The new Top Guns have no call sign
The military is expanding its use of the word 'ace' in today's warfare
Let me tell you about fighter pilots; they are different from you and me.
They make the unbelievable look routine. They are proficient in aerodynamics and weapon systems, and in combat they make remarkable split-second decisions, one after another after another, for hours on end.
Their “situational awareness” is off the charts, as they relentlessly process their mission, their altitude and speed, their fellow pilots flying jets close by… and an enemy that might be in a jet or firing a ground-based heat-seeking missile that is twice as fast as any jet.
In my one-time flight in an F-16, USAF Captain Tom Kolmer made two 270-degree turns that ramped up the G-forces to six or so. Both times I forgot to force my head back while cocking it to one side and opening my eyes as wide as possible. I am not sure if the G-force pressure was so great my eyes never opened or if I just passed out for a few seconds. Either way, I never saw what the world looked like as we completed those sharply banked turns over scrub pines in South Carolina.
Flying from a base in the United Arab Emirates, Kolmer made a lot of bombing runs in his F-16 over Iraq during The Gulf War in 1991. So did my brother-in-law, Navy Lt. Hank Gibson, flying an A-7 off an aircraft carrier. He was interviewed by CNN after the first night of the war, and simply noted, “They didn’t know what hit them.”
I learned plenty about air warfare from both of them, and also from Tom Ruby, a retired USAF colonel who was a weapons officer back in the day and eventually become a faculty member at the U.S. Air Command and Staff College in Montgomery, AL.
As more and more drones were being used during the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ruby told me that the Air Force was facing an interesting future. Fighter and bomber pilots — regardless of the service branch — are generally service academy graduates who cost a lot of money to train. A drone operator on the other hand, can be a recent high school grad with a few months of training to read a screen, and then pointing and clicking.
And of course, with drones, you have the added benefit of fewer dead American pilots.
That interesting future is now here. And it has affected the nomenclature.
The dictionary may tell you that “A flying ace, fighter ace or air ace is a military aviator credited with shooting down five or more enemy aircraft during aerial combat.” But today the word “ace” is being given to ground-based soldiers who have downed five or more drones launched by an American adversary.
Soldier nicknamed 'Ace of Syria' after downing 6 drones - Task & Purpose (taskandpurpose.com)
Three other Fort Drum soldiers were also honored recently with “ace” status after they combined to shoot down 28 unmanned drones attempting to bomb American forces and Israeli cities.
10th Mountain Division gets three new aces for drone kills - Task & Purpose (taskandpurpose.com)
At first blush, it seems like, well, overkill to use a time-honored word that implies a death-defying skill and stamp it on someone who is sitting in a building manipulating command options on a computer screen.
And yet, who can argue with the results? Most enemies of the United States are never going to develop an air force with fighter pilots. We have entered a world of war drone vs. war drone, which will one day include war spacecraft as well. (Space is indeed militarized, but not yet weaponized).
Dirt-poor countries can now communicate with the world because satellites and cell phones have allowed them to bypass the cost of telephone poles and other expensive and labor-intensive infrastructure. Colleges now offer e-sports that have nothing to do with exercise and physical prowess. Online we buy, gamble and you-name-it with no human contact.
And so now we have “aces” who have never seen the inside of a cockpit or have fought an enemy face to face. And yet, without them there is no telling how much death would have occurred on the ground. They know what they are doing, and they do it well.
Still, I believe there should be another moniker for these new “aces.” But don’t get me wrong: If I ever run into these newly minted aces in a bar, I will buy them all a drink.