Originally Posted by beachbum

i dont see why one officer cant be in control of those decisions while being in charge of a flight crew just like a tank commander is in charge of his tank crew. most of the time the time, that im aware of, the predator pilot is just loitering in the air waiting for orders, on recon, or flying to a target. in either case, the decision of the officer to fire upon a target isnt needed. and as for the global hawk, i thought it wasnt armed.. so what decision is there to make that the pilot cant(not to mention that the global hawk can be put in autonomous mode)?

im not saying that we should take the officer out of the equation but we can divide the tasks to make it easier on each person. it would be much easier and much faster if one person it trained to respond to enemy targets and another is trained to fly the uav and have them work together in ratios of 1:1 through 1:3 of officer: pilot.