19,000 plus posts filled with apposite wit and erudition. Irony is dead:8

There's an interesting article in the most recent Janes Defence Weekly about this very topic. Whilst the numbers might look rosy, there appears to be a growing discontent amongst the RPA crews that there is a degree of apartheid between the RPA crews and the traditional rated pilots (seemingly around the question of medallic recognition leading to a sense of being 'second XI' pilots).

Also, questions are starting to be asked about how long an RPA would survive in contested airspace where an opponent has an IADS. Predator et al have been fantastically successful in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, but all of these theatres have been essentially permissive air environments (for FW operating at higher level, certainly not for RW).

All in all, the next few years should be an interesting time for RPAs. I can see a massive role for them e.g MPA and other ISR related tasks in benign airspace, but they are hardly a low cost option to be thrown away like the Army's Phoenix UAVs were a few years back. It's going to take some careful thought and will probably depend on a few RPA operators / customers making it to a high enough rank to guarantee some influence in the decision making process though.

Quite so. Once the opposition have cottoned on to that, it wouldn't take long to develop a drone-swatting capability.

In addition, there is the unpalatable consideration of the terrorist threat to the drone operators themselves. Safe in the Nevada desert is one thing, but in the UK less than an hour from where the 'bruvs' breed in droves, it probably wouldn't take long before some ba$tard 'martyr' decided to commit an outrage.

Sending a real pilot off to a remote part of the world for a tour in a secure environment would be one thing, but expecting someone who might just have splattered Ali bin-liner all over the desert to spend the next 5 years looking over his shoulder is something else.

Drones have been successful, I agree. But for anyone to want to spend a career operating the things is perhaps a different matter.

Beagle,

You raise a valid point re drone pilots and repercussions.

Something that I have raised in the past is the psychological effects that drone pilots may suffer from; that is the effects of actually fighting a war from "home". One minute you are protecting the troops on the ground, trying to stop them from being killed, or even watching them being shot, or bombing the enemy. The next minute you are on your way home to the wife and children. It takes a very special mindset to be able to change from killer to dad, or husband, every day for weeks and months on end.

At least many of the aircrew involved directly in doing the same in your traditional aircraft are based in the war zone, or aircraft carriers, where there are many people in the same situation.

Also remember, when you were flying that VC10 (I am envious of you) that you were stuck in a tube looking out of them windows. A drone pilot/ team also have windows, of a sort. They are the cameras through which you see things - like the enemy, or the friendly forces you are protecting.

In my original post I queried whether a drone operator, far from the action, would qualify for a campaign medal. The immediate response was negative but I suggest the issue is not clear cut. Allow me to postulate the following scenario. An operator of a killer drone, flying it far from the action is particularly successful in destroying a number of enemy drones whilst evading attempts by the enemy to destroy his own drone. How might this be officially recognised? Certainly not by an award of an AFC. By a DFC? But how can this be reconciled without a campaign medal?
Doughnut & Bar seems poor recognition.

Mike

Mike

The Army tend to run the Medals Board and their mantra is "personal rigour" - ie. if you're not in danger from the enemy then you don't get a Campaign gong. It all seems a bit bizarre when you can get a gong in Afghanistan if you're, for example, in the AGC and cashing cheques in an admin section at Kandahar/Bastin, or ISTAR and tanker drivers flying 3-4 miles over the top of any action from a friendly ME country without any surface to air capability to schwack you, etc...

You could argue that anyone involved in the REAPER UOR has had a lot more influence from their efforts on the Afghan campaign, than most others. Don't forget, there's no roulement, no R&R, they eat, live, sleep and work Afghan Ops every day they are at work. I hope the mindset for rigour will change, as others have posted there is a lot of immersal in day to day Afghan action and, although doing it from a "tin box", they have to exercise courageous restraint, courage to decide to take life to save others and then have to live with it.

The only ones on the REAPER UOR that currently get UK Afghan Campaign Medals are those that fly/maintain the aircraft out of their forward operating bases - why? Because there's a mortar/rocket risk to their life and therefore are subject to "personal rigour"! :ugh:

The B Word

Pay rise and/or option of signing on past 18/40 would be recompense for many.

On the subject of survivability in an IADS then MQ-1 did very well over Serbia, Kosovo, Iraq and Libya; all of these had fighter aircraft that had to be defended by Allied fighter sweeps. It also allowed other defenseless aircraft like Nimrod, Sentry, Sentinel, VC10, Tristar, Canberra to operate once protected by a screen of OCA and/or SEAD. I see no diffence for our current flock of RPAS save for the RQ-170 that seems to operate in IADS quite nicely (including operating over Pakistan undetected and unmolested!).

So, don't believe the naysayers, they have no clear evidence to back up their claims apart from a single MQ-1 that was shot down trying to exchange shots with a MiG25 over Iraq - unfortunately, the Hellfire guided towards the contrail of the MiG but the MiG's Radar Missile guided to target! Or the single Hermes 450 shot down by a Russian MiG29 - the Georgian "operator" did nothing to react apart from watch, why? Because he was trained as an "operator" and not as aircrew. He could have descended in a tight very slow spiral and hid in Main Beam Clutter, but he was probably never taught this as an "operator".

Finally, RPA are expendable. The average RPA costs around £3-7M each depending on payload and performance. The average manned fighter aircraft costs nearly 10 times that. So if you only lose 50% of your RPAs vice that of your manned aircraft to achieve your strategic aims, plus the added bonus of no loss of life, then you are on a financial winner.

The B Word

Mike - your question goes right to the heart of why so many USAF RPA crews are starting to feel like the 'second XI' because they are limited in what medals they can get. The edition of JDW in question mentions it but it's currently on my desk at work, but IIRC, they are only eligible for things like campaign medals and aerial achievement medals - they can't qualify for the sexier ones like the DFC or Air Force Cross.

B Word - I think you will find inflation has bumped your RPA costs up somewhat. The DoD quoted price per unit for an MQ-9 Reaper is closer to $37,000,000 per platform - hence why we have so few of them. Based on that cost, they are far from expendible when the MOD is broke!

USAF RPA Costs
 

A lot more discussion of costs here:

2. The MQ-9′s Cost and Performance | U.S. | TIME.com

Melchy

I know exactly how much we paid the USAF for our Reapers under Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and your figures per aircraft are massively wrong. I suspect your $37M quote is for a Reaper system, which includes 4 aircraft, 2 Ground Control Stations, Ground Data Terminals and the infrastructure to connect it all up. Also, the price changes depending on what sensor/weapons fit you order. Don't forget that what one country pays is different to another and so what the RAF paid exactly is very commercially sensitive.

The B Word

Which probably means that you should stfu with trying to hint at your inside knowledge

S-D

S-D

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pro.../206_stars.jpg

The documents are available on t'internet. Jeez.

EngO that time article would be hilarious if it wasn't so depressing. It is a great example of the worst of journalism.

The author decides to define a unit of reaper as all the aircraft and kit needed to sustain a 24/7/365 orbit, which isn't a bad idea, but then proceeds to compare it to a single aircraft of various types. He should have compared it to however many f16s it takes to cover a 24/7/365 task, but then he wouldn't get the answer he is desperately seeking.

Why do they wear Nomex flying suits?:E

Because you can't get the old lightweight flying coveralls these days?

Surrounded by electronic systems in their desert tin boxes, the wearing of protective Nomex garments by drone operators seems eminently sensible to me.

Plus when they get back to Vegas, they can easily wash the sweat (and doughnut grease) off by showering in their flying suits - used to work a treat when we did that during APC at Akronelli.

Perhaps Dunkin's best produce excess methane?

CG

tonker, pen holders and pockets in the right places?

You could also ask that question at Geilenkechen. Why do the gate guards wear nomex flight suits?

Past performance is no guarantee of future survivability.