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Expanding capabilities of aircraft without pilots. By Henry Canaday MT2 Correspondent
Those tough new birds without pilots in the cockpit are dramatically expanding the coverage and capabilities of U.S. ground, air and naval forces. That has imposed some very different, and sometimes very demanding, new training requirements. Training for Army unmanned aerial systems (UASs) is managed by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Capabilities Manager in Fort Rucker, Ala. Jack Wallin, logistician in the product office for the systems at Redstone Arsenal, said there are two types of training for operators of small unmanned aircraft systems such as the RQ-11B Raven and the Puma All Environment (AE): initial qualification, and sustainment when an operator is out of currency or a system is upgraded. The Army does small UAS training for maneuver brigades, military police, engineering units and other small units. It also trains Marines and Army special operations units. www.MT2-kmi.com
“We try to train brigades at home stations on their ranges,” Wallin said. “For small units, it makes more sense to bring them to Redstone.” The Army also trains at fixed locations in Afghanistan. The Army is surging Ravens into Afghanistan and needs 70 operators per brigade. It aims for 2,358 Ravens in the Army by 2015, with three aircraft per system. There are now 288 Puma systems, again with three aircraft per system. “This is just the Army,” Wallin emphasized. “There are more in the Marines and special operations.” Marines have 50 Puma systems. A major training challenge is sheer volume. Small UASs are primarily used by Military Occupation Specialty 11B infantry as an additional duty, not by full-time UAS specialists. “We had to do it differently,” Wallin said. Schoolhouse training would not enable the Army to deploy small UASs quickly. AeroVironment, the manufacturer, originally did all training for Puma and
Raven. Rally Point Management now trains for Raven. Initial training for both UASs takes 80 hours over a 10-day span. Small UASs need less airspace than larger models, so it is easier to train where needed. There are now six small UAS training stations across the U.S., Europe and Afghanistan. At first, the Army lacked a system for telling commanders who was trained on UASs. “We now have software that lets commanders know which and how many have been trained,” Wallin said. The software tracks operator qualifications and possible shortfalls that should be remedied. New equipment will bring more challenges. Puma, with a gimbaled payload, can fly a straight line and look in any direction at targets. Raven, originally fielded with fixed payloads requiring aircraft to be maneuvered to point cameras, will soon also have gimbaled payloads. Furthermore, the Army wants short-, medium- and long-range UASs. Raven and Puma handle MT2 17.5 | 7