Drone pilots

Are any of you guys drone pilots, like in the us military? Or know drone pilots I have some questions about that stuff.

I heard that the us army and airforce both have drones, but the latter is the only one that has drones with combat capabilities and they also pilot the drones from the usa rather than in deployment..

I guess I am mostly asking about the drone pilots who do drone strike and pilot from the usa.

What do you think of the job? How much do you get paid? What requirements did the job have?

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Yes

15W here. Flew RQ-7B and currently fly MQ-1C. Actually on Bagram FOBbing it up right now in my CHU. The Army pretty much has 3 UAS platoforms: The Raven SUAS (Small Unmanned Aerial System) for Infantry to carry on their back and use to peek around corners of buildings, check in dead space for MG emplacements and so on.

Next up is the RQ-7B which is the Tactical UAS (TUAS). It is either organic to a Brigade Combat Team (BCT) in the Military Intelligence Company (MI Co) designed to move quickly with the FLOT, or paired with AH-64s in an Aircav Regt in the Combat Aviation Brigade (CAB) ever since we ditched the Kiowas.

The MQ-1C is the Strategic Division-level platform that is Organic to a single Apache Attack Bn, but there's so few of us that they deploy us separately as a theater asset. The Grayeagle is the only armed platform. It carries AGM-114 Hellfires, usually R1 or R2 type.

The Army's UAS systems are also 100% enlisted operated, unlike the Air Force, so there's that.

Here again.

I like the job. I fly ISR and RSTA missions and support every kind of customer you can imagine; I've done plenty of simple Pattern of Life (POL) missions for S2 cells working for S3 cells planning ops or building the bigger picture, supported convoys and found IEDs and ambushes along their route before they hit them, Tracked squirters out of buildings Rangers were inside of and led them to them in the middle of the night with Sparkle from my bird, I've worked with AH-64s A-10s F-15s F-16s B-1s and even AC-130s and F-22s in missions all over. We do laser target handovers for them, keeping PID on targets, I've been eyeball (lasing) while they were the shooter, and put plenty of warheads on foreheads myself. I even did some head-hunting missons in Iraq when ISI had control of whole swaths and helped the Iraqi Army retake several cities.

That being said, you're the red-headed step-child of Aviation because we're unmanned and not officers. You also don't carry Small Diameter Bombs (SDB) so you will get passed over for reapers and manned platforms a LOT if they're available. The Mqqq-1C's claim to fame is it's crazy good stare time; most assets are on and off station in a few hours, where as we typically have over 12 hours of play time.

ISIS not ISI. Also Mqqq-1C lol.

What do you think of FMV PED/SI PED?

So, that first type of UAV is (usually?) used by infantry in the actual combat zone. But the other 2 are used by guys in that Base?

So you aren't in combat personally (like the airforce drone people in the usa), but you are still in afghanistan.

How much do you currently earn? What requirements were there for your position?

I like PED guys when their feed is good, they relay a lot of the just raw information to everyone and create an accurate log and good products that we can all use because we're usually too busy to do all that stuff when it starts to pop off.

But when their feed is shit it sucks because EVERYONE is relying on them to establish PID on weapons and EEIs. I've literally had missions where I can clearly make out the barrel of a weapon sticking out of loose clothes or see muzzle flash and they wouldn't call it because their shitty degraded feed wouldn't let them see it well enough, and that's INFURIATING.

Yes, the Army has a boots on the ground philosophy. If there's an Aircraft in Afghanistan, the person flying it will usually be in-country. Unless you're INSCOM or 160th, but that's a whole other ball of wax.

When I joined you had to have GT110 (I think they did away with that), be able to hold a SECRET clearance, pass a class 4 flight physical (basically don't be color blind) and be able to NOT drink and drive at Ft. Huachuca while in AIT. Seriously. You're in AIT for 9-12 months, and the only thing they let you guys do is drive to Buffalo Wild Wings and Drink. Don't combine them, the DUI taskforce for Arizona literally trains in Sierra Vista, and I've seen them trump up a .03 into a DUI before.

Well, we heard from an army drone pilot. Any Airforce drone pilots around here as well?

>feed sweet

yeah, one thing I liked about how the QRCs and some other high speed units do business is they actually have the PED in the box with them on mIRC, so they see the raw feed. Plus you guys get a deployment under your belt, which I heard is somewhat hard for PED guys sometimes.

As far as pay, that's really the part that blows and why our retention rates are abysmal (tier 9 SRB baby). I get 0 extra dollars than the cook that fries my eggs to fly a multi-million dollar aircraft over enemy territory in a tactical environment and engage the enemy with air weapons.

So most guys do 4 year (6 is the min now) and get out and take a very lucrative job in a GOCO team or as a civilian SO for a unit and do the same job and double their paycheck.

The army is trying to fins ways to correct this trend, because we're losing more people than we can train at a time where we're trying to start up more and more UAS units. The solution is to just give us a skill pay, but pilots get butt-mad when they think of unmanned operators getting pilot pay because it's a "danger pay, which is BS.

It's a skill pay, if ti was a danger pay, then infantry would get it to and ATC and doctors wouldn't. It's to balance out the pay disparity between the Army and the Private Sector, which is why everyone gets out; they can literally double their paycheck and cut their hair however they want, which is a sweet deal.

Also not to nit-pick, but we don't fly drones. Drones are fully autonomous and do not require human intervention.

The Army calls them Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) or simply unmanned aircraft (UA), and the Air Force calls them Remotely-Piloted Aircraft (RPA).

Just FYSA.

Also it's literally only 2000 here, so I'll be on for a min if anyone else has other questions. Afterall, I'm paying $159.00/mo for my awesome 5mb max internet, so I might as well get something out of it.

If by deploy, you mean Jordan or Kuwait, then sure, us PED guys deploy all the time

Any 1U0 Sensor Operators around? I'm looking to crosstrain and was looking at that as an option. Looking for all the shitty bits and scheduling and such about it in particular that don't get put in the online and guide descriptions.

Yeah you're not scoring a patch for that though. Being an NCO today with a slick sleeve is a discriminator for promotion and assignments.
You gotta watch R2-D2 kill some rockets at some time.

>SPC(p) going to blc next month
>slick sleeve

>. I get 0 extra dollars than the cook that fries my eggs to fly a multi-million dollar aircraft over enemy territory in a tactical environment and engage the enemy with air weapons.

Did you find out about this before or after becoming a UAS pilot?

>Also not to nit-pick, but we don't fly drones. Drones are fully autonomous and do not require human intervention.
>The Army calls them Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) or simply unmanned aircraft (UA), and the Air Force calls them Remotely-Piloted Aircraft (RPA).
>Just FYSA.

Yeah, I'm not the most familiar with the correct terminology.
Thanks for the info.

My PSG was a PED until he made SGT, then he came over to UAS. He has only been in UAS for 3 years and he just got selected for SFC. Just saying.

Also it's not all bad, I was shooting the shit with an Air Force E-7 who had JUST got her first deployment because she was always doing All-Source for deployed assets back in CONUS.

The recruiter doesn't know shit, and they wave the awesome 40k signing bonus in your face when you enlist so you're not even thinking about it.

So you usually find out after, but they don't tell you you DON'T get a skill pay, so they're technically not lying to you.

No worries, I'm here to educate.

At Bragg? or Eglin?

Who me, the Air Force E-7 or my PSG?

I'm out of Campbell, don't know where she was from and my PSG was not from Bragg I can tell you that. I think he was in Lewis before but he's obviously based out of Campbell now.

Ah so you guys are legion itcs, right on

I have some code in the GCS you are sitting in.

Are you Textron, GA, AAI, or someone else?

Also, the U is a big upgrade from the OS, so if you had a hand in that, thanks. But we still need a better joystick and a better setup for the laser. I don't have 3 hands.

And if you're SAR/GMTI then I hope next time around the hardware and software will be better. 160th is looking to dump the SAR entirely on the new birds. Not having it integrated into the CUCS was a bad idea, and it constantly has random little errors and overheats.

Whatever the Air Force has is apparently WAY better, but that's par for the course.

I used to be with GA, left years ago. Happy to hear feedback from active enlisted pilots. I do recall the keyboard being pretty awful but with regards to just hardware replacement that's up to the vendor they source from, I was just software. They do heed a lot from your feedback and take it very seriously especially if it's a severe issue, had to do many trips out to air bases to recreate the issue and verify it and grab those log files.
I'll pass on your feedback to my friends who still works at GA and maybe there can be something done with the joystick and setup.