The Air Force announced Monday that it has begun its search for officer volunteers with no previous flying experience to enter the service’s new training program for operating MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles. The first 10 officers selected will start training in January and a second batch of 10 will begin instruction next April. If the first two training classes of 10 prove to be successful, then the Air Force will start accepting larger classes, service officials have said. Gen. Norton Schwartz, Chief of Staff, announced the new UAV training program last month at AFA’s Air & Space Conference in Washington, D.C. The service eyes it, along with the new practice of taking about 10 percent of its new UPT graduates and training them to operate Predators and Reapers, as a means to beef up its pool of UAV operators to 1,100 by Fiscal 2012 to meet the US military’s insatiable demand for greater overhead UAV coverage to support combat and stability operations. (This Air Force release contains basic requirements, such as age and years of service limits.)
Space Force leaders have been saying for months that they are uniquely prepared among the services to embrace the Trump administration's acquisition reforms. Now, officials from the Program Executive Office for Battle Management, Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence, or BMC3I, are implementing some of those reforms
