Lt. Gen. Steven Kwast said at the Air Force Association's winter conference the service doesn't have to settle for a personnel-to-aircraft ratio about seven times greater than manned aircraft require, and needs to find a way to manage those...Did you catch that? Seven times.
Remember, the greatest utility of UAS is that there is no possibility of human loss to the enemy in case one is shot down. The PAO, PSYOPS and INFO OPS - not to mention all the associated POW issues - unwanted effects of losing a manned aircraft are huge, and quickly move a tactical loss to a strategic handicap.
Those who say they are a great manpower saver? Well ... notsomuch.
We are still in the early days of this chapter in the expansion of unmanned systems decades in the work. To make sure we tailor our platforms and CONOPS - not to mention budgets - we need to be as open as possible to the cost-benefit of the manned unmanned mix.
Personnel costs are not a secondary concern.
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