Hill Air Force Base has a new and additional workload for what many view as the future of defense: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).
The Ogden Air Logistics Complex (Odgen ALC) will open a new Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) shop dedicated to sustaining the electronic parts that keep three different Department of Defense (DoD) UAVs in the air.
The shop will work on the Air Force’s MQ-1 Predator, the MQ-9 Reaper and the Army’s MQ-1C Gray Eagle. The Ogden ALC already performs depot repair and modification on the Predator and Reaper since 2009, but the new workload is different because it will be soley focused on the electronic parts associated with the systems.
Paul Roberts, UAV project manager, said the new workload will eventually lead to new jobs at Hill. "We don’t have exact numbers yet, but we’re already starting to look at adding additional bodies in 2015,“ he said. Russell Kofoed, chief of the Logistic Branch of the Predator and Reaper program office at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, unveiled MQ-9 Reapers are becoming an increasingly important component in the DoD’s weapons systems. ”These are the weapons systems that are fighting the war on terror,“ Kofoed said. ”There’s no other weapon that compares,“ he added. The MQ-9 Reaper fly without a human pilot aboard and can be used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance as well as performing the role of a traditional attack aircraft.
