at the idea, even though from what I can tell it makes too much sense, then they can explain to the geographic COCOMs why they don't want to support downrange ground forces with the excess capacity they apparently have. It furthermore makes it easier for the Air Force to pull back on the number of CAPs we're supporting: if the Army not only (as discussed above) is holding a bunch of its availability in the CONUS because of their misguided organic support concept and they furthermore refuse to do what they can by providing manpower to Creech/Cannon/wherever, then it's much easier for Big Blue to turn down COCOM requirements and give its folks some breathing room (or at the very least counter the narrative that says the Air Force doesn't care about guys on the ground).

Seems like a reasonable COA to me. The Army cares about ground troops and I'm an optimist, so I think this idea might work.

TT

[Gravedigger]

I'm in a class right now with some Naval aviator and Army helo types, and they asked me why dudes hated RPAs so much. It's clear why people that went through UPT would be miserable, but I don't know any 18Xs so I don't know how they feel. Are straight RPA officers equally miserable, considering that's what they signed up for? Are there just not enough volunteers? Seems strange that we are having to use UPT-trained aircrew still, so many years into RPA ops.

[nrodgsxr]

I'm in a class right now with some Naval aviator and Army helo types, and they asked me why dudes hated RPAs so much. It's clear why people that went through UPT would be miserable, but I don't know any 18Xs so I don't know how they feel. Are straight RPA officers equally miserable, considering that's what they signed up for? Are there just not enough volunteers? Seems strange that we are having to use UPT-trained aircrew still, so many years into RPA ops.

AFPC screwed up with the first batch of 18Xers and only gave them a 3 year ADSC. Many of them quit at the first chance. With 6 year ADSCs you'll see the rest of them get out sooner than the 11Xers who got non-vol'd after only 2 years in their first MWS and fly two back to back drone assignments.

so yeah they are just as miserable.. if not more because they have no chance of escaping that grind unless they get picked up for UPT.

[Majestik Møøse]

Internet drink off GO!

I'm not sure how an internet drink-off goes, but I assume it looks like this:

[guineapigfury]

I'm in a class right now with some Naval aviator and Army helo types, and they asked me why dudes hated RPAs so much. It's clear why people that went through UPT would be miserable, but I don't know any 18Xs so I don't know how they feel. Are straight RPA officers equally miserable, considering that's what they signed up for? Are there just not enough volunteers? Seems strange that we are having to use UPT-trained aircrew still, so many years into RPA ops.

Yes, 18Xers are just as miserable minus the added resentment of "I graduated UPT for this bullshit?". Shiftwork is harmful to your health (physical and mental), the mission is mind numbingly boring and unrewarding, the customers are often clueless and unprofessional, there are incredibly limited opportunities for TDYs and deployments, you have significantly reduced chances for promotion, the bases are mostly in awful locations, and many of the squadron commanders are not credible IPs. It's one thing for a Lt Col who's BTDT to ask you to push the margins a bit, it's another for an O-5 who Q3'd his checkride because he doesn't know the boldface to make the same request. 0/10, would not recommend.

Edited August 2, 2015 by guineapigfury

[herkbum]

...and many of the squadron commanders are not credible IPs. It's one thing for a Lt Col who's BTDT to ask you to push the margins a bit, it's another for an O-5 who Q3'd his checkride because he doesn't know the boldface to make the same request. 0/10, would not recommend.

Wow

[Gravedigger]

Well shit. So, things are not going to get better anytime soon then? My classmates were thinking it would be a great job, because you get to fly real missions without having to be gone all the time. I guess that seems good in theory but not in practice. Thanks for the updates.