13 kg UAV to Fly at 132,000 ft for weeks?

[JBP]

Zoomie - 1 Wing is only getting the TUAV.  A long drawnout political argument led to this.  To make a long story short the decision was that if the Air Force was going to run the UAV's then the Army insisted that the ones they bought for their use be given to 1 Wing.

The Strategic or operational level UAV support such as global hawk is still being worked on.  It won't be run by 1 Wing.  Who will run it?  Good question ???

Like Duey said.  For expediency it is necessary to have a pilot as part of the UAV team.  This brings all the knowledge of flying regs, airspace coord, etc, etc to the table quickly.  It doesn't mean that it has to stay that way.  Nor does it mean that everyone involved has to be a pilot.  From my understanding of Canadian Air Regs a pilot may have to remain a part of the team if we intend to fly any UAV in civilian airspace.  Note that the rule is a "pilot".  It doesn't say what type.  Can we send UAV techs to a civy flight school and get them a basic private pilots licence and some IFR trg?  Perhaps, more questions will have to be answered.

I think you've got a good idea about sending UAV techs to civy flight school or I suppose hiring people that already possess those and similar abilities. That would be expensive though, as is any aviation training, even ground school. I suppose we can keep dreaming the military will get that nice 12Billion in 4 years!  :-\

 

[Good2Golf]

I think things will eventually move to tactical operators running UAVs, especially mini, micro and even smaller UAVs.  Frankly, a pilot doesn't actually fly the UAV to "keep wings level" and the like, he/she runs the UAV in a number of modes from AUTO: follow a pre-planned, pre-loaded route, to SEMI-AUTO: changing some way points real-time or initiation pre-programmed loiter manoeuvres, etc..., to "oh-crap-we-just-lost-link-and-now-we-have-to-see-where-the-darned-thing-is-heading!"  Last mode is a bit of humour, but different systems have different responses to things like major systems malfunctions or lost-link, etc...  I can't recall what Sperwer does specifically, so I can't even guess.

Overall, the pilot has an appreciation afor airspace ctrl and all the other nause, but as ArmyAviator said, and I agree fully, there's no reason when switched on folks in many organizations can't get the required training (moderate understanding of platform, good understanding of airspace co-ord and interaction at particular flight-levels.  I see no reason at all why this couldn't be a capable NCM.  I suppose we'll see how this TUAV thing shakes out in 1 Wing first and where it goes from there.

Cheers,
Duey

 

[Buzz]

Been a while sinse I've been in here and doing some follow ups .  This has been some great info for a bit of insight on what could be planned to become part of a team.  But then there are always the almighty question of who to talk to to fulfill this.  Ie) great ideas for going to a civy school for basic flight,  but who makes that decision and how can I send a "memo" to this person?

Cheers!!
-Buzz