I wonder if this will be spun as “Trump Reinstates Military Draft.”
Competence, talent and merit have been sacrificed on the altar of diversity in the military. Such were the dictates of the high priest Obama.
The Air Force basically only lets people with engineering degrees become pilots.
They also don’t allow warrant officers to be pilots.
Easy fix if they wanted to.
Attended a talk by a top NORAD general. We are so depleted in equipment they are being forced to redeploy from Europe and Asia to protect the homeland.
>>I find having to do this very concerning. Why are there not more pilots coming through the ranks?
Some may be getting rated, serving the minimum time and getting out. Others may be moving to more political jobs like Public Information or Diversity Compliance jobs. I’m sure the AF is pushing a lot of people who unsuitable for the job through to fulfill quotas and then make the Maintenance Officers as soon as it can.
So many officers just walked away from the military during Obama’s rule due to political correctness. Or were purged by Obama and his political correctness officers.
What OTHER shortages, pilots, technicians, mechanics, clerks, and the myriad of critically needed skill exist as a result of the last eight years of a Commander in Chief who visibly degraded our military?
Could today’s military pull of D-Day or take the Marianas? Or hold onto Pusan?
we can all guess which political party caused this and any other service retiree recall.
The pilot shortage is REAL, and we are beginning to feel the consequences of it. This is a subject I have spoken much about.
There several factors, but the biggest, by far, has been the economic destruction of the American Middle Class, and the loss of decent paying jobs for the masses. The decline in the pilot population closely follows the decline in real family incomes from around 1980 onward.
Flying, or learning to fly, has never been cheap. In high school, I had to work 25 hours to afford one hour of flight training.
Add in another factor, that being the decline of eligible people in the population.
Stuffing ADD drugs and psychotropics into kids that act out in school, instead of disciplining them is a big part. As is widespread drug usage, and arrests, will almost immediately disqualify you from most flying jobs, and the medical process.
There has also been a severe pilot PAY SHORTAGE for at least two decades, that plays a big part of this. Lots of kids with the desire, could not justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for commercial flight training, only to make $18k flying for a regional to build time for the majors, while living like a pauper.
Another thing is regulation driving costs through the ceiling.
In 1972, a brand new Cessna 172, the workhorse of training and general aviation, cost roughly 2 1/2 years average salary to buy. Today that same, almost exact airplane, costs 9-10 years of the average salary to buy.
Much of that cost is regulatory and liability.
There is no one fix for this, a lot of things have to happen in the right order for it to happen.
How many of the existing active-duty pilots are “flying” drones from Nevada?
Left the AF after 4 years. Wanted to stay in as a pilot but flunked the eye exam. I missed the AF for a long time.
My son is a Navy pilot, and I watched his training as the group went through about 3 levels from scratch to assignment to a platform to learning to fly the right planes. I s'pect it isn't all that different in the Air Force.
While there may have been advancement from the ranks to some pilot specialty over the years, it isn't the kind of thing you can put an announcement on a bulletin board: Pilots wanted.
Most of the lads and lasses that do it express an interest early. That's barely the starting point. I know my son had patient instructors, but there were still many places along the way he could have failed. Many potential pilots do fail along the way.
Plus, I know at least one Air Force officer (not a pilot) who was honorably, while involuntarily, separated from the Air Force in the obama years. It would not surprise me to hear there were many pilots in the obama years virtually pushed out that really didn't want to leave. The problem is unless it was quite recent, they missed advancement some of their peers didn't miss.
If this is voluntary, it will be interesting to see if a thousand return. For many it will be a real sacrifice.
I wonder how many Air Force (pilot) reservists exist that could just be activated.
Finally, I wonder if there are any provisions for drafting retired military if there is a need.
As I was reading this two big 4 prop transports just flew very low over the house (we’re at 10K ft) likely out of Peterson AFB. How cool is that?
Two points here. It seems like red on several occasions that the military is getting away from manned aircraft and going with unmanned such as the drums which can be piloted from a remote location. These particular aircraft do not require the same training as as far as the pilot goes.
I think it would be a good idea to recall some of the really fine generals who had retirement forced on then because they didn’t fit Obama’s politically correct world and furlough some of the ones he kept just to make room.
I wonder how many left because of Obama would now be happy and tickled pink to return and the Air Force is citing a “shortage” as an politically correct excuse to bring them back....
Retired or IRR? THese media buffoons sometimes purposely don’t get it.
Now that the US finally has a Commander and Chief that a real patriot / military person can support and respect. We haven’t had one of those since Ronald Reagan, and JFK before that.
I’m waiting for the Army to recall some of us. I’ll go back as an 80 yr old Colonel, hey 80 is the new 50 right?
Air Force officers have not chosen to stay in service because they reject the religious and gender politics currently in vogue in the gay force. Trump has not followed through on his campaign promises to rid the AF of this BS.