It is unfortunate that the USAF is excluding a great number of excellent candidates from their pool with this "actual pilot" requirement. There exist a great number of people possessing great intelligence and situational awareness who could not meet the physical rigors of piloting a real world fighter plane who would probably be great computer aircraft pilots. They could make it a warrant officer position like the helicopter pilots in the Army and could probably find a fair number of disciplined, post high school gamers to take turns and keep the UAV pilot ranks filled.

this may have somthing to do with the resistance of the pilot community

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NOar22TX2k

the USAF was looking to bring a UAV pilots career stream, "pilot" doesn't nessesarily have to equal expensivley trained Fast jet type, though the are proabaly the best people we have avialible right now

Given a few hours of instruction and sim time, I could fly that thing... or at least land it and make it take off successfully. Operating all the weapons systems... now that's another story... but they can leave that up to a trained non-aviator anyway. Hell, you can get your ultra-light license with just 20 hours of flight training... how much harder could it be to pilot this fly-by-wire thing? Is the FAA actually a model of efficency here?

These things are all going to be piloted autonomously soon anyway (see the following video). Sure, military techys and soldiers will still maintain effective control on the weapons systems, but the actual flying, landing or taking off of the plane doesn't need a human at the helm... taxiing and dealing with other ground traffic, maybe....

http://www.rockwellcollins.com/news/video/damage-tolerance.html

The USAF doesn't actually train that many pilots every year -- well under a thousand -- and each pilot costs millions of dollars to train. In recent times hot-shot pilots have found themselves doing shiftwork in a cube flying those UAVs, its a bit of a comedown (which explains the stress levels -- you learn to fly, and you really work at it to make it in the Air Force -- precisely so you don't have to spend your life in a cube).

Unfortunately all those things you're trained to do as a pilot mean squat when flying a UAV. You have to maintain the mystique, though, because otherwise how can you justify the cost of training (and your salary). Hence the resistance to allowing non-pilots to control (hardly 'fly') UAVs.

Airliners are almost the same, BTW. There are still things the pilots have to do, especially when flying into and out of the boondocks, but mostly the're kept in the plane for the same reason as we have ships' captains -- they don't actually drive the thing, they're there to carry the can for when the machines fail. (Also, paying passengers like to see someone up front who appears to know what they're doing.)

US problem. When relatively unlamented Phoenix UAV was designed for the British Army in the 1980s it was designed to fly itself, all the NCO operator did was guide it to where it was wanted 'flying the footprint' it was sometimes called. Of course it used a launcher and parachute/bag landing so avoided the issue of automated takeoff and landing from a runway (which were assumed not to exist given its limited duration and hence need to operate close to the front).

The UK govt is now spending lots of money to make the Israeli Hermes 450 UAV into auto takeoff/landing for Watchkeeper so that it can keep using NCO operators.

I heard the ideal flight team for a modern airliner is a pilot and a dog.

The pilot's job is to feed the dog and teh dog's job is to bite the pilot if he touches anything.

They don't like the job, and they can't stand the thought of anyone else doing it.

Sounds like the USAF needs a good slap in the face.

The USAF only want Pilots to fly them.

Sooo they tell the G'vmt what to do?

Goverment: We are going to ship out 300 drone planes, need some guys to fly them, nothing special, pretty mundane stuff. mainly there to keep ground troops safe and spy on Mr Bad guy

USAF: We'll need fully qualified Pilots, but they won't do the job, it's dull.

G'mnt: Ok f**k Off, we'll give them to the Army, In fact, we won't bother getting you new planes, the Army have said they'll happily have 600 of the, so they have less need for you guys.

USAF: Waaahhhhhhh, no fair, I won't play, ba hoo hoo....

G'vmnt: Well that's saved a few cents.

The flyboys would rather have taxpayers front up for expensive toys like the F-35 that are a response to no credible threat, than in actually doing work that saves real soldiers on the ground's lives, like flying the A-10 Warthog ground support plane, ugly but heavily armored and invaluable for ground combat. In an era of ever smarte missiles and UAVs, it's only a matter of time before manned fighters are as obsolete as the battleship Yamato.

There's a reason why the new USAF Chief of Staff has been picked from the ranks of transport pilots rather than fighter jockeys. The war in Iraq, and the Israeli war in Lebanon have shown how air superiority does not translate to control over the ground. Both were instigated by former fighter pilots, by the way, Donald Rumsfeld and Dan Halutz.