Air Force Trains Drone Pilots by Tracking Civilian Cars in U.S.

July 8th, 2012

Via: New York Times:

Today many of the pilots at Holloman never get off the ground. The base has been converted into the U.S. Air Force’s primary training center for drone operators, where pilots spend their days in sand-colored trailers near a runway from which their planes take off without them. Inside each trailer, a pilot flies his plane from a padded chair, using a joystick and throttle, as his partner, the “sensor operator,” focuses on the grainy images moving across a video screen, directing missiles to their targets with a laser.

Holloman sits on almost 60,000 acres of desert badlands, near jagged hills that are frosted with snow for several months of the year — a perfect training ground for pilots who will fly Predators and Reapers over the similarly hostile terrain of Afghanistan. When I visited the base earlier this year with a small group of reporters, we were taken into a command post where a large flat-screen television was broadcasting a video feed from a drone flying overhead. It took a few seconds to figure out exactly what we were looking at. A white S.U.V. traveling along a highway adjacent to the base came into the cross hairs in the center of the screen and was tracked as it headed south along the desert road. When the S.U.V. drove out of the picture, the drone began following another car.

“Wait, you guys practice tracking enemies by using civilian cars?” a reporter asked. One Air Force officer responded that this was only a training mission, and then the group was quickly hustled out of the room.

One Response to “Air Force Trains Drone Pilots by Tracking Civilian Cars in U.S.”

  1. JWSmythe says:

    I have it on good authority that this is common. They need to be able to track ground targets. Civilian vehicles are not on an expected track, and therefore offer an excellent source for random maneuvers.

    Even civilian private pilots do similar exercises. Circle a house, follow a road, follow a car, follow a plane, don’t hit that really big bird you’re flying at. Instructors are so pushy. … and I missed that turkey vulture by a good 3 feet. Damned thing was trying to suicide into my plane.

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