In an effort to stem the loss of its overworked and overstressed drone pilots, the US Air Force has introduced a new program to try to convince existing pilots to stay with the service as well as rapidly bring aboard new ones. The plan includes pushing a fresh crop of "Remotely Piloted Aircraft" (RPA) pilots in drone squadrons as early as August and offering existing pilots a $15,000 bonus per year starting in 2016.

As Ars reported in June, the Air Force is facing a potential mass exodus of drone pilots. The New York Times reported that a "significant number" of the current approximately 1,200 RPA-trained pilots who fly the Air Force's MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones were approaching the end of their current service obligations and had stated their intentions to leave the Air Force. Meanwhile, the training program for new drone pilots has only been producing about half the number needed to meet the Air Force's manning levels—putting more stress on pilots and causing the Air Force to move instructors back to daily flying to fill the gaps.

The demands of flying combat missions a world away on long shifts without being actually deployed overseas (most Air Force drone pilots work from Creech Air Force Base outside Las Vegas, Nevada), and of having to switch gears to daily home life after such missions, has been a drain on the morale of drone pilots. As more pilots have left, more pressure has been placed on the remaining pilots. In a press release issued by the Air Force this week, Secretary of the Air force Deborah Lee James said, "We now face a situation where if we don't direct additional resources appropriately, it creates unacceptable risk [to drone operations]. We are working hard to put solutions in place to bring needed relief to our Airmen and ensure our actions show their value to our mission."

Part of the issue has been that the Air Force has drawn its drone pilots from the ranks of pilots who trained to fly manned aircraft—the last time the Air Force pulled freshly minted pilots specifically into the drone program was in 2011, and there has been no specialized school to produce pilots for the drone role.

The first part of the "solutions" now being rolled out by the Air Force includes a "Critical Skills Retention Bonus" for drone pilots starting in 2016. If current pilots sign up for additional five or nine-year terms, they will receive a $15,000-per-year bonus—with half of the total of that bonus being available when they sign on the dotted line. That means that pilots who agree to hang around for nearly another decade could get $70,000 immediately.

The Air Force is also moving to quickly push new officers into the drone pilot "enterprise" by diverting about 80 of the graduates of the Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) program—the program that currently trains the Air Force's manned aircraft pilots—directly to drone squadrons over the next year. That's a stop-gap measure while the Air Force ramps up a separate, drone-specific program for new officers, which will eventually produce between 190 and 300 new RPT-qualified pilots per year. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III said in an official release that officers drafted for drone duties from the UPT program "will serve one tour and then be placed in manned aircraft if desired after completion of that tour. The most critical challenge we face in this mission area is a shortage of RPA pilots and the UPT grads are the fastest way to address that shortfall without sacrificing mission capability in other platforms."

The Air Force has already tried to take some of the stress off active-duty Air Force pilots by tapping into the use of Air Guard and Air Force Reserve pilots, along with some civilian contractors. In April, the Air Force also started working to reduce the number of required daily "combat air patrols" by drones, from the current 65 down to 60 by October. And the Air Force is trying to re-allocate budget dollars to shore up the program—including moving $100 million to buy more, improving ground control stations and drone flight simulators, as well as paying additional contract instructors.