{"id":1746,"date":"2009-11-17T00:20:30","date_gmt":"2009-11-17T08:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=1746"},"modified":"2009-11-21T21:15:47","modified_gmt":"2009-11-22T05:15:47","slug":"controversy-over-uav-flight-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/17\/controversy-over-uav-flight-pay\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversy Over UAV Flight Pay"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting commentary from Military.com describes an alleged controversy over the decision<\/a> to give UAV “pilots” flight pay.<\/p>\n

The “controversy” is largely speculative, as there has been no public example of the outcry the author describes:<\/p>\n

Will we have to come up with new decorations?\u00a0 For the Distinguished Flying Cross shall we create the Distinguished Sitting Cross for “meritorious activity while under seriously remote hostile fire?”<\/p>\n

Since there will be no requirements to shield the UAV Operators from high altitude cold, as an added retention incentive the Air Force could provide them with a fake leather jacket, like Naugahyde, for fake pilots.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Still, there is some question as to why a person sitting at a desk in a secure military facility in the United States should earn flight pay:<\/p>\n

If you are a…traditional crewmember…You understand a max load takeoff on a short runway in a rainstorm, a hot landing in an ice storm, SAMs on the way, wind shear, or the concussion of an exploding rocket off your wingtip.\u00a0 It’s hard to imagine a UAV operator feeling the rising pucker factor of that type airmanship.<\/p>\n

During WWII, 52,173 Airmen were killed in action.\u00a0 Another 13,093 Airmen lost their lives in aircraft accidents.\u00a0 Those aircrews set the standard for all others that followed.\u00a0 Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Iraq and all aerial combat and support missions in between.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That said, the military can compensate and incentivize career fields as it sees fit.\u00a0 As has been frequently noted here, operating UAVs is still a largely undesirable job in the US Air Force.\u00a0 The Air Force could simply have chosen to\u00a0create an incentive pay for UAV career fields in order to encourage volunteerism and retention, without calling it aviation or flight pay.\u00a0 That makes the “controversy” semantic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting commentary from Military.com describes an alleged controversy over the decision to give UAV “pilots” flight pay. The “controversy” is largely speculative, as there has been no public example of the outcry the author describes: Will we have to come up with new decorations?\u00a0 For the Distinguished Flying Cross shall we create the Distinguished Sitting Cross for<\/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":[13,19,2,53],"class_list":["post-1746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-aircraft","tag-government","tag-military","tag-uav"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746","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=1746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}