Air Force is losing pilots, and the headwind is getting worse

The shortage stands at 723 pilots this year and is expected to worsen, reaching 1,000 in 2017, with no immediate way to plug the gap because the Air Force needs two years to transform a young officer into a fighter pilot. While active-duty pilot training will increase from 200 this year to 285 in 2017, it won’t begin to replace the lost talent and institutional memory.

“confused macho overbearing bluff-mongering with effectiveness”

I was a WSO in F-4s, F-111s and an EWO in the EF-111. While not all “confused macho overbearing bluff-mongering” types make good fighter pilots, good fighter pilots DO need to be pretty macho, come across as overbearing, and are almost always dominant type A personalities.

I was an exceptionally talented WSO & EWO, but I was not the right personality to be a good fighter pilot. That may be part of why I was a very good WSO - I didn’t WANT to be a fighter pilot, but meshed well with good, aggressive fighter pilots.

I doubt the modern military would LIKE good fighter pilots. By the time I retired, the “kinder, gentler USAF” was taking over. I would not fit into today’s USAF. Not at all.

Me thinks Schurmann spent his career in a silo or behind a desk or something. There are types who volunteer for tougher and dangerous units. That’s why you can take a quick look at Joe Biden or Bill Clinton and know they’ve probably never served a day and certainly not with a combat unit. For those of you unfamiliar with Mikey Weinstein, here is a little bit of what that piece of swill has been up to: http://www.militarycorruption.com/stevelewis.htm

“...What did you lead?”

Never led anyone in action.

I did spend years on aircrew duty, flying hither and yon in B-52s, and later was selected to form the initial cadre for B-1Bs. As a rated navigator, I did not command: as Mr Rogers will be able to tell you, USAF still does all it can to prevent navigators from commanding flying outfits.

I spent the rest of my career as a technical officer, leading small groups of specialists in test and evaluation of electronic equipment.

When MSF BU finishes congratulating himself over how tough he has been while I wasn’t, I should point out that without the techies and the support structures, guys like him would be back to throwing rocks. If that.

I can recall meeting only one of the guys on his list: Sam Johnson. But I did accumulate a fair amount of experience, so I can say that combat experience doesn’t make better leaders. Some get smarter, some get more stupid. It does seem to transform the marginally capable, highly egotistical ones into impossibly bull-headed fools. Apparently, after they survive the sundry unpleasantnesses of combat, they think they know everything.

“...good fighter pilots DO need to be pretty macho, come across as overbearing ...

I doubt the modern military would LIKE good fighter pilots. ...”

Congratulations to Mr Rogers for surviving so long in the fighter world.

I did not meet every fighter pilot personally, so I cannot state with certainty that all were unworthy.

I can, however, say that I never met one I would trust.

They are macho and overbearing, but not bold, not gutsy, not truly tough in ways that might be inspiring, useful or worthy: closer to being a pack of whiny, backstabbing mamas’ boys. Competition junkies who live up to the character attribute of “integrity” only as long as it doesn’t get in their way. They will betray their own fellow service members just as quickly as they will chop the head off an enemy. And when there’s no one left to play with, they will undercut and one-up each other. They succeed only to the extent others watch over them, support them, look out for them, and otherwise commit to their care. People better than they are.

There is another explanation for Mr R’s good relations: he got lucky. None of the fighter pilots he encountered found it expedient to stick a knife in his back.

"I did not meet every fighter pilot personally, so I cannot state with certainty that all were unworthy.
I can, however, say that I never met one I would trust.

They are macho and overbearing, but not bold, not gutsy, not truly tough in ways that might be inspiring, useful or worthy: closer to being a pack of whiny, backstabbing mamas’ boys."

Horse Pucky! In fact, Horse Shit!

And since I knew hundreds of fighter pilots, deployed with them, was shot at with them, lived with them in tents, worked with them as ALOs and in fighter test, drank beers with them - I know what I'm talking about. You obviously do not!

"There is another explanation for Mr R’s good relations: he got lucky. None of the fighter pilots he encountered found it expedient to stick a knife in his back."

I knew my fair share of total jerks. Fighter pilots have them. As a cop told me once, about a third of cops are assholes, about a third of teachers are assholes, about a third of miners are assholes. The exception, he said, were lawyers, and he figured about 75% of them were assholes.

Some of the finest men I've ever met were fighter pilots, including my Dad - WW2, Korea & Vietnam. And some of the biggest jerks were fighter pilots - but then, I've known hundreds of fighter pilots and only a few lawyers. I knew my share of jerks, but I wouldn't trade the decades I spent in fighters and flying with fighter pilots for ANYTHING.

I was a WSO. Maybe I was born to be one. Looking at a radar scope was as intuitive to me as looking out a window is for most people. But I flew with a lot of damn good men, and everyone I flew with was a fighter pilot.

“Horse Pucky! ... [expletives deleted, mostly to save space] ...”

Let me get this straight -

As an apologist for the fighter pilotry, is Mr Rogers saying that even when they behave childishly, we lesser mortals are still required to take them seriously?

“[expletives deleted, mostly to save space]”

Oh golly. Did I use an expletive? Are you melting, precious snowflake?

” is Mr Rogers saying that even when they behave childishly, we lesser mortals are still required to take them seriously?”

Had you said some - a minority - of fighter pilots are jerks, it might be different. But you wrote:

“I can, however, say that I never met one I would trust.

They are macho and overbearing, but not bold, not gutsy, not truly tough in ways that might be inspiring, useful or worthy: closer to being a pack of whiny, backstabbing mamas’ boys.”

If you met more than one or two, your comment was either stupid or dishonest. But a lot of pencil-pushing snowflakes on the support side might agree with you, since a significant number of desk-bound office workers had no concept of going out to risk one’s life.

“...Had you said some - a minority - of fighter pilots are jerks, it might be different...”

I should be giving thanks that I did not have to rely on Mr Rogers for a precis of operators’ manuals.

In his rush to vilify, he failed to note that I did not mention any percentages, about who were the jerks and who weren’t. I merely said I never met any I would trust.

“...If you met more than one or two, your comment was either stupid or dishonest...”

MR is free to draw any conclusions he wants to, but I did meet hundreds, and worked extensively with dozens - starting in the mid-1980s and continuing through November 1999.

Many pencils were pushed. The towering contempt MR delights in displaying for the lesser mortals is impossible to miss. I’d remind him that without all the “shoe clerks,” his fighter-pilot overlords wouldn’t have one ounce of fuel to burn, not one AIM-9 to launch, not one single wrench to tighten the lug nuts on the F-15E (F-4, or whatever) he rode in.

One cannot resist asking some questions:

If the fighter pilots really are the exalted overlords they claim to be, why should any of them care what we lesser mortals think?

Why should he care?

What reward can they possibly grant him, in exchange for his hysterical defense?

“You really ARE a pathetic pencil-pushing weenie, aren’t you!”

Ignoring - for the moment - the matchless possibilities Mr Rogers has created to craft witty responses, one cannot help but notice that he isn’t familiar with the historical research of either I.B. Holley Jr or Richard P. Hallion (and I’m not taking odds as to whether the forum at large has heard of either).

I met both: MGen Holley when he was still a serving USAFR O-10, and Dr Hallion when he was USAF’s official historian. It was my privilege to engage in more than one conversation with the latter (honesty compels me to admit that neither conveyed any penetrating insight not available to anyone who cared to read their published works).

I could be coy, but it’s not worth the effort. Suffice to say that both these pencil-pushers stand high on any list of influential thinkers when it comes to air power.

If Mr Rogers had read anything they wrote, he would know that “fighter pilot” is a technical specialty, born of the primitive state of aeronautical design and the limitations on powerplant capabilities prevailing in 1915.

Fighter pilots are not a subclass of semi-divine beings ordained by the Almighty to rule over USAF, nor other armed service depts. They are not uniquely talented (outside the cockpit), not particularly insightful, nor are they morally more worthy than us lesser mortals.

I do give them credit for conning others into falling down and worshiping.

What they truly excel at is going the extra mile, in being sneaky, underhanded pests.

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