Unmanned flight
Holloman Air Force Base graduated its first class of unmanned aerial systems pilots and sensor operators in a ceremony at the Stealth Landing Officers' Club Friday.
The second class of UAS has already started.
Lt. Col. James Merchant said the second class at Holloman hits the flightline for the more hands-on training component Monday. Merchant is 432nd Operations Group, Detachment 1 commander.
He said the second class has started because there is a four-week overlap in the 10-week classes. Airmen do academic training for four weeks, then flight training for six weeks.
Merchant anticipated 100 more students would go through the class by the end of the fiscal year, with the last group starting in September. He said that also meets the Secretary of Defense's directive, which was to have 60 students in or through the training in 2009. He said classes have about 20 students each.
Friday's UAS graduating class will be part of the fight in Afghanistan within three weeks. Most will be living in Las Vegas, Nev., and flying missions out of Creech. Merchant said they have a rotation of deployment overseas because of the delay in the satellite link used to control the MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers. They must have crews in theater that do the take-off and landing portion or the satellite delay could cause the aircraft to crash.
Al-Qaida was rumored to have threatened those flying the unmanned aircraft, Merchant said, so photos of the students and use of their full
Pending approval of the environmental assessment for UAS training at Holloman, Merchant said, Trainers will move here in a permanent change of station from Creech Air Force Base, Nev., to train airmen to operate Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft.
A draft environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact was released at the beginning of the month and can be downloaded from www.accplanning.org.
Merchant said the move will bring three flying squadrons, a training squadron and a maintenance squadron. He said that equals about 600 to 800 airmen coming to Holloman. In addition, 300 to 400 students per year will go through the training at Holloman before being deployed to combat.
Over the past four or five years, the tendency has been for the Air Force to come up with a plan for the UAS, then add to it by another half or 100 percent, Merchant said. It is possible Holloman could wind up with many more than the 600 to 800 airmen planned for relocation so far.
Col. Jeff Harrigian, 49th Fighter Wing commander at Holloman, said the public comment period for the environmental assessment closes April 30. After that comments will be reviewed, but Harrigian said at this point everything appears to be on track.
"We haven't seen any surprises," Harrigian said. "So we're hoping it will be a pretty good turnaround after the 30th of April."
Harrigian said the Air Force's decision to consider Holloman as a preferred location for a second UAS training unit was in August 2008. And for the Creech airmen, as a temporary duty station, to be graduating a class by April was almost "unheard of" in most training organizations.
"Once the environmental is released, it'll be full afterburner ahead," Harrigian said. "To make sure we meet the requirements that the Secretary of Defense has laid out for us."
"It was a really gargantuan team effort between the 432nd Wing and the 49th Fighter Wing on making this happen," Merchant said. "It was almost an almost abnormal amount of cooperation that happened ... and the support from the folks downtown was spectacular."
Merchant said last year the Secretary of Defense directed that a second formal training unit for UAS be stood up and graduate its first class by May 2009. He said while graduating the class Friday followed that directive, they were also within the law because they had not moved permanently before the environmental assessment process was completed.
Merchant said if the environmental assessment does not go as anticipated, the Air Force can move the training unit elsewhere.
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