Enlisted Drone Pilots

[SurelySerious]

Lawman, you can't claim that because it's working in the Army with WOs, that it will absolutely work in the AF. We've been disproving it with the enlisted Sensor Operators for years. Their retention is far worse than our pilots.

[Lawman]

Lawman, you can't claim that because it's working in the Army with WOs, that it will absolutely work in the AF. We've been disproving it with the enlisted Sensor Operators for years. Their retention is far worse than our pilots.

And we haven't been. The Army has enlisted sensor guys and warrant pilots/platoon leaders for our WO community. We don't have the same problem.

So there is our chicken or egg problem. Is it rank and money because you guys are throwing mortgage money at commissioned officers and not getting results with double the ADSO.

Maybe the problem stems from the fact you guys have a whole butt load of guys in UAS that didn't join the AF to fly a drone. Yeah it's gonna take some time to ramp up drone specific pilot generation to the point that you can stop robbing jet pilots of what they joined to do. Like say... The length of time a senior enlisted drone pilot ADSO would be?

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[Azimuth]

15 hours ago, guineapigfury said:

If we go to a primarily enlisted pilot community in Global Hawks, where do we select the Global Hawk SQ/CCs and DOs from?  Assuming you want to select from those with RQ-4 experience you'll be picking from a much smaller pool of candidates.  You could go with the "import a random LtCol with no RPA experience" technique that has been such a catastrophe in MQ-9s.

I dunno, where do we get Sq/CC's and DO's from to be in charge at the SERE schoolhouse since there's no Officer SERE AFSC's to pull from? Other AFSC's (11H's, STO and CRO's).

We'd figure it out.

[Magellan]

Issues with Enlisted RPA pilots in the Air Force

This is probably one of the most relevant and thoughtful discussions on the topic as it relates to the Air Force.

[deaddebate]

New AFSC - 1U1XX, Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) Pilot

Source: https://gum-crm.csd.disa.mil/app/answers/detail/a_id/4668

[General Chang]

This will go a long way toward ensuring the future of the overall rated community.  Chalk up a "W" for team A1!

[BFM this]

Don't post drunk.

[Jaded]

1 hour ago, General Chang said:

This will go a long way toward ensuring the future of the overall rated community.  Chalk up a "W" for team A1!

It's interesting to me that you think this is all a joke. Is it just your contempt for operators that has driven you to be so bad at your job? 

[General Chang]

13 hours ago, Jaded said:

It's interesting to me that you think this is all a joke. Is it just your contempt for operators that has driven you to be so bad at your job? 

Jaded, it is an elegant, quick, easy solution to implement and help alleviate some of the personnel pain in the drone community.  Aviators should be the FIRST to embrace this idea.

[BFM this]

I hadn't looked at it that way.

In sarcasm font, what he said makes perfect sense.

[Guardian]

It's interesting to me that you think this is all a joke. Is it just your contempt for operators that has driven you to be so bad at your job? 

"Jaded, it is an elegant, quick, easy solution to implement and help alleviate some of the personnel pain in the drone community.  Aviators should be the FIRST to embrace this idea.

" -quote from General Chang

Who cares what the people on the ground get in terms of support? (Sarcasm font, since that what we as the air force are here to do.....support the people on the ground)

Put Enlisted in a strategic not high demanding and non weaponized platforms that can easily be overseen by and officer= yeah sure that makes sense.

In a platform where weapons effects are executed in a less than a minute or two from the 9 line read back to splash= resounding and deafening HELL NO.

The active duty just needs to manage its people better. The guard and reserves are much better than active duty at managing their RPA pilots and not completely crushing them. Fixing a mistake with another mistake isn't a smart solution to the problem.

Quick and easy isn't quick and easy in this case and actually causes much more problems in the long run and will be neither quick nor easy to undo the damage done.

[Guardian]

This will go a long way toward ensuring the future of the overall rated community.  Chalk up a "W" for team A1!

It's interesting to me that you think this is all a joke. Is it just your contempt for operators that has driven you to be so bad at your job? 

I agree with jaded. It seems like you think this is a joke or are terribly uninformed.

[Guardian]

Don't post drunk.

Or maybe if he is sober he should consider drinking before posting again.....

[Clark Griswold]

14 minutes ago, General Chang said:

Jaded, it is an elegant, quick, easy solution to implement and help alleviate some of the personnel pain in the drone community.  Aviators should be the FIRST to embrace this idea.

Doubtful - the solution to this is actually either opportunities for Guard/Reserve members for long term orders (3-5 years) or as referenced above, resurrect the WO program and apply it in a targeted fashion to the career fields that need augmenting with skilled, selective, and with a focused career path / expectation.  

Quick math:

Hire 300 pilots in blocks of 100 pilots from the Guard/Reserve over 3 years, at Full Burden Cost of $185K per year average (WAG).  That comes to $55 million per block, stager them to have a natural off-ramp if you want to draw down from this surge and for $166 million just factoring aircrew, apply another WAG of 25% for additional costs (training, support, etc...) and it comes to $208 million.  Minimize other cost (PCS, per diem, etc...) by surging at the Guard & Reserve in addition to AD bases and assuming an 8:1 pilot to CAP ratio, from this public reference here and you have robust growth, easily scalable up/down force size with the flexibility of offering extensions or letting orders expire, and minimized infrastructure cost by expanding only where you have operations and God forbid actually utilizing your Guard/Reserve for what it was meant for: surging for periods of time, short or medium term, to meet an operational need and routinely using your Guard/Reserve forces to keep them viably manned by giving them work, operationally relevant by participation in current ops and optimally utilizing the hardware they have that Big Blue paid for.

If you make these orders 3-5 years in length the Guard/Reserve bubbas will be interested as that is inside the scope of USERA (make them Contingency Orders and you can go beyond 5 years) and enough time to be compensatory for interrupting  lives, other careers, etc... and if you allow AD dudes who want to leave to PC and steer them to this program (regardless of AFSC - if not an aviator or 18X, then AD could train them before PC to Guard/Reserve) this fixes RPA manning, but it requires out of the typical stovepipe thinking and Big Blue to be bold, not two traits it has demonstrated of late...

[Jaded]

Only A1 would call paying a certain class of people 1/4 the money to do the same job "elegant." 

[Guardian]

Only A1 would call paying a certain class of people 1/4 the money to do the same job "elegant." 

I wish I could more strongly like a post or double/triple like a post. But you can't triple stamp a double stamp.

[Guest]

This will go a long way toward ensuring the future of the overall rated community.  Chalk up a "W" for team A1!

Chang, this accomplishes absolutely nothing. URT is struggling to expand capacity to 384 pink bodies a year. Enlisted would have to go through this course as well to get winged. The only thing this announcement tells me is that A1 can't find 384 new or crosstrain officers per year willing to take the job. Offering enlisted the "opportunity" to do the same job for less money isn't going to work. In the short term, I'm sure you'll get plenty of volunteers thinking its a good deal, but once they're up for reenlistment, I think A1 will find itself in an even worse manning situation than the one it refuses to acknowledge it faces today.

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[Magellan]

1 hour ago, Clark Griswold said:

by surging at the Guard & Reserve in addition to AD bases and assuming an 8:1 pilot to CAP ratio, from this public reference here and you have robust growth, easily scalable up/down force size with the flexibility of offering extensions or letting orders expire, and minimized infrastructure cost by expanding only where you have operations and God forbid actually utilizing your Guard/Reserve for what it was meant for: surging for periods of time, short or medium term, to meet an operational need and routinely using your Guard/Reserve forces to keep them viably manned by giving them work, operationally relevant by participation in current ops and optimally utilizing the hardware they have that Big Blue paid for.

If you make these orders 3-5 years in length the Guard/Reserve bubbas will be interested....

No one will stay in the Gaurd or Reserve after 3-5 years of 8:1 manning.  The only reason those ratios were ever able to occur on active duty was because you had guys getting sent into the community with 6-7 years of UPT ADSC OR too close to 20 years to quit.

There is no quick or cheap fix to this problem.  The development of the ISR industrial complex is proof of this.  When you have entire missions launched, flown, recovered, supported, and maintained by Contractors to support military needs why would anyone stay in a blue/flightsuit for a career?  They will get their quals, and hit the exit as fast as they can to cash in their value.

[Clark Griswold]

1 minute ago, Magellan said:

No one will stay in the Gaurd or Reserve after 3-5 years of 8:1 manning.  The only reason those ratios were ever able to occur on active duty was because you had guys getting sent into the community with 6-7 years of UPT ADSC OR too close to 20 years to quit.

There is no quick or cheap fix to this problem.  The development of the ISR industrial complex is proof of this.  When you have entire missions launched, flown, recovered, supported, and maintained by Contractors to support military needs why would anyone stay in a blue/flightsuit for a career?  They will get their quals, and hit the exit as fast as they can to cash in their value.

8:1 is just a publicly available number I was willing to quote, the real one may or may not be classified or just FOUO but was just my reference for that post.  

I'll respectfully disagree with you on whether dudes will stay, I think a lot of Guard dudes would use those 1000 to 1800 points to get them to or over 7305 then leave but some may not, that is a far rock, the near and close rocks are the ones we have to deal with right now.  

No disagreement on the fact there is no easy/quick fix, but I really doubt contractors save us money in the long run and the problems of legality, public perception and contracting I don't think are worth it.

Long term strategy for the AD is one they are probably not willing to accept:

- An RPA assignment is a must for an aviator aspiring to leadership not a fake Master's degree

- An RPA assignment is not a pedigree factory, I saw this from my assignment long ago in the RQ-4, lots of people there, just a few who really manned the shelter, lots of fast burners there to have RPA put on there records, get some bullshit job with a fancy title at the Wing or Group, then leave after 2 years for a school slot or staff gig.

- An RPA assignment is not where slow swimmers are automatically sent (not a swipe at anybody), the Navy doesn't necessarily allow all the top dudes to go to Hornets (anecdotal but I have heard that multiple times over my career that they will assign top grads to other airframes to ensure all communities have some top performers out UPT); you have to have a reasonable distribution of talent; we should probably have RPA with a T-38 companion program with a fighter follow on; ditto for heavies to allow fast swimmers to go there, benefit the community then go to manned aviation taking with them a good start in RPAs

- Establish the long term orders concept I proffered to have an easy to manipulate rheostat (from an HR perspective) for RPA surging / draw down using the Guard/Reserve 

 

Just my rantings

 

 

[ILoveScotch]

Re-basing for QoL solves the big issues (eventually), doesn't it?

Air Force brass just need to cry uncle, already. Either allow us to strategically move the damn GCSs or lose a good portion of CAPs. Take your pick.

Waiting for the force to capitulate so you can keep your star(s) is just rotten leadership, IMO.

I also don't see an issue with E's flying ISR. From what I hear, it isn't that complicated...

[Guardian]

Re-basing for QoL solves the big issues (eventually), doesn't it?

Air Force brass just need to cry uncle, already. Either allow us to strategically move the damn GCSs or lose a good portion of CAPs. Take your pick.

Waiting for the force to capitulate so you can keep your star(s) is just rotten leadership, IMO.

I also don't see an issue with E's flying ISR. From what I hear, it isn't that complicated...

The reason the current bases were largely chosen was for already in place infrastructure which would be crazy expensive to redo into bases not equipped with said infrastructure.

As for E's conducting strategic ISR, I agree. But in reference to conducting ISR and providing kinetics or lasers that aide in kinetics to the battlefield from a platform that has offensive weapons, I disagree.

[ILoveScotch]

Don't tell me Cannon AFB had crazy infrastructure. That base was left for dead by ACC. I don't have enough experiance with the others to comment.

[Guardian]

Think more about connectivity not physical buildings

[Guardian]

So one bar and the smell of cow fecal matter doesn't meet your bar?

[ILoveScotch]

Just now, Guardian said:

Think more about connectivity not physical buildings

I am. Comm infrastructure was complete shit when we took over.