SIDEBARS

November 2004

Should Unmanned Combat Aircraft Be Piloted Only by Fighter Pilots?

by Sandra I. Erwin

As more unpiloted aircraft continue to populate the battlefield, a debate is brewing within the Defense Department as to whether these vehicles should be operated only by certified pilots.

The U.S. Air Force so far has been adamant about only allowing licensed aviators to fly unmanned air vehicles, or UAVs. The other services have not established strict guidelines yet, but that may change, particularly if more UAVs become launch platforms for bombs and missiles.

A fundamental question emerging in the UAV world is whether operating these aircraft is more like flying airplanes or more like playing a video game.

The answer appears to be both, plus whatever else falls in between.

“As long as we are in the business of dispensing kinetic firepower from UAVs, we will have credentialed warriors at the controls, who feel the full weight of responsibility, just as they would if they were piloting an A-10 or an F-16,” said Gen. John Jumper, chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force. He and other officials spoke during a panel discussion at the Air Force Association annual conference, in Washington, D.C.

Even though some tactical reconnaissance UAVs do resemble toy aircraft, many UAVs today are multimillion-dollar weapons of war, and should not be treated like toys, Jumper insisted. “It is not a video game, and we have to make sure that those at the controls feel the full weight of responsibility, authority and accountability for their actions.”

But not everyone agrees, even within the Air Force.

“I’ve always been an advocate for people who don’t necessarily have wings to be able to fly UAVs,” said Air Force Gen. Donald G. Cook, head of the Air Education and Training Command.

The Federal Aviation Administration requires that anyone at the command of an aircraft in controlled airspace must have a commercial pilot rating. But that does not preclude the military services from assigning non-pilots to operate UAVs outside controlled airspace, Cook noted.

“Flying Global Hawk is not, in my view, a whole lot different than flying the GPS satellite,” he said. “It’s a point and click, not a stick.”

The Global Hawk is a high-altitude surveillance UAV, equipped with a sophisticated sensor package. The aircraft has been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, but the ground command-and-control stations are based in the United States.

Jumper pointed out that the controls of the Global Hawk don’t look like airplane controls, “but when you bring that UAV into a controlled airspace environment, you need to have a sense of what the airspace restrictions are. You have to know if you have to send it around traffic. There is a sense of airmanship that goes along with every basic employment of things that are in the air.”

Nonetheless, there is room for flexibility, Jumper said. UAV flying does not necessarily need to be performed by traditional pilots, “but it has to be done by people with the right credentials who have the right skills.”

With the numbers of UAVs entering service expected to grow rapidly in coming years, the Air Force is trying to find the best way to encourage skilled people to sign up as UAV operators, without necessarily jeopardizing their chances of getting promoted if they chose to not fly conventional airplanes.

The service is creating a “combat systems officer” career track that will encompass navigators, electronic warfare specialists, as well as UAV operators, said Cook.

In the U.S. Navy, it is unlikely that only pilots will be allowed to operate UAVs, said Capt. Ralph Alderson, who oversees the X-45 and X-47 combat UAVs at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

“The Navy’s position is to consider other operators that are not fighter pilots and get them minimum qualifications to satisfy the FAA,” Alderson said. “This will be a different culture that comes along.”

Most challenging for the Navy will be to operate UAVs from aircraft carrier decks, which already are congested. “We will have people in direct eye contact with the aircraft as it moves around the deck,” Alderson said.

He characterized UAVs as a “classic disruptive technology,” which “threatens to some degree a culture like ours, but you can argue it will make our jobs easier.”

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