{"id":180815,"date":"2016-12-23T20:50:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-24T01:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/12\/23\/this-is-a-sign-of-institutional-collapse\/"},"modified":"2016-12-23T20:50:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-24T01:50:00","slug":"this-is-a-sign-of-institutional-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/12\/23\/this-is-a-sign-of-institutional-collapse\/","title":{"rendered":"This is a Sign of Institutional Collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out that the shortage of drone pilots in the US military is so unable to meet the basic training needs of even its drone trainers<\/a>:<\/p>\n

American military power in the 21st century relies on the mighty drone. The flying robots watch America\u2019s enemies from the skies\u200a\u2014\u200aand sometimes blow them apart with Hellfire missiles.<\/span>

<\/span>There\u2019s a logic to using drones. Putting a robot in harm\u2019s way is a lot better than putting an actual person in the same place.<\/span>

<\/span>America can always build another drone. It\u2019s a lot harder to replace a good pilot.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>he U.S. Army and the Air Force both need a lot of pilots and technicians to keep the drones flying\u200a\u2014\u200aliterally tens of thousands of people altogether\u200a\u2014\u200abut it hasn\u2019t been easy filling those job slots. Worse, the two branches started cutting corners during training, according to the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, a congressionally-mandated watchdog.<\/span>

<\/span>Often, the Army wasn\u2019t even sure if its pilots were qualified<\/i> to fly drones. On top of that, it was approving new flight instructors who haven\u2019t finished their own<\/i> training.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>But the less obvious answer is that no one wants to pilot drones. It\u2019s an awful job where a pilot\u200a\u2014\u200ainstead of sitting in a cockpit\u200a\u2014\u200asits inside a metal box in front of a computer screen for hours. Drone pilots are overworked, over-stressed and pissed off.<\/span>

<\/span>No wonder the Pentagon can\u2019t find good pilots.<\/span>

<\/span>
<\/span>In May 2015, the GAO released its most recent report<\/a> on the sorry state of America\u2019s drone force. Concerned about drone pilots\u2019 lackluster training, the agency talked to pilots and instructors and pored over the training logs and materials.<\/span>

<\/span>The findings were scary.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cMost Army [drone] pilots are not completing all of their unit training,\u201d the GAO explained. Further, \u201cthe Army does not have visibility over whether [drone] pilots \u2026 have completed training.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>The Air Force was no better. The flying branch\u2019s pilots were so overloaded that they don\u2019t have time to finish required training.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cAccording to Air Force officials,\u201d the GAO wrote. \u201cSome Air Force UAS pilots have not completed their continuation training because they spend most of their time conducting operational missions due to shortages of UAS pilots and high workloads.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More than equipment, more than any technological superiority, wars are won with training, tactics, and readiness.<\/p>\n

Case in point, the F4F Wildcat, which achieved a 6:1 favorable kill ratio against the Mitsubishi A6M Zero<\/a>, despite the fact that it was markedly inferior aircraft. (Slower, less maneuverable, etc.)<\/p>\n

This was because of better training, situational awareness, and tactics.<\/p>\n

And now our training infrastructure is breaking down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It turns out that the shortage of drone pilots in the US military is so unable to meet the basic training needs of even its drone trainers: American military power in the 21st century relies on the mighty drone. The flying robots watch America\u2019s enemies from the skies\u200a\u2014\u200aand sometimes blow them apart with Hellfire missiles.There\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[772,765,774,768,820,856],"class_list":["post-180815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-aviation","tag-education","tag-employment","tag-fail","tag-military","tag-uav"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180815"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}