Saturday November 21, 2009 2:43 PM AEST

What does it take to be a drone pilot?

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What does it take to be a drone pilot?

Essential linkage: Get a look inside the future of modern, remotely operated, combat.

You wouldn't often expect a magazine and website that has as it's main interests Women and Style to come up with the high tech goods. But US men's style mag Esquire recently bucked the trend with an awesome, high-level access, story on the pilots of the United States military's drone squadrons.

You read about them all the time, and often see them on the news, but how drones like the now near ubiquitous Predator are operated is one of the last great military secrets. But this article, now online, opens it all up:

The top middle screen shows the view from the Reaper - in this case Afghanistan at rest. The sun has already set, but the infrared lens illuminates a darkened world in a palette of black and white. Down the hall, Nelson and Anderson step into the Ground Control Station, a windowless room ten feet wide and twenty feet deep, with beige walls and a drop-tile ceiling. At the far end, two men in flight suits and radio headsets sit in bulky tan faux-leather chairs before a cubicle cockpit of joysticks, throttles, and ten monitors. They stare at Afghanistan's roads and schools and markets and homes, as they have for the past several hours. Nelson and Anderson, their relief, slip into the seats as the Reaper flies on. Nelson checks his cargo, shown as neon-green silhouettes at the bottom of his center screen: four Hellfire missiles and two five-hundred-pound GBU-12 laser-guided bombs. Another shift of remote-control combat has begun.

There's about five long pages of this stuff, and it makes for gripping reading for any observer of cutting edge military tech. Follow the link to get the goods.

 
 
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12 Comments
Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
qwakqwak
Oct 15, 2009 10:50 AM
me wantee
omega
Oct 15, 2009 10:54 AM
Job applications require a high score in 'Flight Simulator X' and 'Freespace' - hahaha
Hawkeye
Oct 15, 2009 10:57 AM
Or three consecutive kills in CoD4.
AIMBOT
Oct 15, 2009 11:14 AM
If all I had to do was own at CoD4, I'd be Commander AND Chief!
spaced
Oct 15, 2009 11:52 AM
That is really cool tech, saw that on slashdot as well. Will check it out when I get some time. What amazes me is that they can communicate with the drone at a speed acceptable to remote control a plane.
Antraman
Oct 15, 2009 1:46 PM
a very eye-opening read in many ways (sheep and goats lol), while I am interested in the tech and would like to try it myself, I fear that this is one step closer to a militarised police state and that this stuff will be used against us in the future.


,,,maybe I watch too many SF shows....
fr3nzystrikesback
Oct 15, 2009 3:18 PM
+1 Antra... Say goodbye to any personal freedoms in favour of 'safety'.
Ezekill
Oct 15, 2009 6:51 PM

And...they wear flight suits why ?
Hawkeye
Oct 16, 2009 9:58 AM
I'd imagine as part of getting the right feeling of actually flying something. If they could just wear t-shirts and boardies, they'd be dangerously divorced from the reality of what they're doing (IMHO).
Sneaky
Oct 16, 2009 10:04 AM
the RAAF tried to buy some of these, but the OFLC refused it a classification.
wlayton27
Oct 16, 2009 10:50 AM
I'm guessing they wear flight suits because they're in the army under an aviator job title ... God knows if the computer caught on fire ... at least those boots are flame retardant. :D
xBomx
Oct 18, 2009 4:06 AM
The last decent flight sim they made would have to be F22 lightning 3, 10 years ago.

Too many FPS shooters these days and not a decent modern dog-fight sim.

Too bad the majority of the dumb-ass got sucked-in/brain washed into the front line.

All of us at Geekdom should establish a petition to get our fellow geeks that have been taken away their rights, to make a modern warfare flight simulator.














































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Issue: 107 | December, 2009

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