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Wanna be a UAV Pilot?

  • 16-01-2010 8:32pm
    #1
    Steyr
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,266 ✭✭✭


    Defence
    DATE:15/01/10
    SOURCE:Flight International

    University of North Dakota offers world's first degree course in UAV piloting

    By David Learmount

    The world's first degree course for unmanned air vehicle pilots has started at the University of North Dakota, with 12 students.

    Known as the Unmanned Air System Operations course, it will be a four-year bachelors degree, equipping students with pilot skills and the technical and operational knowledge they will need to be able to fly UAVs in all environments.

    Jeffrey Kappenman, head of the university's unmanned aircraft centre, says: "Primarily the market is still military, but a lot of that is shifting over time. It's going to be a huge market in the future."

    The university is talking to the US Federal Aviation Administration about its wish to set up a 35,000km2 (13,500 miles2) UAV flying range over North Dakota that the university's centre can use for UAV research as well as pilot training with real - rather than simulated - UAVs.

    Professor Ben Trapnell says: "What we hope to do is educate and train students with the best available technology that exists, but we know that technology is going to change extremely rapidly. We may even need to teach courses in technology that has not hit the street yet."


Comments

  • #2
    Local-womanizer
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,798 ✭✭✭Local-womanizer


    Beats my course anyday:p


  • #3
    Gunny Hartman
    Closed Accounts Posts: 66 ✭✭Gunny Hartman


    When it says that there will be a huge market for it in the future, does any one have any ideas what exactly they are talking about?


  • #4
    Ricky91t
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,281 ✭✭✭Ricky91t


    Gunny Hartman wrote: »
    When it says that there will be a huge market for it in the future, does any one have any ideas what exactly they are talking about?
    I'd assume a lot of air forces across the world will invest in this technology?


  • #5
    Steyr
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,266 ✭✭✭Steyr


    Gunny Hartman wrote: »
    When it says that there will be a huge market for it in the future, does any one have any ideas what exactly they are talking about?

    Id imagine Air Forces and possibly Civillian jobs like Ordnance Survey? I could imagine a UAV performing SAR Top Cover instead of a Nimrod/Herc/Casa whatever sometime.


  • #6
    Gunny Hartman
    Closed Accounts Posts: 66 ✭✭Gunny Hartman


    Ordnance Survey is very plausable I was more interested in the market of civilian jobs we know the benefits that UAV's have for recce and the like.


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  • #7
    silverharp
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 18,854 ✭✭✭✭silverharp


    dont let Google near it :D

    A belief in gender identity involves a level of faith as there is nothing tangible to prove its existence which, as something divorced from the physical body, is similar to the idea of a soul. - Colette Colfer



  • #8
    Tabnabs
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 15,788 Mod ✭✭✭✭Tabnabs


    I knew all those longs nights of playing FlightSim would come in handy one day ;)


  • #9
    OS119
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,518 ✭✭✭OS119


    Gunny Hartman wrote: »
    When it says that there will be a huge market for it in the future, does any one have any ideas what exactly they are talking about?

    mapping, meteorology/weather research, border control, crop spraying, fisheries protection, search and rescue - and thats just the immediate stuff...

    i suppose that once - at some stage - the systems have been hardened and UAV's have a similar safety record to manned passenger/freight flights, that normal passenger flights could become unmanned - one crew at a ground station could be flying half a dozen 747's at a time...


  • #10
    the_syco
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 37,316 ✭✭✭✭the_syco


    OS119 wrote: »
    that normal passenger flights could become unmanned - one crew at a ground station could be flying half a dozen 747's at a time...
    Can't see it happening for one main reason: lightening and other "acts of god" that causes planes to fall out of the sky.


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