MOSCOW, January 5 (Sputnik) — The US Air Force is anticipating a "perfect storm" of increasing demand and decreasing pilot availability of its drone forces, the Daily Beast reported on Monday.
According to an internal Air Force memo obtained by the news outlet, the drone fleet's readiness and combat capability will be damaged by the imbalance "for years to come."
"[The US Air Force drone fleet] is at the breaking point, and has been for a long time. What's different now is that the band-aid fixes are no longer working," a senior Air Force official told the news website.
"I am extremely concerned," Gen. Carlisle was quoted as saying, claiming that the 65 drone combat air patrols (CAPs) demanded by the Pentagon stretches the available pilots to their limits.
The problem is exacerbated by the decreasing number of operators of the remotely pilot aircraft (RPA), four of which are required for each CAP.
"Pilot production has been decimated to match the steady demand placed upon the RPA community by keeping 'all hands' in the flight," Gen. Carlisle wrote to Gen. Welsh.
Drones, often referred to as RPAs or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), are aircraft controlled by pilots from the ground or functioning autonomously on pre-programmed routes. Over the past few years, they have gained wider use in military, industrial, commercial, surveillance and civilian applications.
A former CIA official told Sputnik last Wednesday that despite a formal end to NATO's combat operations in Afghanistan, US drone strikes targeting the Taliban and other insurgent groups are expected to continue well into this year. According to Bureau of Investigative Journalism data released in November, drone strikes targeting 41 terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen over the past decade claimed the lives of 1,145 civilians while only killing 32 targets.
