Pilot training pipeline is at max capacity right now, but there are some key factors at work that are causing the shortage.
First, the airlines are hiring, and in near-record numbers. This trend is expected to continue, and even with bonus increases for military pilots, the prospect of an airline career is difficult to pass up. In fact, the Air Force recently convened a “summit” with the commercial carriers (at Charleston AFB, SC) to discuss the issue and explore possible solutions. That is unprecedented in my USAF experience, dating back to the early 80s.
Secondly, some of the pilots who would normally move into manned aircraft have wound up (instead) in the UAV community; some as a career broadening move, others as pilots who will fly drones throughout their career. And as you might have guessed, RPV units are facing their own pilot shortage. The Air Force is going “back to the future” in addressing the problem; the service began training enlisted pilots earlier this year and graduated the first class over the summer.
By all accounts, the NCO pilots (drawn from the ranks of enlisted aircrew members) are doing extremely well. However, they are currently limited to UAVs that aren’t armed (i.e., Global Hawk). That will probably change, and the service needs to take a hard look at enlisted pilots for selected manned platforms, and (ideally) bring back the warrant officer ranks. Warrant pilots have been the backbone of Army aviation for decades and could perform a similar role for the Air Force.
But there are limits on how many pilots can be trained. If the pilots being recalled are assigned to the cockpit, they will need requalification in the jet, even if they’ve been away from flying duties for a relatively short time. The length of the re-qual depends on how long they’ve been out of the cockpit—and those recalled pilots will be competing for simulator time, training sorties and instructor hours with new pilots fresh from UPT, and those already on active duty, who are returning to flying status after a staff job.
It would make more sense to recall these pilots and put them behind a desk, as originally proposed. But even that poses challenges. Why would someone who has retired or separated from service and settled into a civilian career return to active duty for a chance to push staff summary sheets and background papers for a couple of years.
No easy solutions...
Excellent comprehensive post. Thank you.
We trained tens of thousands of pilots in the months after Pearl Harbor.
“Pilot training pipeline is at max capacity right now, ... NCO pilots ... are doing extremely well. ... But there are limits on how many pilots can be trained ... It would make more sense to recall these pilots and put them behind a desk, ...” [ExNewsSpook, post 59]
A decent summary, as far as it goes.
US Army officers who became the first pilots, then USAAC/USAAF officer-pilots of the 1930s and 1940s, and ultimately USAF pilots, have always struggled to prevent enlisted troops from becoming pilots.
Read _Training to Fly: Military Flight Training 1907-1945_ by Rebecca Hancock Cameron (ISBN-10: 1477547762, ISBN-13: 978-1477547762). You will learn:
That before WWI, all US Army pilots who were commissioned officers signed a letter to the Chief of the Signal Corps, begging the Army not to allow enlisted men to undertake flight training. Mere troops were not deemed able to understand the physics or physiological/sensory aspects of flying, nor could they ever attain the athletic abilities one needed to judge all those objects moving at high speed in relation to each other, through the air. (Translation: gentlemen ranker collegiate-tennis types didn’t want the lower classes threatening their ticket to the higher levels of US society.)
During the leadup to and prosecution of the Second World War, various groups of USAAF pilots argued strongly against training enlisted pilots. They did succeed in part, largely confining enlisted pilots to “support” jobs such as aircraft ferrying, liaison work, cargo aircraft, training, and air-assault gliders. Combat aircraft were considered the place for “true warriors” (commissioned officers) only.
In the demobilization following WWII, many USAAF leaders (all pilots) who shortly became USAF leaders, and their supporters in the ranks of pilots, got rid of as many enlisted pilots as the possibly could, as quickly as they could.
By then there were many multi-place aircraft in inventory, and not all crewmembers had to be pilots. Some were commissioned and rated (navigator/observers, bombardiers, radar operators), some were enlisted (gunners, flight engineers, some radar operators, radio operators etc)
Attempts were made to require all aircrew to be pilots, but this backfired immediately. It was discovered that not enough training hours could be found in a day to keep everybody current and qualified in piloting, plus all the other specialized inflight duties they would have to perform. Pilots dug in their heels over the looming prospect of being worked seven days a week. Additional details about what almost became the SAC pilots revolt can be found in _Building a Strategic Air Force_ by Walton S Moody (ISBN-10: 1478125578, ISBN-13: 978-1478125570)
In the 1960s, the in-house argument began revolving around who ought to be in command.
Air Force pilots were by law the only officers permitted to command flying organizations (a part of US Code Title 10, dating to the Air Corps Organization Act of 1926); pilots attempted to broaden this to encompass command of any USAF unit, an ever-expanding number of which had no aircraft and did no flying. In this they were sporadically opposed by nonrated officers and by navigators, who had become the “dumping ground” for all flying specialties requiring rated officers that did not involve taking off, steering, and landing.
The film _Bat 21_ is taken from a true story, but the script never mentions the reason for the largest, costliest rescue operation US forces mounted during involvement in southeast Asia: the downed individual in need of rescue, Iceal “Gene” Hambleton, was a rated navigator who had pioneered a big chunk of USAF ICBM operations. He was in command of a missile squadron when a fighter pilot was assigned as commander of his missile wing; the fighter pilot promptly relieved Hambleton of command, declaring that no nav would command anything in his outfit. Hambleton was immediately assigned to an EB-66 unit in theater; when his aircraft was shot down, a large portion of USAF’s hierarchy came near to panic - he held more specialized weapons-code knowledge inside his head than any other USAF officer alive. Fears ran high, that if he was captured, most war plans would be compromised.
Hence, the rescue effort. All because of a fighter pilot.
In 1975, the offending section of Title 10 was repealed. Many non-pilots moved into command billets, but it happened only slowly in flying outfits. Gradually, each professional specialty developed its own career path, greatly reducing the chances of any outsiders acceding to command. Civil engineers commanded civil engineering squadrons, transportation officers commanded transportation squadrons, missile officers commanded missile squadrons, computer officers commanded computation systems squadrons, etc.
Pilot ascendancy enjoyed a major advance after 1992, when SAC was inactivated; its units and assets were farmed out to other commands. No one could ever figure out what to do with ICBM units, but all bombers were placed under ACC (always commanded by fighter pilots) and all tankers were placed under the newly-created Air Mobility Command (then commanded by a fighter pilot).
The fighter pilots worked like the dickens to remove all navigators from every aircraft they could: tankers and airlifters lost their navs, much to the consternation of many actively then flying. Aircraft with an “F” in front of their designation with more than a single seat were retired as quickly as possible. “Navigator” as a rated specialty was actually discontinued; they are now called “combat systems officers” or some such foolishness.
Severe undermanning of many more specialties than “pilot” continues all over USAF. But Air Force personnel experts remain timid in attempting to keep pilots in uniform; talk never ceases, about how incentives and bonuses can be pushed higher still.
But as owners of overblown, over-coddled egoes, pilots resist. Fighter pilots, owning the biggest egoes of all, are the most difficult of all to hang onto. They grouse about being worked so hard; if they are reassigned to non-flying duties, they complain of boredom and under-utilization. Despite tens of thousands of dollars in bonuses and incentives no one else in USAF uniform ever gets to touch, they whine about lack of money. They are allowed to command any unit that pleases, whether they have any knowledge, experience, or abilities in the field or not.