Blood from a stone

We recently increased our workdays here due to the massive increase in ops tempo we (the UAV world) have gone through. I'm afraid our leadership is going to learn the wrong lesson from this, the wrong lesson being, "They're UAVs, every time we push them harder, we get more back."
This would lead them to believe that they can just keep pushing and just keep getting more back. I watched same thing happen in the desert: They asked for massive increase in ops and got it, then they asked for more, until finally we were all flying 12 hour days praying no one went DNIF or crashed one because it would mean a reduction in ops.

We already don't have any training lines, which is already bad enough. For those with no AF flying experience, most of the flying (60%? 75%?) a squadron does is training, even during a war. In the UAV world, the operational squadrons have zero dedicated training flights in a given day.

The following are a couple of articles referenced in an email from a friend who asked me about it.

Article 2, Air Force Times

-----Original Message-----
From: David Witt
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 15:43
To: X
Subject: FW: Fly opportunity


Yeah, we got a slightly early heads up on this. Big picture, I have no problem with lower level experience folks showing up here.

Small picture, what this means is that they OUGHT to get a lot more training than I got...but they probably won't, which means the already low average level of our experience will get even lower, and we will see a lot sloppier ops. This is your typical AF knee jerk reactions, all about quantity, quality goes straight out the window.

How's things?

-----Original Message-----
From: X
Sent: Friday, September 19, 2008 1:14 AM
To: Witt, David
Subject: FW: Fly opportunity

Interesting... not that I'd want to fly (or rather: to be responsible for that much $$ with my Murphy's law luck), but some dad's just won't let their dreams die. But it made me think - what are your thought on this, since you've seen two of the three sides first hand? Forgive me if you've addressed this in your blog, its been a few days since I've taken a peak.

-X

~~~
Up and Away: The Air Fo rce envisions building a force of 1,100 unmanned aircraft operators-up from today's pool of about 450-by Fiscal 2012 to support 50 continuous MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper combat air patrols under two new initiatives announced Tuesday at AFA's Air & Space Conference. The initiatives will develop a new cadre of UAV operators that do not have experience operating other combat aircraft, and in some cases, have no real previous flying experience at all, service officials said. "This will certainly be a cultural change," Brig. Gen. Lyn Sherlock , director of air operations on the Air Staff, told reporters during a press briefing.
Previously, the service has drawn its UAV operators from the ranks of more experienced pilots. But with the insatiable demand for UAVs, not only for overhead surveillance, but also for strike and additional roles, the Air Force is taking this new approach. Under the first initiative, the Air Force will select about 10 percent of its next batch of graduates from undergraduate pilot training in October-about 100 airmen-for training in UAV operations at Creech AFB, Nev. The second, more radical concept entails creating a new career field for UAV operators by choosing active-duty officers from various technical and non-technical backgrounds to teach to teach them to fly the UAVs. These officers will get some introductory flight training at Pueblo, Colo, and then go straight into Predator training "to bring them up to fully qualified mission status," said Brig. Gen. Darrell Jones , director of force management policy on the Air Staff. To see if this idea has long-term legs, there will be a two-part "beta test" program, he said. An initial class of 10 officers will start training in January until next fall. A second class of 10 will start next summer and finish before the end of 2009, Sherlock said. If those two test runs prove successful, the Air Force would then start accepting larger classes, Jones said.

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published 8oct08