US Air Force Converts First Wing of Combat Planes to UAVs
August 14, 2008
MQ-9 Reaper in flight. Credit: Dick Jones, Sandia National Laboratories.
Pilots of the US 174th Fighter Wing have begun a new job this week. Instead of flying their F-16 combat planes over Iraq and Afghanistan, they’ll be flying robotic MQ-9 Reaper drones remotely, mostly from stations in the US.
The transition marks the US Air Force’s first replacement of a full wing of piloted F-16s by unmanned Reapers, and it will likely be a trend that continues. Several robotic Predator aircraft are already in use, but they are considered reconnaissance aircraft.
As combat planes, which seek and destroy ground targets, the Reapers have several advantages over manned planes. At $18 million, a Reaper costs just a third of the price of an F-16, and uses 100 times less fuel per hour.
More importantly, Reapers can stay in the air for 14 hours or more, while pilots take shifts controlling them. A UAV can watch over an area and wait for the enemy to emerge, and when that happens, the drone can drop 3,000 pounds of bombs and missiles.
Within that 1.5-ton payload ability, the 4.7-ton Reaper can carry 100-pound Hellfire missiles and 500-pound GPS-guided smart bombs among its other weapons.
According to the military paper Strategy Page, some manned fighter aircraft will still be needed for aerial combat due to their quick response times. Also, maintenance troops for the Reapers will still go overseas to care for the aircraft, but some civilian contractors are also being hired for this purpose.
The Air Force is also calling in experts from a different field: psychologists. They’re concerned because, normally, pilots don’t see what happens when the plane they’re flying drops a bomb, since they’re busy flying away. But when remotely operating a drone, pilots will witness the vivid destruction on the ground. For this reason, psychologists and therapists will try to help pilots adjust to using the new weapons.
"It's bizarre, I guess," said Lieutenant Colonel Michael Lenahan, a Predator pilot and operations director for the 196th Reconnaissance Squadron. "It is quite different, going from potentially shooting a missile, then going to your kid's soccer game."
More information: 174th Fighter Wing
via: Strategy Page
Search Archives
Top Stories of the Week
Coming soon.
Exclusive Stories
Coming soon.