Mission control centers for unmanned vehicles.

• Position: Miss - Brief article

* The military is now flying hundreds of unmanned surveillance aircraft over Afghanistan and Iraq. While the aircraft and sensors have advanced rapidly, the workstations that pilots on the ground employ to operate them are archaic.

Pilots who fly the popular Predator and the newer, heavily armed Reaper, in particular, complain that the ground control stations they use make it difficult for them to hit their targets accurately. They say that the stations lack ergonomic features for lengthy combat missions, and require tedious processes of mouse clicks and button presses to deploy laser-guided bombs and missiles.

The operators are experienced fighter jocks and would like the control stations to resemble the cockpits of F-15s or F-16s rather than an office computer screen. "I want to be able to fly and employ this airplane just like I fly and...