As demand for UAV grows, Army expands training opportunities in Europe

[unhappycamper]

Sgt. Sean Kearney, 28, of Atlanta, Ga., works on a Hunter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle at Hohenfels, Germany, last week. Kearney is a Company A, 1st Military Intelligence Battalion soldier.

As demand for UAV grows, Army expands training opportunities in Europe
By Seth Robson, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Wednesday, May 19, 2010

HOHENFELS, Germany — Rapid expansion of the Army’s unmanned aircraft fleet has prompted the service to begin offering initial training in Europe, instead of sending troops to the U.S. to learn, officials said.

Chief Warrant Officer 4 Jonathan Daniels, a former Huey helicopter pilot who trains unmanned aerial system operators for U.S. Army Europe, said last week that a course next month at Grafenwöhr Training Area, will, for the first time, offer initial operator training on the Raven UAS in Europe.

Until now soldiers who fly the Ravens UAS, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, traveled to the U.S. for initial training, the 38-year-old Kingston, N.H., native said. Hunter and Shadow UAS operators will still travel to Fort Huachuca, Ariz., to begin training.

Since 2003, when the first Hunter aircraft arrived in Germany, there has been a massive expansion of the unmanned fleet in response to their success in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Daniels said.

Each of the four brigade combat teams in Europe now has a platoon of Shadows and 15 to 19 of the smaller Ravens spread throughout line companies, he said.

“There is a constant growth of personnel, expansion of mission and expansion of integration,” he said.



unhappycamper comment: Wait a minute! The Stripes picture above is not that of an RQ-11. This is an RQ-11:




Each RQ-11 Raven costs somewhere between $25,000 ~ $35,000 and the total system cost is around $250,000.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/raven.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RQ-11_Raven

[Lost4words]

1. there is something very cowardly about this, and these remote killers!