‘This allows me to go home to my family at night but still be able to help the soldiers in the field,’ says Staff Sgt. Nicollette Sebastian, a Predator sensor operator
Lt. Col. Tom Rempfer, an MQ-1B Predator pilot, explains how the pilot controls the aircraft. The sensor operator would sit next to him.
Lt. Col. Tom Rempfer sits at the console and does what he’s done for more than 5,000 hours of his life. He flies.
What’s new to him is that he’ll never leave the ground in Arizona and pilot an aircraft perhaps 8,000 miles away.
Rempfer, a former fighter pilot, flies commercial jets. But now he’s with the Arizona Air National Guard flying MQ-1B Predator drones over Iraq and Afghanistan.
“There’s no seat-of-your-pants flying in this,” Rempfer said from the ground control station at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. “We take our time on this airplane.”
He doesn’t have a lot of choice because the plane cruises at about 75 miles per hour.
Rempfer is one of the 75 members of the new 214th Reconnaissance Group at D-M.
The 214th was officially commissioned Wednesday when the D-M honor guard presented Lt. Col. Gregg Davies with “the colors” (a flag with the group’s insignia).
It’s an old military tradition to have the commander publicly accept responsibility for his unit.
The 214th has been operational since July.
Predators are launched and landed by crews overseas. Then, pilots from around the world control them by satellite link. The unmanned aerial vehicle’s main mission is to gather intelligence in a battle area, but the craft can carry a pair of air-to-ground missiles.
The 214th has done a couple of strike missions but members won’t discuss what they were attacking.
The planes cost $3 million – but the ground control station and communications equipment costs another $37 million.
Flying slow is not a bad thing for close air support missions because the drones don’t zip over the battlefield. They are powered by what essentially is a snowmobile engine that can keep a drone aloft for up to 20 hours.
The Predator is controlled by a pilot and sensor operator in a souped-up, air-conditioned trailer parked at D-M.
The satellite link creates a two-second lag between telling the plane to do something and it responding. The same thing happens when a sensor operator guide missiles to targets.
“You just have to be conscious of the delay,” said Staff Sgt. Nicollette Sebastian, a Predator sensor operator. “It makes it harder.”
The operation is a lot like a Play Station.
“Oh, it’s a gamer’s delight,” Sebastian said.
She can fly a combat mission, then grab a Thirstbuster at a Circle K a few minutes later as she heads home with her family.
It takes time getting used to, Sebastian said.
“You have to be able to turn it on and turn it off,” she said. “This allows me to go home to my family at night but still be able to help the soldiers in the field.”
The launch of the 214th Recon Group has been in the works for two years. The Arizona National Guard had to fight to keep it, said guard commander Maj. Gen. David Rataczak.
“It was a budget thing,” he said. “The budget goes up and it was included, and the budget goes down and it wasn’t.”
Eventually, the unit will fly UAVs out of Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista on missions including search and rescue as well as border surveillance.
An MQ-1B Predator that will be based at Fort Huachuca
Twins Vasha (right) and Raygan Hatch peer into the sensor pod of a model of an MQ-1B Predator during the 214th Reconnaissance Group's activation ceremony Wednesday.