The Senate Armed Services Committee is pushing the Air Force to use enlisted pilots for the majority of its remotely piloted aircraft missions, urging the service to adopt the Army's operator training model despite hesitation from the service to use non-officer personnel to perform kinetic strikes. The committee's fiscal year 2017 defense policy bill includes a provision requiring the service to transition most of its remotely piloted aircraft operations to enlisted personnel by September 2019. The Air Force is already...
