Predator TaxiingThe Great UAV Pilot Shortage -- Strategy Page
September 1, 2008: The U.S. Air Force has a record number (nearly a hundred) of Predator and Reaper UAVs in service. But so far this year, seven have been in major accidents (causing more than a million dollars in damage), and since 2003, another twenty have been hurt bad. Turns out that two-thirds of those losses are because of human error. Early on, most of the losses were due to equipment failure, but now the cause is usually the operator (a pilot retrained to operate a Predator) error. The air force blames this on the need to train so many new UAV operators quickly. But this is largely a self-inflicted problem. The air force insists on UAV operators already being manned aircraft pilots, and allowed most of them to spend only three years operating UAVs before returning to manned aircraft.
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My Comment: I am surprise that there are only 100 UAVs in service. I thought there were many more.
I mentioned in a previous post that the requirement that all UAV pilots must be active pilots is a waste of resources and training. I would not be surprised that future UAV pilots will be people who may not be suitable for flying aircraft, but because they have the proper eye-hand coordination to handle a UAV drone on a computer screen .... they will be the pilots who will be selectively trained to just handle this type of weaponry.