Air Force Strains to Meet the Demand for Drones in Afghanistan

UAV's can stay in the air for up to six hours and can fly at heights up to 15,000 feet.

Turner also takes issue with the fact that people refer to UAVs like the Predator and Reaper as "drones." "OK, there may not be a pilot actually sitting in the aircraft, but there's nothing unmanned about how we fly it. All of the missions are exactly the same as an A-10, an F-16, an F-15, or a B-1," he says. "We're just not physically sitting in the airplane. I always cringe when I see it."

At the base in southern Afghanistan, UAV pilots work 12 hours on and 12 hours off for 120 days, adds Turner. "They don't get days off the whole time they're out here."

Turner does not expect the demand to dip anytime soon. At the moment, the Air Force is fielding the new Reapers so quickly that the service often hasn't had time to test them back in the United States. "The acceleration of this capability in combat came with some risk," he says. "But the fact that [UAVs] are unmanned, that's an acceptable risk. If you can have them in combat, and test them at the same time, why not?" Particularly, he adds, when F-16s cost about a half-million dollars an hour to fly and are quickly being worn out by the wear and tear of flying in the heat and desert.

To date, the problems with the Reaper have been relatively minor, he adds. "We've had some challenges with gear retraction—that little motor that will drive your landing gear back in. It would catch a little bit," he explains. "We shaved off a little bit of the material and we were able to fix it." This summer, there was a fuel pump problem to grapple with as well. "We had several fuel pumps fail within three or four weeks of each other," Turner says. "Normally, these are things that you go through before you get to combat."