My BIL spent 20 in the AF flying C-130's.
Retired in '93, dinked around with a couple of airlines and then was in 2009, along with other retired AF pilots, requested to come back in to take over some of the extraneous duties of the active pilots.
He did Control Tower OIC duty at Hickam for 3 years up to mandatory retirement age.
Bumped his '93 O-4 retirement pay to the 2012 O-4 level, sweet deal.
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...
One other comment I’ll make - the draw down in the early 90s gutted both the Navy and AF pipeline for years to come.
Add on that there are more admirals then ships in the Navy and likely more Generals than AF Bases in the AF and you quickly realize that we have gone from performance jobs to administrative bureaucracy from a structural force standpoint.
Op tempo is up, equipment is aged, personnel are fewer, maintenance is a nice to have, and new programs take forever to deliver.... Stinks of the 1920s/early 30s. Took time to build back up then...be harder now.
It is too difficult to separate the young ones from their phones.
Few young people are interested. Look at general avaition now, one nearly has to be wealthy just to own/maintain and park a small Cessna. The only way for most of the young to get involved in aviation is to join the service, and most have no desire to do that either. Bottom line, flying became very expensive.
Money is a part of it. The AF does not have the infrastructure to train as many pilots as they used to . Many of the Undergraduate Pilot Training, UPT, bases were forced to close and then all the draw-downs during the Obama administration created this problem.
The AF does not have the money to bring back UPT bases, as well as getting Instructor Pilots, so they can't make up for all the manpower loses during Obama's reign of terror.
Active Duty ping.
Those who actually waged battle were more depressed over having that POS as CinC than anyone else....
HMMMmmm...
My wife's doctor; in her 60's; just re-enlisted in the Army Reserve.
Cost.
The pipeline is pretty narrow to become a military pilot. The payoff is flying cool jets and a good contract with an airline after you retire.
Airlines needed pilots, so they built a pipeline outside of the military. Now many pilots are not from the military, but they also make much less.
At some point, people who wanted to be pilots went to more stable and lucrative professions
If you judge what the article actually says, versus what the Title implies, they are two different animals.
“May recall”, “no plans to do it”, “only if the pilots want to return to the service”...phrases like that from the article don’t shouldn’t invoke all
the questions the title provokes.
Sounds like the Air Force needs to boost retention bonus. Are the other services having the same problem.
Talked to a friend tonight about this whose fiancee is an air force pilot. She said that he was offered a very substantial “pilot bonus” if he agreed to fly an extra 8 years past his initial gig. Said that this was a while lot of money being offered to keep pilots and he signed. Not dure how much.