In the past, we’ve talked a bit about the prospect of Unmanned Combat Ariel Vehicles (UCAV’s) and what they possibly mean to your future as a fighter pilot. It’s a pretty sore subject to bring up to people who grow up and live their lives wanting to fly airplanes. Not just in the military, but anywhere.

I once had an Afterburner Club member ask me not too long ago if the F-22 and the F-35 were going to be the last generation of manned fighter aircraft. The answer of course was yes! Like a huge YES! So big of a YES that if we as a collective nation really wanted to, we could have just skipped right over those two airplanes and skipped right on to UCAV tactics and combat.

Believe it or not though, the good news regarding planes that fly themselves far, and I mean FAR, outweighs the bad.

For starters, like I said, the Department of Defense could have skipped over the development of the F-22 and the F-35…but they didn’t!! The brass at the top still believes that human beings have to be at the controls making important decisions in the cockpit of aerial combat. So throughout your entire career, and I mean your entire career regardless of whether you’re just about to submit your package right now or you’re just in 7th grade right now, there will be a need for pilots in the U.S. military. So no worries there.

In fact, the technology for airplanes to fly themselves is very helpful to you as a future fighter pilot!

For those of you who’ve actually got some flight experience under your belt in a Cessna or a Piper, you may find this hard to believe, but flying the F/A-18, F-16, F-22 or F-35 is actually easier in a lot of ways the flying those little put-put piston engine planes are. How can that be? Well, all those little tiny corrections that you have to make flying a Cessna over the practice field of your hometown…those little corrections are all made for you in a fly-by-wire (i.e. under human AND computer control) airplane. All you have to do is use the flight controls to tell the computer where you want to go. It’s like you are the voluntary impulses of the jet. The computer takes care of the involuntary ones that make all those little corrections. Because in a modern manned fighter, there would be so many little corrections that a human pilot couldn’t possibly keep up with all of them. So thank God for fly-by-wire and computer control.

Always remember that the purpose of technology is to serve human being and not the other way around. Your future career as a military officer will include finding and testing new ways to keep our great nation safe. And you may just find some new dreams and goals along the way.

But time waits for NO ONE! Sign on with the Afterburner Club to day and get started with studying up on this technology and getting the inside edge that will blow away your competition!

Semper Fi!