Posted by Chris Anderson on December 15, 2009 at 11:58pm
This year's New York Times Magazine Year in Ideas reminded me of a good one from last year's edition: "Drone Pilot Burnout", described as follows:
"On its face, it seems like the less stressful assignment. Instead of being deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq, some pilots and other crew members of the U.S. military’s unmanned Predator drones live at home in suburban Las Vegas and commute to a nearby Air Force base to serve for part of the day. They don’t perform takeoffs and landings, which are handled overseas. But the Predator crews at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada “are at least as fatigued as crews deployed to Iraq,” if not more so, according to a series of reports by Air Force Lt. Col. Anthony P. Tvaryanas.
When Tvaryanas and colleagues surveyed crews who “teleoperate” drones in war zones a few years ago, they found an alarming result: crew members had “significantly increased fatigue, emotional exhaustion and burnout” compared with the crew of a craft that does have a pilot on board, the Awacs surveillance plane. In response, the Air Force implemented a new shift system, in which the number of days off in a row was increased. This year, in March, Tvaryanas released a fresh survey but the results were no better. There was “a pervasive problem with chronic fatigue,” Tvaryyanas writes, which “can be expected to adversely impact job performance and safety.” The survey also showed that Predator crews were suffering through “impaired domestic relationships.”
Why is this? Part of the problem lies in what Tvaryanas calls the “sensory isolation” of pilots in Nevada flying drones 7,500 miles away. Although there are cameras mounted on the planes, remote pilots do not receive the kind of cues from their sense of touch and place that pilots who are actually in their planes get automatically. That makes flying drones physically confusing and mentally exhausting. Perhaps this helps explain the results of another study Tvaryanas published with a colleague in May, which examined 95 Predator “mishaps and safety incidents” reported to the Air Force over an eight-year period. Fifty-seven percent of crew-member-related mishaps were, they write, “consistent with situation awareness errors associated with perception of the environment” — meaning that it’s hard to grasp your environment when you’re not actually in it."
I've found some fixed based simulators realistic enough to give me the willies, but I needed to be flying lower to the ground. Probably not something UAV pilots 7500 miles away should do.
As a former F-16 Pilot, I was ill just reading about using the top gun soundtrack. I have been in fully immersive simulators and they were actually pretty good. If they could add a few more cameras, in addition to the sensor, they could give a much more realistic feel.
@Brian,
No offense taken. I stayed away from the "bird farms" myself. "Top Gun" to some extent was not that realistic IMHO. My last tour of duty in Vietnam, right before the negotiated peace in January of '73, was spent doing EW north of the DMZ and the radio chatter from Yankee Station, where the carriers were stationed, was hot and heavy making "Top Gun" sound like a cake walk.
Yep Jordi , :) I wanted to eloberate it for few people like me. I guess the term should have been Navy'less , :) , may be some high octane fuel smell, noise, ;-) etc will add some bells to poor guys f_lying hours. No pun, I and relate to the feeling.
Why not add some actuators like in real/virtual simulators to simulate the senses, ... I am sure the poor ex/real life figher( the documentary I saw was with the ex F16 pilot flying this) missing the feel and adraline rush + mach speeds, view of clouds and above etc.. ...
The top-gun sound track would cause other major problems... Like the AF pilots becoming physically ill due to all that Navy'ness... :P) (No offense TCIII)
I was wondering if adding a moving platforms will improve something? Also simulate white noise vibrations adjusted to the actual RPM of the aircraft motor, etc. That should help... At least the top-gun sound track. ;-)
The warfare being conducted by the Predator crews is very impersonal as they probably never see the combatants being targeted by the Hellfire missiles.
That being said, I served in the Navy on a heavy cruiser stationed on the DMZ in 1969 during the Vietnam War. Our cruiser was capable of throwing an 8" shell over twenty miles. We never did see who we were killing inland in the DMZ and I do not think that most of us cared. We were really only interested in the next R&R location.
Comments
No offense taken. I stayed away from the "bird farms" myself. "Top Gun" to some extent was not that realistic IMHO. My last tour of duty in Vietnam, right before the negotiated peace in January of '73, was spent doing EW north of the DMZ and the radio chatter from Yankee Station, where the carriers were stationed, was hot and heavy making "Top Gun" sound like a cake walk.
Regards,
TCIII
The warfare being conducted by the Predator crews is very impersonal as they probably never see the combatants being targeted by the Hellfire missiles.
That being said, I served in the Navy on a heavy cruiser stationed on the DMZ in 1969 during the Vietnam War. Our cruiser was capable of throwing an 8" shell over twenty miles. We never did see who we were killing inland in the DMZ and I do not think that most of us cared. We were really only interested in the next R&R location.
Just a thought.
Regards,
TCIII
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