Word: droning
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...duty personnel wearing Air Force blues, and the service is now buying more unmanned than manned aircraft. It's a trend that experts say will only accelerate. So this week the Air Force, acknowledging that it no longer makes sense to spend $1 million training a pilot to fly drones from a desk halfway around the world, declaring that future drone drivers will not have to be pilots able to fly manned aircraft. "This will certainly be a cultural change," Brigadier General Lyn Sherlock, a top air warfare planner, said of the shift, which was announced during the annual convention...
Schwartz, significantly, is the first non-fighter pilot to head the Air Force in a generation (he is a pilot, but primarily of special-operations aircraft). To meet the soaring demand for drone operators, he says fledgling pilots will be used. But the service soon will "develop an unmanned aircraft systems operator career field with specialized training potentially distinct from current manned pilot training," he said. That will come as a relief to many young pilots who have feared having their flying careers crimped by being ordered to fly drones from Nevada's Creech Air Force Base. Schwartz said...
...demand for drone drivers is so great, Schwartz noted, that even retired officers may be recalled to fill the ranks. Some also argue that the Air Force ought to end the practice of regarding only officers, retired or otherwise, as eligible to operate drones. They point out that enlisted Army personnel fly that service's unmanned aircraft, and that enlisted airmen are known to spend a lot of time playing video games - a key skill in this line of work. "It does not take a commissioned officer with a university and leadership background, and years of training flying fighters...
...many years. It is not popular with the public, but we are doing it," says the Zardari aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "And in Waziristan, after a lot of effort we got the Waziri tribes to unite against [Taliban commander] Baitullah Mehsud. But after all these drone strikes, they got dejected...
...could call it an election gift for Pakistan's new President. Or a threat. Just a day before Asif Ali Zardari, during his inauguration ceremony, swore to protect his country's sovereignty, a U.S. Predator drone launched five missiles at a suspected militant compound near the border with Afghanistan. The compound belonged to Jalaluddin Haqqani, one of the most notorious Afghan Taliban commanders based in Pakistan and a Soviet-era ally of the CIA. The Predator strike missed Haqqani, but it did kill four midlevel al-Qaeda operatives, government and militant sources told the Associated Press. It also killed...