Originally Posted by
melmothtw
Genuine question - why do UAVs need to be flown and potentially lost in peacetime? Why can all the training not be done synthetically? For the pilot, he is not in the aircraft anyway so will lose nothing in terms of realism from sitting in a simulator . Any ground forces he is supposed to be interacting can do so synthetically also, no?
Pilots aren't the only people involved in operating UAVs, nor the only people to benefit from training.