There is more to this story than meets the eye. There is a big gun fight going on in the concrete sphincter among the AF, Army, Marines about who owns and who should fly the UAVs. The stress thingee is part of the AF ploy to retain control over the UAVs and want them flown by pilots. Gates, we need to prepare only for unconventional and terrorist threats SECDEF, wants the AF to ramp up the number of UAVs incountry. The AF, who wants sole ownership of UAVs, says they cannot comply with more UAVs because of pilot fatigue and shortage because they have to fly manned aircraft also. Apparently the stress argument by the AF is that if their seasoned pilots get stressed from playing video games sitting stateside flying missions think of the stress the other services who allow NCOs who are not seasoned pilots (
perish the thought)
will have to suffer when they fly UAVs . Of course the other services counter with the fact that their UAV "operators" are in theater and work hand in glove with the troops that they support and are subjected to the day to day successes and failures on site because whom they support are real folks and not blips on the radar screen. At this point, from what they have reported, stress does not seem to be any more of a problem for them than for anyone else. And so boys and girls we have shitheads in uniforms and civilians in the five sided puzzle palace fighting over rice bowls while kids in the sand box deal with the realities of non support.