{"id":1264,"date":"2009-09-30T00:30:44","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T07:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=1264"},"modified":"2009-11-21T21:17:38","modified_gmt":"2009-11-22T05:17:38","slug":"air-force-graduates-first-non-pilot-pilots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/30\/air-force-graduates-first-non-pilot-pilots\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Force Graduates First non-Pilot Pilots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Air Force has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.airforcetimes.com\/news\/2009\/09\/airforce_unmanned_pilots_092809w\/\">graduated<\/a> its first class of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) pilots that included\u00a0officers who had never attended Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT).\u00a0 That is, they are the first UAV pilots who were not formerly a pilot of some other military aircraft.\u00a0 The class was composed of 10 pilots and 9 sensor operators.\u00a0 Eight of the pilots were non-aviators; there is a second similar class in training behind them.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.military.com\/news\/article\/af-class-of-2009-pilots-who-wont-fly.html?ESRC=topstories.RSS\">increasing demand<\/a> for UAVs in Iraq and Afghanistan&#8211;as well as the desire to keep military pilots in cockpits&#8211;led to the &#8220;experiment&#8221;\u00a0<!--more-->of using non-aviators as UAV operators.<\/p>\n<p>It is unclear if these are\u00a0simply the first two classes of non-pilot UAV operators, with more in training, or if the Air Force will hold fast and evaluate its\u00a0results prior to continuing the program.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123169844\">It seems as though<\/a> these two classes, described as &#8220;beta&#8221; classes, are the only ones currently planned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Air Force has graduated its first class of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) pilots that included\u00a0officers who had never attended Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT).\u00a0 That is, they are the first UAV pilots who were not formerly a pilot of some other military aircraft.\u00a0 The class was composed of 10 pilots and 9 sensor operators.\u00a0 Eight of the pilots were non-aviators; [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[58,13,52,2,32,53],"class_list":["post-1264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-afghanistan","tag-aircraft","tag-iraq","tag-military","tag-pilot-training","tag-uav"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}