{"id":25278,"date":"2013-09-02T01:00:43","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T04:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=25278"},"modified":"2016-11-26T00:56:36","modified_gmt":"2016-11-26T03:56:36","slug":"air-force-unable-to-fill-unmanned-cockpits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/02\/air-force-unable-to-fill-unmanned-cockpits\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Force Unable to Fill Unmanned Cockpits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>US Air force Col Bradley Hoaglan wrote a report from the Brookings Institution saying the Air Force can&#8217;t fill its annual requirements for unmanned remotely piloted aircraft (UAV\/RPA) operators. As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stripes.com\/news\/unmanned-now-undermanned-air-force-struggles-to-fill-pilot-slots-for-drones-1.236906\">reported at the <em>Stars and Stripes<\/em><\/a>,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In 2012, the Air Force filled only 82 percent of its remotely piloted aircraft, or RPA, training slots, while virtually all manned aircraft slots were filled. And as of early this year&#8230;the Air Force Academy had only 12 volunteers for its 40 RPA training slots.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Air Force apparently attributes the problem to a lower <!--more-->promotion rate in the RPA community, training and opportunities not equal to manned aircraft, and the basic perception that remote control airplanes are not as cool as ones you actually <em>fly<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Hoagland offers a solution to this equity gap: The Air Force should just force Airmen into whatever airframe they need people in:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cBasically, if a rated officer is more qualified to fly unmanned aircraft versus manned aircraft, then the AF should place them there,\u201d Hoagland wrote. \u201cThe aviation culture in the AF is changing, and now is the time to test the waters on this policy change.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>UAVs\/RPAs are just the latest &#8220;community&#8221; to join the Air Force fighter\/bomber\/tanker\/transport intraservice culture wars.\u00a0 At varying points in the Air Force&#8217;s history each has had unique place in both ongoing conflicts and the &#8220;cool&#8221; factor in greater America.\u00a0 But nothing the Air Force does will make any community precisely equal to any other &#8212; least of all creating a <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/18\/secdef-eliminates-controversial-drone-medal\/\">special medal just for one<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Hoagland says\u00a0if they want to man the unmanned cockpits, the Air Force should just force Airmen in.\u00a0 Of course,\u00a0when it did that to <em>pilots<\/em>, it created a pilot retention problem that resulted in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/2013\/07\/26\/air-force-facing-fighter-pilot-shortage-offers-retention-bonuses-up-to-225000\/\">near-record setting bonus offer<\/a> to fighter pilots this year and a promise they wouldn&#8217;t do that again.<\/p>\n<p>So where do the UAV pilots come from?\u00a0 <em>That<\/em> can be an interesting question&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-share=\"true\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-size=\"small\" data-action=\"like\" data-layout=\"standard\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US Air force Col Bradley Hoaglan wrote a report from the Brookings Institution saying the Air Force can&#8217;t fill its annual requirements for unmanned remotely piloted aircraft (UAV\/RPA) operators. As reported at the Stars and Stripes, In 2012, the Air Force filled only 82 percent of its remotely piloted aircraft, or RPA, training slots, while virtually all manned aircraft slots [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[134,4255,4256,5285,2,53,65],"class_list":["post-25278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-air-force","tag-bradley-hoaglan","tag-brookings-institution","tag-fighter-pilot","tag-military","tag-uav","tag-usafa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25278","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=25278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}