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UAV pilots to get flight pay

Airmen will receive flight pay for the first time without ever leaving the ground.

The extra cash will go with the new unmanned aerial vehicle pilot career field approved Sept 29 by Air Force leaders at an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance summit in Washington.

Leaders also approved a career field for sensor operators, though officials are still working out the details to allow these airmen to receive flight pay.

Both UAV pilots and sensor operators, though, will receive wings for their uniforms similar to those worn by manned pilots and aircrew members.

The career fields, the incentive packages, the wings are all part of the Air Force’s ongoing shift to an unmanned fleet by 2047.

UAV pilots will receive the “18X” Air Force Specialty Code. It will be a “rated” career field and require airmen to serve a six-year active-duty service commitment.

Air Force officials have not settled on a name for the career field. Officials do not want “unmanned” in the name because Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said the career field is anything but unmanned.

Sensor operators, enlisted airmen who sit next to the pilots and direct the sensors, will receive the “1U” AFSC, which will be a subcategory of Career Enlisted Aviators. It will require a three-year active-duty service commitment.

The new career fields will allow the service to grow UAV pilots and sensor operators from scratch. The airmen have come from other career fields to fly the remotely controlled aircraft, mostly MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers, which are playing a key role in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Top leaders know that transferring airmen from manned aircraft to UAVs is a short-term solution to a long-term mission area, said Col. Trey Turner, chief of the operational training division.

“We’d like to be able to grow these guys into a professional corps of airmen in the system and be able to retain them and provide a career path that looks like any other career path in the Air Force,” he said.

Manned pilots and imagery analysts are now UAV pilots and sensor operators will keep their AFSC designations. Airmen must complete the UAV pilot and sensor operator training regimens to earn the new career field designations.

Despite the recognition from leadership, airmen still have plenty of questions. The biggest one: How much flight pay for senor operators?

Federal law dictates what military members earn. While officers are allowed to receive Aviation Career Incentive Pay — the amount can reach $840 a month — without leaving the ground, it’s written in the law that enlisted airmen must be airborne to receive Career Enlisted Flier Incentive Pay. UAV sensor operators never leave the ground.

Pentagon officials are working to get the law changed, Turner said. It is uncertain how much sensor operators would receive, but manned enlisted aircrews receive as much as $400 per month each.

A career field will make it easier to promote sensor operators. Before, they had to take imagery analyst Weighted Airmen Performance tests. However, their job differed from traditional imagery work, putting them behind for promotions.

Officials have already started to outline WAPs tests for sensor operators that will deal with the basics of operating UAV sensors, said Lt. Col. Dewey DuHadway, chief of rated force policy for the Air Force personnel directorate.

The sensor operator career field should take the strain off the imagery analysis career field. Imagery analysts are also needed to produce intelligence products from the video and SIGINT collected from the UAVs.

The career field announcement came four days after the first non-rated officers completed MQ-1 initial qualifying training.

The eight airmen make up the first of two classes that the Air Force assembled to determine whether airmen without aviation experience could fly Reapers and Predators. They will be the first 18Xs

At the graduation, Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz told the new UAV pilots “you are part of the major new development of the decade. This cultural change for our Air Force has to do both with the future of these unmanned systems, and how we see ourselves as airmen.”

Leaders had their doubts whether the non-rated officers would complete the training, said DuHadway, the personnel expert,

“I think the biggest lesson from the front end is that it can be done. We took people from different training backgrounds and they were successfully able to complete Predator MQ-1 Flying Training Unit initial qualification training,” he said. “I don’t think there was consensus that people would be able to make it to that point.”

The second class of UAV pilots will graduate next spring. Turner, though, predicted the service won’t wait for the class — made up mostly of officers directly out of the Air Force Academy, Reserve Officers' Training Corps and Officer Training School — to graduate before starting more classes.

Officials, though, want to expand the training pipeline; right now, 10 officers can start training every other month, Turner said.

The service plans to advertise for more volunteers to train into the UAV pilot career field “in the next couple weeks,” Turner said. At that point, officials can start targeting who will start training next.

Officials didn’t specify the size of the sensor operator training pipeline. However, 150 “1N1” imagery analysts and 25 “1A” aircrew members have volunteered to transfer over to “1U” sensor operators, DuHadway said.

“What we need to do now is figure out what we learned from the two groups that went through, and make any adjustments to the course,” he said.