Enlisted personnel can now fly remote-controlled drones in Air Force

Dec 19, 2015 4:09 pm
The Los Angeles Times reported Dec. 17 that the Air Force is now taking enlisted personnel as drone pilots for the first time, because they need so many soldiers to fly the drones. Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, or ISR, is the military's growing sector. "If you talk to combatant commanders around the world, which I do regularly, and ask them, 'What is the one more thing you need from the Air Force?,' they will always reply, 'I want more ISR,'" said Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James. Enlisted personnel are only handling surveillance so far, not firing missile and killing targets from remote control. Officers, for now, will be the only ones operating MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones. "In fiscal year 2014, the most recent data available, the Air Force trained 180 drone pilots, and 240 veterans left the field," The Los Angeles Times reported.