USAFE chief: Don’t rely on UAVs

[unhappycamper]

An MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle prepares to land while another Predator taxies toward a hangar at Joint Base Balad, Iraq. Both UAVs were returning from missions over Iraq.


USAFE chief: Don’t rely on UAVs
By Scott Fontaine - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Jul 30, 2010 12:39:25 EDT

The Air Force’s top officer in Europe has a strong message for supporters of unmanned aircraft: Remotely piloted planes won’t be as effective in future wars as they are in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gen. Roger Brady, outgoing commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, laid out the limitations of unmanned aerial systems and pumped up manned aircraft in a no-holds-barred speech to more than 500 military leaders, engineers, scholars and UAS manufacturers.

Brady acknowledged that UAS play a key role in combat and will play even a bigger part in the service someday, but warned the Air Force must include manned aircraft in its future as well.

“In this debate, the burden of proof, in my opinion, is on the proponents of UAS,” he told the unmanned proponents, all attending a UAS conference July 29 and 30 in suburban Washington. “We know the advantages and disadvantages of manned aircraft. Technology must deliver, not merely promise to deliver, the same level of competence in UAS that we have learned to place in manned aircraft.”

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An MQ-1 Predator system of four drones, a ground-control station and the satellite link costs $20 million; an MQ-9 Reaper system runs $53.5 million. But each need about 10 pilots to maintain a 24-hour orbit, and personnel costs are becoming a larger share of the Air Force budget.