The U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force are moving ahead with unmanned aircraft training programs that are vastly different from anything they have done before, all in the name of satisfying an order from the U.S. secretary of defense to do everything possible to fill gaps in ISR coverage, especially in Afghanistan.

The Army is in the process of teaching its first classes of trainees to operate new Predator-inspired Sky Warrior unmanned aircraft. A handful of “quick reaction capability” versions of the aircraft have been flying over Iraq since July with contractor-trained operators at the controls. The big change will start in August, when the Army plans to start flying the first production versions of Sky Warriors in Afghanistan with Army-trained operators at the controls.

For its part, the Air Force has underway what it calls a “beta” test program to train college-educated officers with no previous piloting experience to fly Predators and Reapers from sites in the continental U.S. The Air Force has so far resisted prodding from Congress to train enlisted service members to pilot unmanned aircraft, as the Army will do with its Sky Warriors. The service announced the 10-trainee beta program in 2008 as a compromise roughly in the direction of the Army’s approach.

Members of Congress and policymakers are watching the Air Force and Army training programs closely because of the need to expand ISR coverage, primarily in Afghanistan. In September, the Army and Air Force graduated the first fliers from the initial phases of their programs, and those personnel are now in combat training. If the programs work as advocates hope, the Air Force would have more pilots available to expand unmanned aircraft coverage from today’s 37 continuous Predator-Reaper orbits to the Pentagon’s goal of 50. On the Army side, ground forces would gain the bird’s-eye view of Predator-class unmanned aircraft under the direct control of battalion commanders rather than under the control of an Air Force officer assigned as the joint forces air component commander.

The Predators, Reapers and Sky Warriors will perform similar ISR functions — versions of each will carry full-motion video cameras and Hellfire missiles — but there are numerous differences in how the services view the aircraft. The Air Force calls its UAS fliers “pilots.” Those pilots, even under the beta program, are officers who control their aircraft with sticks and rudders. The Army calls its fliers “operators.” In the case of the Sky Warriors, they will be noncommissioned officers and warrant officers who will use track balls and point-and-click controls.

As part of that cultural divide, there is a widely held, though rarely publicly stated, belief among Air Force and ex-Air Force pilots that the Army’s approach to unmanned aircraft training is inferior and possibly dangerous: The Sky Warriors will carry four Hellfire missiles along with their sensors.

In the Air Force school of thinking, UAS pilots should have the same education, experience and skill set as their manned-aircraft peers.

The Army school holds that the Sky Warriors are no more dangerous than Apache helicopters equipped with cannons and Hellfires and flown by enlisted members.

On Sept. 25, eight Air Force officers pinned on their “remotely piloted vehicle” wings, said Air Force Col. Peter Gersten, commander of the 432nd unmanned aircraft wing at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., the control center for most Predator-class aircraft. Those officers — including two former navigators, an engineer and an acquisitions officer — are now in “combat mission training” to gain the hands-on flying skills and experience required before they are allowed to fire missiles at hostile forces in close proximity to friendly troops, Gersten said.

At the same time, the Army is pushing its model of relying on enlisted soldiers and warrant officers into what has traditionally been an Air Force domain: persistent coverage of battle zones from medium altitudes of about 18,000 feet.

“We’re exploiting technology to utilize the convenience of using enlisted folks,” said Mark Farrar, director of the Army’s unmanned aircraft systems training at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. “The Army holds in highest esteem the door-kicker grunt, who can get into close-combat situations and succeed, such as the ‘when-forced-to-take-a-life-with-a-spoon-he-can-do-it’ situation.”

The shift to the Sky Warrior is a challenging one for the Army because the aircraft’s capabilities are so superior to those of its current unmanned workhorses, the smaller Shadow and Hunter unmanned aircraft. Shadows fly to 15,000 feet for five hours. Hunters fly to 18,000 feet for 25 hours. By comparison, the Sky Warriors can fly to 25,000 feet for more than 30 hours. In some respects, the Sky Warriors are superior even to the Air Force’s Predators: The MQ-1B version of the Predator carries two Hellfires compared with the four on each Sky Warrior, known formally as the Extended Range/Multi-Purpose aircraft. The Sky Warriors also use safer heavy fuel, which means they can be fueled up at more locations. Predators require high-octane, purified fuel that limits where it can fly from.

The endurance and altitude of the Sky Warriors mean they can fly across a combat zone, far beyond the brigade-level assignments of the Shadows and Hunters.

The advent of the Sky Warrior has opened up an entire new discussion within the Defense Department about how to coordinate the roles and missions of the aircraft.

Under an agreement worked out between the Army and Air Force service chiefs in February, the Sky Warriors, Predators and any future aircraft in that class will be required to support Army ground commanders and Air Force air commanders.

The services are supposed to share the aircraft with each other: “Operations such as air interdiction in the early phases of a conflict, to direct support to maneuver units during the security phase and everything in between will be supported by either service,” according to a publicly released summary of the document known as the “Army/Air Force Multi-Role UAS Enabling Concept.” The document is sometimes called “Task 11” for short, which is a reference to its place on a list of interoperability issues being worked by the Air Force and Army.

In practice, the agreement is supposed to mean that a ground commander with units under fire can call in an Air Force Predator, if necessary. Likewise, the Air Force could call on Army Sky Warriors to help provide the broader “theater”-level ISR coverage that has been the Air Force’s hallmark.

For the Army, the size, complexity, altitude and weapons of the Sky Warriors have required a dramatically expanded training regimen. Tim Owings, the Army’s deputy project manager for unmanned aircraft systems, describes the challenge like this: It will mean “more involved simulator and flight training than is necessary for smaller, less complex air vehicles” plus “specific training” for Sky Warrior’s sensors, and “training specific to target acquisition and attack.”

Because the Sky Warriors fly as high as commercial passenger jets and military transports, the Army analyzed and adapted the Federal Aviation Administration’s pilot curriculum. It has incorporated instruments-only flight rules into its training program, although Army operators will not be required to prove their instruments-only acumen by flying Cessnas with cardboard temporarily over their windows.

“This is a first step toward showing the world: Hey, our folks are getting the same training as if you were a private pilot,” said Farrar, the unmanned aircraft training director at Fort Huachuca. “They learn all the procedures that a fixed-wing pilot would have to know,” he added.

All Army UAS soldiers, not just those who will be trained on Sky Warrior, go through the equivalent of FAA ground school, said Howard Phelps, a vice president in charge of UAS training and simulation for General Dynamics, which provides instructors to Fort Huachuca. “They learn all the procedures that a fixed-wing pilot would have to know,” he said.

The first Sky Warrior class at Fort Huachuca completed the course in September. The second class is in progress now. The Army is tweaking the training as the instructors get to know the airplane, Farrar said.

“The course is alive — it’s growing and living, and always subject to change,” he said. “We simply don’t know what we don’t know yet.”

At the moment, the Army is planning to put each operator through 9.5 weeks of unmanned air systems “common core training” — the training Shadow and Hunter operators also receive — and then 23 weeks of training specific to the Sky Warriors.

The Air Force is similarly breaking new ground with its beta test training for UAS pilots and is facing its own share of challenges.

Two of the 10 students in the beta class left the program. According to an ex-Air Force pilot familiar with the beta program, as of early October, the performance of the remaining trainees was not good as the Air Force had hoped. ”It’s not going well,” said the pilot, who asked not to be identified because of his continuing work with the Air Force as a contractor. “With the Predator and Reaper, you’re not just asked to do right-hand turns on an ISR mission. You have a tremendous amount of close-air support involved.”

For the record, the Air Force concedes that that some changes will be required to the beta course. “Initial indications are that some additional manned flying time at the beginning of the training pipeline would be helpful,” said Air Force Maj. Matt Martin, manager of Predator training. The first beta class had 17 hours of flight time in light aircraft with instructor pilots.

Another probable change would be to increase the length of training during the initial phase. The Air Force might also increase the level of supervision during the combat mission training phase, Martin said.

These and other changes would make the training more expensive, but the Air Force is going to err on the side of caution, Martin said. “These are combat missions we’re talking about,” he said.

Nevertheless, the beta program means that the Air Force now has three unmanned aircraft systems pilot training paths. One accepts previously rated pilots of manned Air Force aircraft, including those who have flown fighters, tankers or cargo planes. The second category includes college graduates with one year of pilot training. Then there is the new beta path, which is open to all Air Force college graduates.

As for how long it will take for the beta pilots to be combat-ready, the Air Force doesn’t yet know. An A-10 pilot with four years of experience could finish the UAS combat mission training in 45 to 60 days, said Gersten of Creech , while the trainee with one year of flight training prior to UAS school might need 60 to 90 days to be qualified. Without prior pilot experience, it takes time to build the airmanship skills of flying UAS, such as three-dimensional space and time awareness.

Combat mission training will take as long as each individual candidate requires. The Air Force will stop and evaluate the trainee’s performance at each stage of a very specific syllabus, Gersten said. That includes flying UAS in direct support of ground troops and learning the coordination procedures with non-Air Force forces.

Until the students show proficiency in all areas, “we won’t let them fly on a combat mission,” Gersten said.

While it is possible that pilots in training could wash out during the combat mission training phase, it’s unlikely, Gersten said. “The betas we will carry through until they are all mission-qualified, unless it gets absurd, which I doubt it will, because they’re all very motivated.”

The Air Force has a lot riding on the beta program because of the high-level push for the service to increase its ISR contributions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“There is a compulsion to make this a successful program,” an Air Force contractor said.

Ultimately, the Air Force envisions a pilot force of officers with a mixture of backgrounds that can be matched to the skills of particular missions, the contractor said.

Predator pilots have a wide range of abilities that depend not only on training but also their experiences, the contractor said. A tanker-pilot-turned-unmanned-aircraft-pilot might be content to fly ISR missions and “call it a day,” he said.

On the other hand, an ex-A-10 pilot “who grew up learning to kill things” is likely to seek out action, for example, by monitoring the banter on the secure chat rooms used by commanders to communicate in battle, and offering up the services of his Predator if he is nearby, the contractor said.

“Highly skilled, highly trained people can only eat so many peanut M&Ms or Doritos or whatnot,” he said. “There’s the 10 percent when it goes hot, when you need to shoot to take out a high-value target. And there’s the 90 percent of the time that’s sheer boredom—12 hours sitting on a house trying to stay awake until someone walks out.”