Money could be saved by Army Grey Eagle program.

The Congressional Budget Office says the Army could save $1.3 billion if it stopped deploying its unmanned aerial vehicle pilots to Iraq and Afghanistan and instead flew its war-zone aircraft from control stations on U.S. soil.

Army officials say that’s fine for the Air Force, not for them.

But analysts say that if Defense Department budgets shrink, the CBO’s arguments could ultimately prevail.

The Army could buy 42 fewer MQ-1C Gray Eagles in 2012 than planned if the service “would adopt the Air Force’s approach of using remote-split operations,” said the CBO’s report, “Policy Options for Unmanned Aircraft Systems.”

The report offered eight ways the Air Force and Army could expand their medium-size and large unmanned aircraft fleet in 2012.

The Army plans to buy 107 Gray Eagles next year.

The CBO said mimicking the Air Force, whose pilots remote-control their UAVs from stations in Nevada and New Mexico, would allow the Army to have the same level of Gray Eagle coverage in the war zone with 27 percent fewer UAVs.

Under that scenario, some of the Gray Eagles would remain in the U.S. for training, but the rest would stay deployed, much like the Air Force’s Predators and Reapers.

Army ground commanders have long said they want their UAVs to remain under the division’s operational control and, therefore, UAVs stay with units when they redeploy from the war zone.

The report suggests division commanders would retain such control during their deployments.

Army Col. Robert Sova, unmanned aircraft systems program manager for Training and Doctrine Command, doesn’t buy the CBO’s math. The increased investment in infrastructure and commercial bandwidth would offset the savings from trimming aircraft purchases, he said.

The Army would need to build ground control stations at U.S. posts and stations such as the ones at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., and Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., Sova said. The Defense Department would also need to buy satellite time to link ground control stations and aircraft.

“Using commercial satellites is a very expensive proposition and one important aspect the CBO report failed to address,” Sova said. “All of the Army’s analysis indicates that there would not be enough commercial and military satellite time available to adequately resource all the service’s UAS demands if it were all using satellite control.”

Beyond the dollars and cents, Sova said he fears an Army switch to remote split operations would cost soldiers’ lives.

It takes too long for division commanders to push requests for UAV support, especially if they have already been tasked to other missions, Sova said.

“Results of that lost time are potentially measured in the destruction of equipment or even worse, injury or loss of soldiers’ lives,” he said.

Sova didn’t completely rule out soldiers flying unmanned aircraft from U.S. ground control stations. The service is exploring the potential of using U.S. ground control stations for the “early phases of an operation when no ground forces are in place forward to actually require the organic services of their UAS,” Sova said.

Peter Singer, a defense analyst with Brookings Institution, said the debate over remote split operations goes back to an old argument between the Army and Air Force over aviation control.

“Whether it was P-40s then or MQ-9s today, the issue Army and Air Force are debating is one of control versus efficiency,” Singer said. “Remote split may get you more efficient tasking of resources from an overall perspective, but in turn, local commanders tend to feel that if they don’t ‘own’ it, then they can’t trust it,” Singer said.

MQ-1C Gray Eagles remain the largest drone the Army plans on buying. However, CBO suggested the Army could buy MQ-9 Reapers in place of Gray Eagles.

The report proposed the Army buy up to 78 Reapers to replace 78 of the 107 Gray Eagles the Army had planned, at an admittedly higher cost. But CBO also proposed the Army could replace those 78 Gray Eagles with 69 Reapers and maintain a similar capability.

The Reaper can carry the Air Force’s new wide-area airborne sensor Gorgon Stare, which Gray Eagle cannot, and it can fly two hours longer when carrying two Hellfire missiles. And since the Air Force already flies the Reaper, the Army could find savings in manufacturing and “operating costs for training, spare parts and tools,” the report said.