It may not be as sexy as Tom Cruise conducting aerial dogfights in his F-14 Tomcat while Kenny Loggins sings about the “Danger Zone” in the movie Top Gun, but graduates of the U.S. Air Force’s newest pilot program are hot commodities these days. The program is also redefining the meaning of “pilot” because these young fighter jocks never get their feet off the ground while directing—from thousands of miles away—unmanned aircraft that are increasingly being used to fight combatants and terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.

 

The U.S. Air Force Weapons School is graduating its first class of “drone pilots” who have been trained to fly unmanned aircraft like the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper that can do everything from aerial surveillance to launch air-to-surface missiles, and maybe even assist with search-and-rescue missions. The training is conducted at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, and once pilots complete the special program, they shift to nearby Creech Air Force Base, the mission control center that directs the drones launched from bases in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Whereas the Air Force was able to fly only 12 drones at a time just three years ago, it can now operate 34 at a time. Although drones have become increasingly associated with civilian casualties, their use is expected to grow as more pilots graduate from the program.

 

When the Air Force first began using drones, it had to rely on fighter pilots taken out of real cockpits and placed in front of stationary consoles equipped with computer screens, keyboard and “stick” to fly the drones from halfway across the world. This only worked until the pilots eventually got the itch to return to the wild blue yonder, forcing the Air Force to begin training pilots specifically for drone missions. Commanders hope that in time young hotshots will see the drones as a career path as viable as flying actual planes, and the Air Force has even devised a special patch graduates will wear on their uniforms to demonstrate their place among the new “top guns” of the military.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Training the Top Guns of Drone Aircraft (by Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times)