Keeping the Drone Swarm Alive (opens in new tab)

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, officers joked that there was “nothing unmanned about unmanned aircraft.” A single MQ-9 required over 180 people to keep it running, including pilots, sensor operators, launch-and-recovery crews, and analysts to process the firehose of data. As Major General Michael McCurry once said, “unmanned” formations often demand more people...