Enlisted Drone Pilots

[HerkFE]

https://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/careers/air-force/enlisted/2015/09/28/enlisted-drone-pilots-decision-expected-early-next-year/72806812/

[HerkFE]

"This is Pandora's box," he said. "If you say, why can't they be on RPAs, a guy with stripes, why does it matter? Well, OK, why can't they be the pilot of a U-28? How about an MC-12? How about an F-16? F-22? Your prize of all things, F-35?"

[Azimuth]

Manning RPA Pilots positions would be great justification for creating Warrant Officers.  Of course the USAF is the branch that will let an Enlisted person teach Combat Survival or call in airstrikes, but not shoot a Hellfire.

[HerkFE]

This is all the airline's fault for creating a hiring boom. 

[SurelySerious]

The real problem is retaining trained people, and this move wouldn't help that.

[HU&W]

Bad journalism.  Their first person sources are an engine mechanic, a cop, and a pilot who is straying way outside of his lane trying to talk like a lawyer.  Perhaps they should interview a few of the most likely candidates to be enlisted pilots, current and qualified sensor operators who actually know what the job entails, and see what they think of the idea.

[Day Man]

"Given the level of tactical sophistication between what an F-16 dude does, and what the MQ-9 crews are actually doing behind the scenes, you would have better luck making an enlisted guy an F-16 wingman than you would of making him an MQ-9 aircraft commander," he continued. "It's literally that level of responsibility different. It is an actual warplane. It is not a toy."

Wow.

[Chaff]

Plenty of experienced SOs think they could probably do the job. However, I have yet to meet one that thinks enlisted should do the job.

[TnkrToad]

The real problem is retaining trained people, and this move wouldn't help that.

Shack. 

The enlisted pilot concept is one of those dumb ideas that simply won't go away.

Yes, we had enlisted pilots in the 20s and 30s, and also during WW II. The Army could get away with it, because (1) something called the Great Depression provided a powerful incentive for folks to stay on active duty, even if they were working for enlisted wages, and (2) those enlisted pilots were competing for active duty officer billets. Some of the best pilots during the interwar period were enlisted aviators. The other two primary members of Chennault's "Three Men on a Flying Trapeze" demo team were enlisted aviators . . . but guess what? They were reserve officers who, when their one or two-year active-duty stints were up, accepted the demotion to enlisted status to stay on active duty. On the days they flew in demo's, they wore their reserve officer rank. They got commissioned later on active duty, in conjunction with the wartime buildup. 

Don't forget that it was the Army Air Corps and Army Air Forces that had enlisted pilots. Of course the Army wanted its aviators to be enlisted, because if they became officers, they might end up running the Army. The Army couldn't wait for the Air Force to become an independent service after the war, lest airmen take over the whole organization. Imagine how much worse it would have been for the ground service, if all the enlisted pilots/navs/bombardiers were made officers. They might have more-senior and smarter (airmen typically scored 10 IQ points higher than their ground counterparts during the war) air officers commanding non flyers. 

Think of active duty enlisted pilots in the military as something akin to regional pilots in the commercial world. It's a neat idea, and it can work, so long as folks see it as a stepping stone to greater things. Folks have embraced the suck in the regional world, because they perceived a long-term future benefit (transition to major airlines). Short term pain, long-term gain. The problem for the Air Force is that the primary avenue for long-term gain for enlisted aviators would be the commercial RPA industry (or if we ever trained enlisted pilots of manned aircraft, the airline industry). At least if you train officers to fly RPAs, there's a more reasonable monetary incentive to stay in. Looking at ACP take rates, though, the monetary incentive is far from adequate. Creating enlisted pilots would strike me as ridiculously penny-wise and pound-foolish. We'd spend a whole bunch of time and money to train them, then they would simply get out at the end of their initial enlistments and take their skills to the commercial world. They'd be fools not to.

Creating an Air Force warrant officer corps is equally problematic. The Army system works great, because that service primarily flies helos. Retaining helo pilots on active duty is much easier because, oddly enough, there are proportionally fewer lucrative opportunities in the civil sector. If there are any Army warrants who have gone directly into fixed wing, I'd love to hear what their retention stats are right now. They can stay in the Army, knowing that they'll run into a ceiling promotion-wise, or take their skills to the civil sector and makes way more cash than they ever could in the Army--while (even more importantly) not having to be in the Army. 

It would seem to be a helluva lot smarter to ramp up Air Force OTS production. Provide liberal bootstrap opportunities for medically-qualified enlisted folks and advertise extensively in colleges/universities for folks to earn their commissions and become RPA pilots. You avoid creating a whole warrant officer corps for a relatively niche career field, and you can get your officers relatively quickly and cheaply (especially since many quality enlisted folks already have their undergrad degrees, or at least are working on them). 

Of course, the Air Force doesn't like to read its own history. We'll probably try the enlisted pilot thing, realize it was a dumb idea from the outset and we should have known better . . . and scrap it, having further delayed getting the RPA pilot community healthy manning-wise. 

TT

 

[Snooter]

Are they going to have 10 year commitments too?  What about retention bonuses when they start jumping ship because the civilian sector is paying them triple what the military is?  Okay so I basically summed up the TLDR above...

Edited September 29, 2015 by Snooter

[BuddhaSixFour]

The real problem is retaining trained people, and this move wouldn't help that.

Creating enlisted pilots would strike me as ridiculously penny-wise and pound-foolish. We'd spend a whole bunch of time and money to train them, then they would simply get out at the end of their initial enlistments and take their skills to the commercial world. They'd be fools not to.

I'm an outsider to this whole thing, but it seems like its a problem with training capacity.  It sounds like a grueling job. In the end, do what you can do to make it better, but sometimes you just have to plan for high-turnover rates.  If you have sufficient training capacity, who cares if 70% of your hypothetical enlisted drone operators go to the civilian sector at the end of five years as long as the 30% remaining, plus whatever long-term officers you have are enough to teach the new guys, maintain institutional knowledge, and lead the unit? Fix the user interface (which by all accounts is abysmal) so the things are easier to learn, and work to boost your throughput. If they do the job well for five years then leave, figure out how to make them cheaper without sacrificing performance.  Enlisted operators are a perfectly reasonable option for that type of solution.

[guineapigfury]

If you have sufficient training capacity,

We don't.

[BuddhaSixFour]

 

We don't.

Agreed. My point is that's the real problem. Fix that (I know, easier said than done... trust me, I get it) and other options come into play for dealing with the retention issue, up to and including accepting high turnover.

[Lawman]

Are they going to have 10 year commitments too?  What about retention bonuses when they start jumping ship because the civilian sector is paying them triple what the military is?  Okay so I basically summed up the TLDR above...

You guys act like there isn't a working example of the enlisted UAV construct operating at full capacity and not facing manpower shortages... And we are doing it without 10 year ADSO's.

It's not the UAV side we are having trouble filling it's the junior officer/Warrant pilot side because after 3-6 deployments and "dwell time" that features half your home time at Irwin or Rucker people are taking the punch out early at Cpt/CW3... Meanwhile you can't force guys out of fixed wing because it's not the Army an there is literally no upper limit to promotion since the community flow is so well managed compared to helo's.

[SurelySerious]

I'm not exactly sure what "full capacity" is in the Army world, but since the combatant commander demands of AF ISR keep increasing, it's impossible to fulfill the crew requirements.

Training an enlisted aviator to the same standard of execution won't take any less time, and once they're trained they're more difficult to retain (see lack of sensor operator retention). It's not the magic people think it is.

[TnkrToad]

 

You guys act like there isn't a working example of the enlisted UAV construct operating at full capacity and not facing manpower shortages... And we are doing it without 10 year ADSO's.

 

It's not the UAV side we are having trouble filling it's the junior officer/Warrant pilot side because after 3-6 deployments and "dwell time" that features half your home time at Irwin or Rucker people are taking the punch out early at Cpt/CW3... Meanwhile you can't force guys out of fixed wing because it's not the Army an there is literally no upper limit to promotion since the community flow is so well managed compared to helo's.

Are they going to have 10 year commitments too?  What about retention bonuses when they start jumping ship because the civilian sector is paying them triple what the military is?  Okay so I basically summed up the TLDR above...

This is why I sometimes write long posts . . . short ones fail to include vital information.

- "Full capacity" in the Army is very different from full capacity in the Air Force. Given the comparatively puny number of orbits the Army provides to joint warfighters relative to the Air Force, and considering how the Army has way more people than the Air Force to start with, the Army's effort to grow and maintain its RPA operator force can hardly be described as a major muscle movement. It is unsurprising that the Army is able to successfully grow a small, niche career field within its massive overall organization.

- The underlying premise of the enlisted vs. officer pilot argument is that enlisted pilots are cheaper than officer pilots. This idea needs to be examined. The Army RPA construct is (unsurprisingly, it's the Army we're talking about here) manpower-intensive. A relatively small fraction of the Army's enlisted RPA operators are actually providing direct support to warfighter on a given day, because only those who are forward-deployed actually support combat operations. Those back at home station, in keeping with the Army's organic support model, are doing exactly squat for the warfighter. Meanwhile, proportionally and numerically way more Air Force RPA operators are fully employed in support of warfighters, while home station. 

       - Riddle me this: How many Army enlisted RPA pilots would be required to provide the same level (60 CAPs and growing) of warfighter support), and how many more other troops would be required to house, feed, protect them, etc., at their forward locations? Unless and until you can prove that the aggregate costs associated with the Army model, on a per CAP basis--what really matters to the warfighter, is cheaper than the Air Force model (good luck with that), you need to at least be honest about the flaws in your basic argument.

- I don't get what you're saying with, "Meanwhile you can't force guys out of fixed wing because it's not the Army an there is literally no upper limit to promotion since the community flow is so well managed compared to helo's." I'm not a smart man, but this makes no sense to me. If you're telling me that the Army sends some number of its officers and warrants directly into fixed wing, and has no problem retaining those individuals past the end of their initial commitments in today's hiring environment, I'm sure all of us would love to hear what the Army's secret is. Again, I suspect you left out some key data point/idea. Also, there is an upper limit to promotion in the warrant officer ranks. It stops at W-5. Officers can press on to O-10. Seems pretty clear to me there's a significantly lower upper limit for warrants, vs. officers. In fairness, that might be a distinction without a difference, since many are happy not to have their lives run by the Colonel's group.

Not trying to get in a pissing contest here, but as stated above, trying to provide value-added info for those on the forum who care. I really look forward to hearing what the Army's secret for retaining its fixed wing pilots is, and if the Army's policies could be effectively translated into the Air Force. I'm not holding my breath, however. 

Fly safe, 

TT

[Lawman]

This is why I sometimes write long posts . . . short ones fail to include vital information.

- "Full capacity" in the Army is very different from full capacity in the Air Force. Given the comparatively puny number of orbits the Army provides to joint warfighters relative to the Air Force, and considering how the Army has way more people than the Air Force to start with, the Army's effort to grow and maintain its RPA operator force can hardly be described as a major muscle movement. It is unsurprising that the Army is able to successfully grow a small, niche career field within its massive overall organization.

Aviation is 40% of the Armys operational budget and only getting bigger. Remind me again how we arent a major muscle movement? The transtion to Full Spectrum CABs is only 3 years old hense us only having so many platforms for the fight but the Idea that we arent leveraging this force and just taking the idea its a small niche is ludicrous. It is personnel non intensive compared to an Infantry brigade but dollars to dollars I can have something like 5 ground Brigades for the cost of a single CAB. Inspite of that we arent having a problem willing personnel with units we are having a problem getting them aircraft to use because PM shadow and PM grey eagle can only produce so many airplanes so fast. Hense why I currently have 60 enlisted operators training on a grand total of 3 air vehicles in my Squadron.

- The underlying premise of the enlisted vs. officer pilot argument is that enlisted pilots are cheaper than officer pilots. This idea needs to be examined. The Army RPA construct is (unsurprisingly, it's the Army we're talking about here) manpower-intensive. A relatively small fraction of the Army's enlisted RPA operators are actually providing direct support to warfighter on a given day, because only those who are forward-deployed actually support combat operations. Those back at home station, in keeping with the Army's organic support model, are doing exactly squat for the warfighter. Meanwhile, proportionally and numerically way more Air Force RPA operators are fully employed in support of warfighters, while home station. 

You seem to confusing direct support tactical units with the more strategic function you guys do thanks to Goldwater-Nichols. We arent allowed to own stuff like Global Hawk/Reaper and only recently were allowed to join the world of Predator. And "Doing exactly squat" doesnt take into account the number of home station training requirements we are doing for warfighters spooling up for Combat. I have yet to see the Air Force TDY a predator detachment to Yakima or Polk so they Brigade can actually excercise OSRVT training prior to deploying with the system. When you say "manpower intensive" you make it sound like I need 3 pilots to do what you do with 2. If the Air Force maintains the strategic initiative and stays on the construct of producing orbits for the JFC there is not an additional footprint of troops required, you are merely changing 2 Cpts for a E6 and a CW2.

       - Riddle me this: How many Army enlisted RPA pilots would be required to provide the same level (60 CAPs and growing) of warfighter support), and how many more other troops would be required to house, feed, protect them, etc., at their forward locations? Unless and until you can prove that the aggregate costs associated with the Army model, on a per CAP basis--what really matters to the warfighter, is cheaper than the Air Force model (good luck with that), you need to at least be honest about the flaws in your basic argument.

The same number. Again we arent talking about a mission change. You are not suddenly restricted to living and breathing for only one GFC who doesnt let the asset out of his sight. Whats cheaper to the warfighter is it takes 52 weeks for the Army to train a UAV operator and no officer producing school to get them. It takes you 52 weeks just to get a guy wings, then send him through an advanced WMS, then tell him sorry bout your luck bro and send his butt to Cannon for an indeterminate amount of time. Maybe thats why despite not having a 10-12 year ADSO we dont have the personnel problems you do. We didnt force a guy to go through 4-5 years of school, 2 years of being treated like an idiot who just kept telling themselves it'll be worth it, and then reward that suffering with a parking lot in the middle of nowhere and a box to sit in 12 hours a day while working on their masters degree so they can stay competative and maybe someday get to go back to a manned platform. You spend nearly 3 times the length of training flying aircraft which much higher cost per hour while paying a guy something like 2-3x what we do for the same end result a guy sitting at a computer looking at a video feed. Do you really think somehow enlisted pilots with a 6-8 year turnover are gonna be more expensive than paying somebody to suffer all the way to Major to do the same thing? Same is true with Warrants. Are we qualified to go to other jobs, sure .... but most of us dont have Bachelors degrees (Im one fo the weird exceptions). So you gotta factor that in, we dont have to pay a guy back for school or absorb the cost of the Academy to get him to flight school. Having somebody spend 4 years as a generator mechanic or crew chief is far cheaper and more cost effective than paying for 4 years at a nationally recognized higher learning institute.

- I don't get what you're saying with, "Meanwhile you can't force guys out of fixed wing because it's not the Army an there is literally no upper limit to promotion since the community flow is so well managed compared to helo's." I'm not a smart man, but this makes no sense to me. If you're telling me that the Army sends some number of its officers and warrants directly into fixed wing, and has no problem retaining those individuals past the end of their initial commitments in today's hiring environment, I'm sure all of us would love to hear what the Army's secret is. Again, I suspect you left out some key data point/idea. Also, there is an upper limit to promotion in the warrant officer ranks. It stops at W-5. Officers can press on to O-10. Seems pretty clear to me there's a significantly lower upper limit for warrants, vs. officers. In fairness, that might be a distinction without a difference, since many are happy not to have their lives run by the Colonel's group.

Not trying to get in a pissing contest here, but as stated above, trying to provide value-added info for those on the forum who care. I really look forward to hearing what the Army's secret for retaining its fixed wing pilots is, and if the Army's policies could be effectively translated into the Air Force. I'm not holding my breath, however. 

Fly safe,

TT

Because flow to Fixed wing only now has opened up to flight school graduates. Its a community that has for the longest time been the reward for dealing with a decade of previous suck. Remember thanks to the warrant model most of our pilots show up to the game with 4-6 years enlisted time before they ever see flight school. The commission guys are different but population wise they are limited in scope. So you have a group of people with 10-14 years total from the day they show up flying to the day they can leave with a paycheck every month. Its a lot easier to suffer 12 years of the suck (dont even pretend to have anything like our shitty QOL). And once they do 12 years they are typically in such a protected status of progression that they hang out a while longer. Go to an Army fixed wing unit some time, they are top heavy as hell despite having more than enough hours and time to go to an airline job. Why? because they saw for however many years in the "real Army" how crappy life can be, and they have seniority to give themselves a far better quality of life than they would have starting over at some regional or low end airline. RLOs (the regular Os) ... get treated like adults far earlier in their careers than happens in the Air Force. This is because they are evaluated on the ground leadership model and have to have commands and staff time so much earlier to remain promotable. Think about it, whens the last time you guys sat around and though about which midgrade captain should be in command of 60-200 people. But their peers on the ground side do exactly that so having them hold off till Major or LtCol to be in command means they wont ever make Maj/LtCol. And because of having a warrant population there is a much smaller number of excess Cpts and Majors around so its not like 30 guys competing with each other for 1-3 slots in the other services. Im in a unit of 500 people... we have 24 aircraft, 3 O4s and 1 O5. How many O5s would a same size Air Force unit have?

[Chaff]

I have yet to see the Air Force TDY a predator detachment to Yakima or Polk so they Brigade can actually excercise OSRVT training prior to deploying with the system.

Everyone at home is flying real world missions. Half the time MQ-1/9 Red Flag is canceled because ops units are unable to produce crews, and that doesn't require us to TDY at all. Home station training outside of initial qualification is something like 95% getting dudes launch and recovery qualified so they can deploy, 4.9% Weapons School and 0.1% continuation training. I have flown 1 local sortie in the last 3 years and the squadron average over that time is much lower than 1. If we had the crews to support going TDY to fly they would just cancel it and add 2 more ops lines.

[Lawman]

Everyone at home is flying real world missions. Half the time MQ-1/9 Red Flag is canceled because ops units are unable to produce crews, and that doesn't require us to TDY at all. Home station training outside of initial qualification is something like 95% getting dudes launch and recovery qualified so they can deploy, 4.9% Weapons School and 0.1% continuation training. I have flown 1 local sortie in the last 3 years and the squadron average over that time is much lower than 1. If we had the crews to support going TDY to fly they would just cancel it and add 2 more ops lines.

No kidding, but we don't have assets to replace you on the line. Remember you fought tooth and nail for this mission and the money to go with it. It's only after a decade of getting tired of being yelled at by another service you let us play.

We have the opposite problem because we are swimming in personnel with no equipment. If it wasn't for the fact our systems are different and more importantly the Air Force doesn't want to view warrants as real pilots much less enlisted operators we could IA task to back fill your needs.

[TnkrToad]

Aviation is 40% of the Armys operational budget and only getting bigger. Remind me again how we arent a major muscle movement? 

If the Air Force maintains the strategic initiative and stays on the construct of producing orbits for the JFC there is not an additional footprint of troops required, you are merely changing 2 Cpts for a E6 and a CW2.

We didnt force a guy to go through 4-5 years of school, 2 years of being treated like an idiot who just kept telling themselves it'll be worth it, and then reward that suffering with a parking lot in the middle of nowhere and a box to sit in 12 hours a day while working on their masters degree so they can stay competative and maybe someday get to go back to a manned platform. 

Because flow to Fixed wing only now has opened up to flight school graduates. 

 

We have the opposite problem because we are swimming in personnel with no equipment. If it wasn't for the fact our systems are different and more importantly the Air Force doesn't want to view warrants as real pilots much less enlisted operators we could IA task to back fill your needs.

Major muscle movement: The Army's RPA operation, relative to the Army's overall size, comprises a much smaller proportion of the service's overall operations, when compared to relative weight of effort within the Air Force. Really big green Army (compared to USAF) + small number of RPAs (again relative to Air Force) = much different organizational problem sets for the Army and Air Force. As you already noted, the Army is "swimming in personnel," at least with regard to RPA operators. I suspect this is the reason the Army doesn't yet have manning issues with its enlisted RPA pilot force; once the Army reaches the same level of productivity as the Air Force currently "enjoys," I imagine Army retention will start to decrease accordingly.

Manpower equivalency: It is ridiculously expensive to maintain troops downrange, vs. keeping them home station. Two non-deploying Capts at Nellis are way cheaper than three CW2s and three E-6s operating on a 1:3 dwell  . . . especially when one considers all the additional support infrastructure required to feed/house/protect those warrants and enlisted troops downrange. 

Read my prior post: If we ramp up OTS, we don't pay for 4-5 years of undergrad schooling, and don't worry about folks trying to get manned cockpits, because they were hired for and trained to fly RPAs. 

Warrant officers direct to fixed wing, manned aircraft: Similar to the enlisted RPA pilot retention argument above; you don't have a valid historical basis to work from. From what you've written, it remains to be seen what will happen with the Army's retention of its fixed wing aviators. The argument that the Air Force should just do what the Army does and use warrants to fly fixed wing doesn't fly (pun intended) unless you can show that the Army is successfully retaining folks who started their Army careers in fixed wing--and are willing to remain in the Army, despite the current hiring environment. The Air Force did ok for pilot retention, too . . . until the airlines started hiring like crazy. 

If you're saying that the Army has offered up its warrant officers to fly Air Force RPAs as individual augmentees, and the Air Force turned the Army down, this would be huge news. I would hope somebody with seniority on this forum would take this offer and run with it.

My original statement still stands: enlisted or warrant officer pilots--for the Air Force--would be a ridiculously bad idea. I suspect the only reason it's being considered by senior Air Force leaders is that we don't have enough O-4 and O-5 types staying on AD (see the ACP discussion)--who, if they were on staffs, would be telling senior Air Force leaders how dumb the enlisted/warrant officer pilot idea is. 

TT

[Lawman]

 

Major muscle movement: The Army's RPA operation, relative to the Army's overall size, comprises a much smaller proportion of the service's overall operations, when compared to relative weight of effort within the Air Force. Really big green Army (compared to USAF) + small number of RPAs (again relative to Air Force) = much different organizational problem sets for the Army and Air Force. As you already noted, the Army is "swimming in personnel," at least with regard to RPA operators. I suspect this is the reason the Army doesn't yet have manning issues with its enlisted RPA pilot force; once the Army reaches the same level of productivity as the Air Force currently "enjoys," I imagine Army retention will start to decrease accordingly.

Have you spent a day with an Army unit? Do you have any idea how miserable a non deployed unit with no mision equipment can be? You are literally the task bitch for everybody in your organization at that point. Are you going to argue quality of life of living at Ft Bliss deploying to Field Problems/NTC and doing road marches/ranges/PME in between  vs being stuck at Cannon and working 12-14 hour days? When was the last time you put up a tent, or better yet burned sh!t. The Army is busy work with the occasional mission task stuck in for a break in the suck.

Manpower equivalency: It is ridiculously expensive to maintain troops downrange, vs. keeping them home station. Two non-deploying Capts at Nellis are way cheaper than three CW2s and three E-6s operating on a 1:3 dwell  . . . especially when one considers all the additional support infrastructure required to feed/house/protect those warrants and enlisted troops downrange.

Read my prior post: If we ramp up OTS, we don't pay for 4-5 years of undergrad schooling, and don't worry about folks trying to get manned cockpits, because they were hired for and trained to fly RPAs.

Why would you deploy Air Force personnel as enlisted when they dont deploy to do the mission as officers. You seem to think its necessary to give the job to the Army in order to use enlisted. Im arguing that if you guys just accept that it does not take a 4 year degree in Journalism to fly an airplane you might be able to aquire personnel at a much lower cost. What difference would it make operationally for you and the guy next to you to come to work with E6 rank on instead of Cpt/Major.

Warrant officers direct to fixed wing, manned aircraft: Similar to the enlisted RPA pilot retention argument above; you don't have a valid historical basis to work from. From what you've written, it remains to be seen what will happen with the Army's retention of its fixed wing aviators. The argument that the Air Force should just do what the Army does and use warrants to fly fixed wing doesn't fly (pun intended) unless you can show that the Army is successfully retaining folks who started their Army careers in fixed wing--and are willing to remain in the Army, despite the current hiring environment. The Air Force did ok for pilot retention, too . . . until the airlines started hiring like crazy.

The historics are officers remain in fixed wing units in our service well past 20 on a regular basis all without much in the way of additional commands or achievements that can be achieved. You know what a CW5 with 20 years vs a CW5 with 30 is doing in a fixed wing unit? The same job just with more flight hours and respect. Do you seriously think these guys cant get hired? your talking about pilots with thousands of hours of total flight experience. Could have retired years ago, and still has a crappier qualifty of life than any comprable Air Force position (not to mention less pay). We opened up warrants from flight school assesion because fixed wing units were basically stealing high rank guys and we dont want to lose CW4/5 IP from a 64 to go fly C12s so he can enjoy the last years. Again maybe if you didnt create a culture where 60-90 guys are vieing for 1 command slot 20 years later they would be more willing to put up with the suck after year 8-12. If you knew when it was time to make a choice that there was say a 1 in 5 chance of owning a squadron vs a 1 in 30 would that change your mind to stick around? Thats what having a Warrant population allows us to do.

If you're saying that the Army has offered up its warrant officers to fly Air Force RPAs as individual augmentees, and the Air Force turned the Army down, this would be huge news. I would hope somebody with seniority on this forum would take this offer and run with it.

No Im saying even if we were qualified on your particular versions and types of UAS platforms the idea would be thrown out because the Air Force historically views Warrants or enlisted operators as not real pilots. Look at what you do to warrants who go green - blue as far as flight school. Culturally you guys are unwilling for whatever reason to accept that there is another service with literally thousands of non commissioned officer pilots operating in it. It works because everybody in our service is not stuck on a single construct track of dipstick wingman day 1 pilot -> Flight Lead -> Squadron Commander and checking every box for that job on the way. We have 3 Commissioned officers in a company (equivilent to a flight).. and a dozen warrants. Those commissioned officers dont do jobs like IP or Maintenence they do command duties and staff assignments outside it. The Warrants form the functional cadre of making the unit work. Im an operations and survivability officer, and tomorrow Ill be one, and 4 years from now Ill be one. I dont have to try and check 40 boxes on my slow march to LtCol. I also dont need to try and worry about becoming an IP or a safety officer, because somebody else went into that track. Im also not gonna worry about spending 3 years on a joint assignment staff somewhere so I can get my next command oppertunity.

My original statement still stands: enlisted or warrant officer pilots--for the Air Force--would be a ridiculously bad idea. I suspect the only reason it's being considered by senior Air Force leaders is that we don't have enough O-4 and O-5 types staying on AD (see the ACP discussion)--who, if they were on staffs, would be telling senior Air Force leaders how dumb the enlisted/warrant officer pilot idea is.

TT

Liquid posted exactly opposite this in another thread. Its only not up for consideration because you guys are stuck on the idea that everybody needs to be a leader, everybody wants to be a squadron commander, and everybody must be a commissioned officer to achieve that goal.

[SurelySerious]

I'm not exactly sure what "full capacity" is in the Army world, but since the combatant commander demands of AF ISR keep increasing, it's impossible to fulfill the crew requirements.

Training an enlisted aviator to the same standard of execution won't take any less time, and once they're trained they're more difficult to retain (see lack of sensor operator retention). It's not the magic people think it is.

[TnkrToad]

Words

Dude, 

      I've spent more than enough time in joint billets (and remember joint is spelled A-R-M-Y), so I've got a pretty darn good appreciation for the Air Force vs. Army ways of doing things. We're mostly talking past each other at this point. Bottom line, in my mind, the Air Force spends more time and money paying and training its RPA pilots, but uses its RPA pilots as RPA pilots way more efficiently than the Army. The added efficiency, from everything I can tell on this forum from AF folks, more than compensates for the higher per-individual cost of using officers rather than enlisted. I'll let the folks who actually fly Air Force RPAs duke it out with you over Air Force officer vs. Army enlisted training standards/relative responsibility/whatever other factors that come into play. If you guys in the Army can hire quality folks directly from civilian life, make them warrant officers, send them directly through fixed wing flying training (not have them serve as enlisted grunts first), and manage to keep them on active duty past their min commitments (despite the notable Army suck), more power to you. I personally have yet to read a rational, dispassionate, convincing argument in favor of changing the Air Force model to match the Army construct, so I remain convinced that enlisted or warrant officer pilots are a bad idea for the Air Force. Feel free to keep arguing your point, but I'm going to step away from this tit-for-tat discussion; neither of us is going to convince the other to change views. 

Cheers, 

TT

[HuggyU2]

Lawman,

I don't care to read your entire post, but I think I get the gist.  

Army Aviation isn't the end-all-be-all.  I was in the MC-12 in 2011 in Bagram.  We went out of our way to open communication with the Army King Airs doing a similar mission.  The Army's act was a clown show.  Their crews were poorly trained.  The pilots had significantly greater restrictions on them, to the point of making them often ineffective.  And the enlisted sensor operators in the back... well, that was even worse.  We invited them over to our squadron to teach them everything the Army failed to, and they came to learn.  They had to sneak over for fear of being caught by their commander.  One of our pilots who was a very good instructor on all aspects of the mission spent a lot of time with them, starting over from the beginning.  It didn't last long, as the risk of them getting caught with us was too high for them, and they finally balked.  

Hacker can chime in, as he was way more tuned in than I was, and may have been directly involved with working with the Army folks.  

Maybe it was bad luck on my timing, but during my time in Afghanistan, nearly every interaction in dealing with fixed wing Army aviation left me disappointed that we were burning the money to have them do nothing effective.    

I'm not going to spend my time in an argument with you on this issue.  Those are simply my personal observations.  

Edited October 2, 2015 by Huggyu2

[Lawman]

Nobody is saying this is the end all be all but acting as if your model is the only way to run a program is not gonna move you anywhere but where you are now. Plus temper the experience working with TF Odin with the fact the Army has never done this mission. I'm sure if you guys started running an Assault Aviation Bn it would look like a sh!t show to the Army for years. Somebody could ask the 160th to critique working with CV-22s or HSC-85 and it would probably sound identical to your opinions on Odin.

But here's my point on the out right dismissal of using non commissioned aviators or limited duty officers like Warrants.... How many times have people on here complained they were aviators second and just wanted the Air Force to let them be pilots. What if you could have that. What if you could literally never leave squadron level aviation until you were on top of or past 20 years? Would you always fly not like a Jr. Pilot no, but seriously no staff job somewhere at the pentagon, or a flunky joint job at the CAOC just staying in an aviation unit focused on the aviation mission and specializing in particular tasks (IP/Maintain/Safety/Tacops). The other big thing, what if you didn't need 4 years at the zoo to get here.

That is how we get to keep people. This dismissal that it only works for the Army because there are no helicopter jobs. Well for one, there are even less UAS jobs available so where are all these highly qual'ed UAS guys gonna go. And that excuse really only passes muster if every pilot that punches out of the AF taking a job at United. Check people's LinkedIn profiles after they leave you, no way they are all pulling airliners despite way more opportunity for it.

Think about the different flavor of suck you guys deal with and seriously ask yourself if you didn't have to deal with all that would you be punching at 12, because we can punch at 6 and we don't see the manpower drop off not even from the safety guys that can get OSHA jobs in a heart beat because the track gets them about every certification you could ever want. Also while limited, outside Helo contracting jobs pretty much start at 6 figures, so there is plenty of incentive to run to those when available.