Word: petrizzo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...small boy living near an Air Force base in Florida, Steve Petrizzo would crane his neck as jets roared overhead. "Every day in elementary school I would look up into the sky and see a four-ship formation of F-16s flying over, and I just thought that was the coolest thing," he recalls. "I always wanted to fly." By the time he entered high school, however, Petrizzo believed that his poor vision would keep him grounded...
...Today, new technologies - and leaders with new policies - have rescued Petrizzo's boyhood dream. The 28-year-old will soon be fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban from the skies, as one of the Air Force's first ground-based Predator drone pilots not to have started out in an Air Force cockpit. The change reflects a shift in Air Force thinking. Instead of carefully polishing and husbanding the service's costly F-22 fighters and their pilots for future wars, the Air Force increasingly is rolling up its sleeves and helping fight today's conflicts...
...Petrizzo spent much of the first six years of his Air Force career tending to intercontinental ballistic missiles. But he left his Montana base last weekend for his new permanent Predator posting at Creech. He disputes the popular perception of his new job. "When people say it's a video game - just like playing Xbox - I really take offense at that," he says. "You have to have an air sense and all that aeronautical decision-making down pat." While he has never had to fire a missile in anger, he knows that is likely to change once he begins...
...this Predator training program is experimental and could be scrapped, don't bet on it. Schwartz told his new pilots the demand for their skills "is insatiable, and shows no sign of abating." And then there's the fact that the service just commissioned a new metal pin that Petrizzo and his fellow drone drivers will wear on their uniforms. While its central shield features a lightning bolt connoting the Predator's remote control, its wings will be identical to those worn by all other Air Force pilots...
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