UAS Crew Operator Requirements

In the not so distant future, autonomy and automation will synonomous with commercial transport aviation.  Until then, the chasm that needs to be bridged is the proliferation of unmanned aircraft operations.  This is seemingly a natural progression to the end-state of full autonomous aircrafts but it is not without its hurdles.  The main drivers to facilitate this transition is the global shortage of aircraft pilots and its impact on the ever increasingly demand on international travel.  As such the need to recruit, train and operate with the correct crew for unmanned operations is a vital topic of discussion.




Unmanned aircraft operators are employed in a remote located away from the actual aircraft asset within a ground control station. With the high costs of training traditional pilots coupled with the intuition of the video game millenial generation, I opine that it makes sense to not have a prior manned aircraft flight hours as a pre-requisite in order to become an UAS operator.  Often you hear that UAS operators do not experience the same tactile feedback or noise reverberations as they would within a traditional aircraft.  Well, imagine an untainted UAS candidate operator who would bring their own unbiased intuition to operate within a GCS.  Further, with GCS design interfaces, they are more and more akin to that of video game controller designs.  The hand eye coordination, multi-tasking and multiple interface monitoring are all basically inherent with this new generation of aspiring UAS operators.




The basic requirement to become a UAS operator should come down to a screening process for the potential to handle high work load in stressful situations, absord and intepret multiple sources of information, proficient hand-eye coordination and also understanding the fundamentals of flight dynamics and operations.  They should also be mandated time within a simulator for line of operational simulation scenarios.  This would help train on CRM related scenarios to foster efficient and decisive communications within the GCS. In terms of a medical requirement, a lower threshold would attract a much wider talent pool, as an example, if your body is unable to sustain high gravitational pulls past 3Gs, it would not be a problem given the high performance aircraft flight effects have no impact to the UAS operator within the GCS.


Cheers,