Predator UAVs suffer 40 percent losses
Insatiable demand in the field prompts Air Force to ask for twenty-two additional craft; operator errors continue to plague UAV airspace
More problems for the ever-popular General Atomics-made Predator UAV. A combat favorite since the war in Kosovo, the medium-altitude craft has suffered from high levels of what is called “attrition” in military-speak but what we call “crashes.” In fact, military planners now say that the Air Force has lost approximately 40 percent of its Predator fleet, a problem they say is compounded by a shortage of trained crews able to fly them (operator error is the main cause of UAV crashes across the board) and the rough paces the craft are being put through. According to DoD, Predator flight hours now exceed 70,000 hours, three times as much as in 2003. “If you asked me if we had enough people — pilots, sensor operators, mission coordinators, etc. — I would tell you no,” said Col. Matthew Bannon. Of course, just as similar problems with Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk UAV have not stopped the Air Force from demanding more, an “insatiable appetite for Predator” remains. The service has asked for twenty-two more of the $4.5 million craft in the emergency war funding bill.
