Drone Pilots: We Don’t Get No Respect

[TAMInated]

Despite changes to the face of OEF and OIF, there is still an insatiable need for ISR. Without getting into specific numbers, the number of daily requests for ISR by supported units in theater outnumbers the total number of available ISR sorties (including all manned and unmanned ISR assets) over 6-to-1. It's an unbelievably big elephant to eat, even WITH the full-throttle press the AF has been involved in making RPA operators the last 5 or 6.9 years.

Anyone who has worked with those supported units knows there are more than a fair share of those ISR 'requirements' that are ground commanders gaming the system or wanting ISR just as a security blanket rather than for a true operational need: IMHO there is a lot of fluff in those requests because supported unit commanders often don't know what goes into generating that sortie in terms of time and effort by the USAF (having spoken to a number of green-Army types, ISR is mostly PFM as far as they're concerned). The ISR cells do a decent job of filtering out some of this when they do the daily ATO matches, but there's still a lot of fluff (meaning a lot of time with ISR assets on station watching things with no immediate value when there are other taskings that would have immediate value to the commanders). Until the supported units can get their requests under control, this insatiable need will continue.

Shack. Well put. There is a difference between "need" and "want". We could put enough ISR assets in the air to cover every square inch of the planet 24/7 and the Army would say, "Great, can we get 2 assets for every square inch, just in case?" and no one in the USAF would say "no" or "unable" or "maybe that isn't a good idea" because that gets you fired.

Edited May 5, 2012 by TAMInated

[slackline]

@ DeskJockey - Returning to the point you made about how the nature of combat experience shades culture and reasoning. Very important point about gradations in risk, though I think it actually runs deeper than that, and very much includes the role of combat in the institution's hierarchy of values.

An academic named John Owen makes an argument about how cultural change happens - an orthodoxy grows up with a set of framing experiences, which informs what they think is important, and hence influences how they structure their culture. When conditions change, the next generation grows up under different conditions, with different values and structures. These values lead to heterodoxies when those values encounter the extant system. Eventually, these frustrations coalesce around a symbol, object or event, and this forces the orthodoxy to engage the heterodoxy and both end up changed - Reformation leads to Counter-Reformation which is different in certain ways from pre-Reformation thought. I think this model applies here, but it's not really about RPA.

I would argue that the fundamental cultural fissure is not manned/RPA, fighters/heavies, or even fliers/non-fliers, but ONW/OSW culture vs. OIF/OEF culture. These framing sets of experiences taught very different lessons, which are now fundamentally in conflict. In ONW/OSW, experience teaches one to be highly risk-averse, as the impacts on national policy for losing an aircraft is far higher than the benefit from killing an Iraqi SAM or fighter. Additionally, given the ops tempo relative to later OEF/OIF demands, there is enough surplus time that a good officer would spend that time getting an AAD and doing their PME. These are all right and appropriate in that context. But OEF/OIF is a very different context - many of us have never known a day in the military when we were not at war. The logic of wartime rightly accepts more risk because there's more at stake, and because political leadership is willing to accept more in the way of consequences. With the increase in demands on time, deployments involved less in the way of slack for studying, etc. This is also right and appropriate in context, but these are two very different contexts and we would expect to see Red Flag culture and Balad culture, for lack of better terms, clash.

Applying Owen's theory, this explains many of our cultural friction points. Reflective belts replace indulgences in the analogy - as the most visible and often ridiculous symbols of the culture of risk-avoidance, these provide a focal point for friction between these two cultures. The risk-accepting OEF/OIF culture learned, as a function of the innovation required in wartime, to make decisions on their own -- the idea of this cultural value being abrogated is then offensive. This escalates (i.e. defending indulgences until they become ridiculous) to the point where both sides conduct a power struggle over this object as a symbolic struggle over overall cultural values. The escalation of C2 amplified this struggle - new technologies enabled ONW/OSW risk-aversion to extend control deeper into the cockpit ('never let your connectivity exceed your maturity' is a good rule of thumb.) So as we come back home, the space where the OEF/OIF culture cut their teeth begins to collapse, and the ONW/OSW tries to reassert their vision of 'normalcy,' which is contested by the differing 'normalcy' of the OEF/OIF culture. This is parallel in many ways with Gen. Petraeus' reformation-of-sorts in the Army - his constituency was more the junior officers who were muddling through COIN with little help or even comprehension on the part of pre-OEF/OIF seniors. Their reform was quicker, as it was accelerated by the pressing needs of being on the ground in this fight. But as the war has gone on, and the logics of combat ebb and give way to routine, risk-averse behaviors (i.e. started at KAF, then BAF, now everywhere.) A clash over ideas is the result - ref the SWJ argument (makes this look like a flash in the pan) about 'Disruptive Thinkers.'

As another example - I think it captures the controversy about AADs. To ONW/OSW logic, a good officer should spend their time bettering themselves (though the rise of degree-for-profit institutions makes this a questionable assertion, ref. Switzer's Degrees as Costly Signals ASPJ piece.) To OEF/OIF logic, the war comes first, and combat is the cache that matters. So the fundamental argument about AADs is about differing cultural valuations - the orthodoxy holds to established structures, whereas the neo-orthodoxy challenges those structures.

There is a very strong case to be made on the part of OEF/OIF logic (I am tribal about that) but it can't be made if that group is at war with itself. If the neo-orthodoxy is fractured, the orthodoxy wins by default. Most CAF communities, most MAF communities, SOF, and RPA are all very much part of OEF/OIF thinking. As time goes on, the next generation might revert back to something more ONW/OSW-looking. So the more the OEF/OIF culture keeps combat in its portfolio, the stronger a showing they make. Emerging fronts are mostly RPA right now. Therefore, to move past some of these old logics that tie us to the past, the communities emerging from these wars need to move together. This is well beyond the original scope, so therefore apologies to anyone who is Winchester Attention Span.

Chalk it up to me being a dumb Rescue guy, but less flowery speech, and more digestible phraseology might mean people would actually read your essay. You come off pompous.

[AdVictoriam]

Apologies - one more response.

Hacker - great point. This goes back to culture, bureaucracy and innovation (and in a way risk aversion.). If RPA were done right, we'd multiplex a number of platforms to a smaller number of crews, and let crews hotlink into whatever platform was doing something requiring control (kin strike, follow, raid support, transit thru manned airspace) and leave the other lines on autopilot, giving the sensor to the intel screener guys. If you had 3 crews running 10 lines (there's logistic and procedural issues to this but they're soluble) then manning wouldn't be nearly a problem. But with a risk averse bureaucracy, and a beat down culture, these sorts of innovation can't happen. Hence RPA cultural problems drag everybody down.

Re DeskJockey - great point. I'll step back from that specific line. Any of he ones you propose make sense to me. The question then becomes about power transitions - the Army went through one of these which was unpleasant but didn't turn into civil war. From what little I understand about McPeak, he followed his power transition with genocide toward SAC, it seems that power transitions have not happened well in the service since then - current one was by fiat, incomplete and contested. If every change of dynasty means that we have to burn down the whole kingdom, then we all lose, because we're poached from outside (ie expending all political capital on F22 fight meant we had nothing left to moderate the Army's unending demand for ISR, which meant that we couldn't build RPA right, which meant we still have the problems we have now.). Managing a better power transition would mean that there's space for all the communities afterwards (instead of the winners feeling compelled to destroy anything left of the old regime) and that we don't lose ground in the meantime. Tribalism exists for various reasons, as well pointed out by Vader, some good and some bad, but as people get older and move outside of their tribe, tribalism must give way to cooperation.

[TAMInated]

If RPA were done right, we'd multiplex a number of platforms to a smaller number of crews, and let crews hotlink into whatever platform was doing something requiring control (kin strike, follow, raid support, transit thru manned airspace) and leave the other lines on autopilot, giving the sensor to the intel screener guys. If you had 3 crews running 10 lines (there's logistic and procedural issues to this but they're soluble) then manning wouldn't be nearly a problem. But with a risk averse bureaucracy, and a beat down culture, these sorts of innovation can't happen. Hence RPA cultural problems drag everybody down.

This actually was happening for quite some time. One pilot monitoring three airplanes would give the sensor operators a 3D play pen to do as they saw fit with the airplane. The pilot could take control of any airplane at any time if needed. But, cue the risk averse middle-management at the Wing and OG levels of the USAF and now we have full up fighter pilots sitting in a shipping container and punching themselves in the sack for 6-9 hours a day watching Haji poop in his yard or doing the same IED scan until the end of time.

Edited May 5, 2012 by TAMInated

[AdVictoriam]

TAMInated - absolutely. It speaks volumes that we stepped back from that construct, as well as a couple other things we used to do that made good sense, but boiled down in my thinking to risk averse uppers saying 'even though there's no value added for having a guy at the controls, I don't want to have my name on the safety report for authorizing it.'. My $0.02.

[Guest]

This entire discussion is grotesque.

[guineapigfury]

Re brevity. Touché. Copy tone down the academic. I'll take that spear.

Re Hacker. Good points. I appreciate your experience. I disagree with the idea that an argument is invalid unless experienced firsthand - I trust the Warnings in a Dash one and I have not done most of them myself - though in this case you've seen the substance firsthand. So a better way to make the culture clash argument is the 'logic of deterrence' (risk averse) v the 'logic of combat.' (risk accepting - not just risk to self.). Both fill different roles, but the first one is out of control - queep will kill us all. DeskJockey makes a good point - this has to do with formative experiences. One problem is that tribalism causes those in the logic of combat to squabble over the trappings and 'cool points' of combat, and hence the logic of combat loses out in the institution.

Re Restating arguments and slap down fail - flying=dangerous. Already covered. Risk factors are not cosmic, and covered well in safety theory. Combat is not a significant additive risk factor right now, and we still call it combat for manned. It is, but because of using weapons and guarding good guys. Re my main point, Vader says it better than I - RPA are in combat but not at risk. My argument is that combat is more important than risk in the context of our current AF. Re your point on viral name calling - this is tedious and uninteresting. This is an obvious consequence of making this argument - of course it would be met with a hail of spears, I knew that when I pressed send. Would you recommend only making arguments that will make other people think youre cool? This is a useless metric.

Re argumentation in general. This is one of the problems we continue to have - poor reasoning based on conventional wisdom and appeals to power. This damaged the service in the F-22 fight - when there was an good argument to be made at the time about recap and deterrence holding off the wars we can't afford to fight, we failed to engage with the arguments from the Joint Community, defense academics, all the people who let us buy these things, and did a lot of what we're doing here - namecalling, shouting down, cherry picking and going after strawmen. While this made good 'look at me I'm cool' play in the little puddle of people who agree, it was rejected out of hand as utterly devoid of content by the people who make these decisions. Similarly, the Navy just did find and replace on Soviet for Chinese on strategies from the 70s (those making the argument weren't in the navy the either - they do well by reasoning from history.) and got a ton of new systems while we're still squabbling for scraps and cutting A-10s we need. It does not concern me that these are the types of arguments leveled at me. It does concern me that these are the default ways of engaging anyone or anything we don't immediately agree with. Hence we lose arguments - and we have to eat things we don't like such as a dwindling fighter fleet, (hence TAMI, etc.) and so on.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Edited May 5, 2012 by guineapigfury

[Hacker]

This entire discussion is grotesque.

Direct results from the "everyone is a warrior" mentality.

[BitteEinBit]

Direct results from the "everyone is a warrior" mentality.

I want my trophy!

Posts are getting too long, someone post a gratuitous picture of boobs.

Speaking of trophy wives....I like the way you think...

I still believe boobs can save the world!

Edited May 5, 2012 by BitteEinBit

[Karl Hungus]

That's a big part of the problem

Shack. And it's not just ISR. The army thinks OEF is Burger King.

Still doesn't explain why the AF puts CONUS UAV bases in absolute shitholes.

[hindsight2020]

Still doesn't explain why the AF puts CONUS UAV bases in absolute shitholes.

Because our role in the eyes of peacetime leadership is to be conduits for the support of local economies that should have been starved out of existence 50 years ago. We are instruments of wealth re-distribution and federal transfers and that has jack to do with national security strategy. We are instruments of congressional delegation pork barrel, bitch whores in essence, to be less formal. There's nothing strategic about where you do your garrison duty . It's all about pork barrel. Mother Blue simply punks you into considering that very dramatic psychological effect as a sunk cost of signing on a dotted line. Nothing new really. But, yes, the AF could go about it in a much better way, if they actually believed these QOL issues were real game changers for people. They presently hold the line that it is not and they throw money at the problem every time they're proven wrong by members separating due to their unwillingness/inability to tolerate it for more than a decade at a time.

I agree with you. UAV bases should be placed in better locales. Shopping, jobs and schools. That's what an area needs to have to keep the supporting structure of the deployed member happy. Placing people in CONUS chitholes falls in the category of "fucking with people when they're at home" which continues to be a big driver in the discontent. But read paragraph #1, it's not about you, it's about pork barrel. We all walk at some point.

[Karl Hungus]

We all walk at some point.

Agree with everything you said.

Lots of people I know are planning on walking at their earliest opportunity. Lots of people with lots of exit strategies. Very few think of AD as a viable career anymore. That should be concerning to people.

[guineapigfury]

Agree with everything you said. Lots of people I know are planning on walking at their earliest opportunity. Lots of people with lots of exit strategies. Very few think of AD as a viable career anymore. That should be concerning to people.

Hit the nail on the head right there.

[Learjetter]

Still doesn't explain why the AF puts CONUS UAV bases in absolute shitholes.

Airspace.

[TAMInated]

Airspace.

Did you know that drones can be "flown" from anywhere and that you can put a small detachment of people in the shitty places where they take off and land and have the majority of people "fly" them from somewhere else that's not shitty? No? Neither does anyone else above the rank of O-5.

[Skitzo]

And yet AFPC still thinks and publicly states that rated manning is good. They cannot see the mass exodus, even when the screw up the VSP process last year they fail to see the looming problem---who knew that the 10 year commitment would work so good that it would blind the leadership.

[Groundbounder]

I agree with you. UAV bases should be placed in better locales. Shopping, jobs and schools. That's what an area needs to have to keep the supporting structure of the deployed member happy. Placing people in CONUS chitholes falls in the category of "######ing with people when they're at home" which continues to be a big driver in the discontent. But read paragraph #1, it's not about you, it's about pork barrel. We all walk at some point.

Cuts down on that problem of too many O3's competing for too few O4 slots. Bring you in, give you a commitment, train you, station you in a sh!t hole and a bunch will leave as soon as you can. That answers for the RPA guys at Cannon, don't know what Big Blue is thinking about the other AFSOC guys there.

[magnetfreezer]

Cuts down on that problem of too many O3's competing for too few O4 slots. Bring you in, give you a commitment, train you, station you in a sh!t hole and a bunch will leave as soon as you can. That answers for the RPA guys at Cannon, don't know what Big Blue is thinking about the other AFSOC guys there.

The problem is the avg 2 year UPT timeline + 10 year commitment results in basically every aviator meeting the majors board. Maybe not true for the 6 year 18X guys though.

The promotion board problem will trickle down, though. Having a FNG Lt who gets to their ops squadron with a PRF due in 3 weeks and has to worry about chasing bullets for their captains board since 2 years of training reports aren't competitive enough at the wing level doesn't help matters.

[nsplayr]

My argument is that combat is more important than risk in the context of our current AF.

So stick with that argument, I think it's a good one to make. What you need to cut out completely is the notion that RPA operators are somehow at greater risk (or even equal) in combat than manned assets; that doesn't make any god damn sense and all your nerdery hasn't changed that.

You say combat is combat regardless of risk, great, keep it that way and cut the BS argument where you're playing up the risk of RPA guys and playing down the risk manned assets take. It makes everyone's initial reaction to your argument "WTF" and by then your goal of influencing leadership or starting a broader conversation have failed.

[ForgotPassword]

1) Being a drone pilot is more stressful than most people realize

2) Still not putting life at risk(not that pilots in current environment are beyond technical risks)

aaaaand boom goes the dynamite.

Who's got the next round? I'm wasted.

[Chapter29]

Who's got the next round?

Now this thread is making sense.

[StainedClass]

Having a FNG Lt who gets to their ops squadron with a PRF due in 3 weeks and has to worry about chasing bullets for their captains board....

Pardon my ignorance as a long time reservist, but an AD sqd has to submit PRFs for a Lt to make Capt? YGBSM.

[C17Driver]

Pardon my ignorance as a long time reservist, but an AD sqd has to submit PRFs for a Lt to make Capt? YGBSM.

True (recent change). However, currently if the individual gets a DP, then the PRF is blank. The most recent board allowed for the top 80% to get DPs.

[AdVictoriam]

A buddy pointed out, rightly, that running into a Pred is probably the highest risk of combat aviation right now.  When Preds move into the NAS, this won't be just a combat risk but it got me thinking.  When I got non-volled, the first guy I met - a B-1 dude and the guy that I think was the best of all of us - told me that he had to give Q-2s and immediate retraining instead of Q-3-FEB to guys who shot inside of danger close w/o initials on sim checks.  YGBSM - but with the insatiable demand and the manning shortage, there wasn't anyone in line to replace anyone we kicked out - it was the least worst option.  So as a Flt/cc and a warfighting ADO, my nightmare was one of our guys shooting or running into a good guy because of the compromises of being a leper colony.

Another buddy, previous Viper driver, described it as Twelve O'Clock High - the island of misfit toys.  Going with the analogy - there's four things you can do - 1) give up, which is useless, 2) escape, which is the often right thing to do (family, etc,) but doesn't solve the problem, 3) beat them down more, which continues not to work, or 4) find a way to build some morale and self-respect.  The RPA dude doesn't have any skin on the line, but the guys he's flying with do.  And the things that actually make him engaged are killing bad-guys and helping good guys. So the best thing I can do is to get him away from thinking about individual risk and get him thinking about corporate risk - I want the other players' risk to be more important to him than his own.  So killing=combat, and 'if you screw up your friends die'=combat. 

At the outset, the loudest shouting was about 'we don't care about medals.'. I agree - but I'll call out the logic.  The best point was that people would give up all their medals to see their families grow up.  If there's some non-zero chance that defining combat in terms of corporate risk will keep some RPA dude's head in the game enough to not hit another airplane, then I'd absolutely make a piece of blue and yellow fabric a little less exclusive if it has any possibility whatsoever of increasing the chance of the manned guy goes home to see his family.  A community that takes itself seriously is safer - if RPA gets the trappings of combat because of killing and life and death responsibility, then RPA gets Q-3-FEBs for not taking those responsibilities seriously.

Break break. Re discussion - Beer sounds like the best option.

[Hacker]

"Q-3-FEB"?

Is there some link between the two in the RPA community?