Drone businessIncreased use of UAVs leads to new job opportunities

The growing importance of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is producing new job opportunities across the United States, with more likely to come as drones enter the civilian realm.

Over the last decade UAVs have become a critical component in U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, serving in combat roles targeting suspected militants or as surveillance vehicles giving real-time intelligence to battlefield commanders.

Spending on UAV’s accounted for more and one-third of the Air Force’s 2010 aircraft budget and the 2012 Defense Department budget contains $4.8 billion in funding for drones.

According to the defense-analysis company the Teal Group, the world-wide market for UAV’s is expectedto rise to $15.1 billion annually over the next decade, driven in large part by demand from the U.S. government.

In 2005 the 860 employees of the Springfield Air National Guard base were told that their facility would be closing as a result of a decision by the Pentagon’s Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC), which was tasked with reallocating Defense Department resources more effectively in order to save money.

The base had previously been a training site for F-16 pilots and an assignment training aviators from the Royal Netherlands Air Force had delayed the closure.

In 2010 the base was given a new lease on life when it was given a new mission—ground   control operations for MQ-1 Predators, which have become the public face of U.S. missile strikes on suspected terrorists in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

The Defense Department’s budget for the 2012 fiscal year contains $6.7 million to convert the old F-16 training building into a state-of-the-art Predator operations center.

The effort to keep the base open was spearheaded by Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.

While no aircraft will be stationed at the base, “pilots” will remotely control drones operating across the world.

“The Predator mission will maintain positions for more than 800 Ohioans and preserve southwest Ohio’s position as a stronghold for our nation’s security viability,” wroteBrown in a February press release.

The decision to host the Predator control center at the Springfield base has spurred additional job growth in the area.

In October the Ohio Controlling Board announced a grant of $550,000 to government contractor SAIC to provide support for the Springfield Predator base by adding 180 jobs to its offices in nearby Beavercreek and thirty-five in the Springfield area over the next three years. The company also expects to add “several hundred” more jobs, with some working at a new UAV facility close to the base.

Springfield is not the only site scheduled to benefit from the increasing number of drones in the U.S. arsenal.

The Air Force recently announcedthat it had narrowed its list of candidates for a new ground control station for a new drone squadron consisting of Predators and the larger MQ-9 Reaper. 280 active-duty personnel will be added to either Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, or Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina. The final decision is expected sometime in December.

UAVs are also appearingmore and more inside the United States and their domestic use is expected to increase in the coming years.

For the last several years the U.S. Customs and Border protection has used drones to spot illegal immigrants and drug smugglers attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

In addition next January the Federal Aviation Administration is expected to issuenew rules regulating the use of drones in U.S. airspace, potentially providing companies which a vast and largely untapped market. Domestic use of drones is currently severely limited due to concerns that they are not sufficiently capable of avoiding collisions with manned aircraft.

Law enforcement agencies are the most likely customers for UAVs at least initially and police departments in Texas, Florida, and Minnesota have already expressed interest in acquiring the aircrafts.

Drones could also be used for a number of jobs other than surveillance.

Last year Fredrick W. Smith, the founder of shipping giant FedEx, told a conference hosted by Wired magazine that a convoy of drones could be used to carry packages, while being led by a manned aircraft.

“Think of it like a train where you have a locomotive and you put two or three or four or ten cars — depending on what demand is — and the drones basically fly the exact same flight profile in formation,” he said.

Regardless of their role, drones are expected to become big business if allowed by the FAA. The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, which according to their website is the “world’s largest non-profit organization devoted exclusively to advancing the unmanned systems community,” estimates that 23,000 jobs could be added over the next fifteen years if drones are allowed in U.S. skies.