US Air Force Reporting Pilot Shortage

An anonymous reader writes "Times sure have changed: it is no longer cool to be a fighter pilot. The Pentagon expects to be short some 200 fighter pilots this year, and is projecting that shortfall will increase to 700 pilots by 2021. Various factors seem to be involved: better paying jobs in the commercial sector with more stability, the stress of repeated overseas deployments, and the threat that ultimately the job they trained to do — fly planes — is being superseded by remotely-controlled drones. With demand for commercial aviators heating up as thousands of pilots are expected to reach mandatory retirement age (65) in the next five years, the Air Force is caught in a quandary. Where are they going to get the pilots to fly their shiny new F-35s?"

Comments

The more likely reason

[EmagGeek]

People don't want to sign up for the armed services knowing that they're just going to be shipped off immediately to one of these middle-eastern hell holes to fight some undeclared war over some bullshit "terror" campaign to "keep us safe" from that big, evil Constitution that is making government's job so difficult.

Re:The more likely reason

[couchslug]

That's been going on a very long time and hasn't stopped potential aircrew. The perception they won't get a slot for their effort IS a deterrent.

What does piss off pilots and ruin RETENTION (which creates shortages) is their "extra duties" and square-filling they are tasked with when not flying. If the Air Force wanted to retain pilots it would reduce the bullshit they have to put up with. It's not as if pilots aren't vocal about it. Many would be delighted with a full career "flying track" even if they weren't promoted as quickly. With command comes a desk, and that desk never empties.

Pilots do not live in "hellhole" conditions, and neither to most Airmen when deployed.

Re:The more likely reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe me, that may be a problem with the Army but never with the chAir Force.

No, their problem is a ridiculous "up or out" policy in the officer corps where if you can't get promoted to a higher rank within a certain length of time, you get shitcanned. Since they only let officers fly planes, they now have a pilot shortage as too many of them are now either gone or at too high a rank to actually do the whole flying thing.

Re:The more likely reason

[Anonymous Coward]

There is the fact that civilian pay for airline pilots is so low. In fact, officer pay (all pilots are O rank) is usually higher than what one can find in the civilian industry.

A lot of people don't want to be pilots just because there is no future in that field unless one wants to buy their own plane and run their own charter service (good luck.)

Almost any other profession, the amount of hours one has to log would get them a journeyman or master rank. A commercial airline captain? $40k/year. To boot, the allowances for hotels and such have been pared to the bone... airline crews end up sleeping in bunks/dorms.

Make the pay worth it, then people will consider that route.

F35 and F22

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps it could be that the F-22 has been shown to be a grossly overpriced death-trap, and the F35 is also likely going to be proven a piece of shit as well. No sane pilot would willingly fly those pieces of shit.

As for the drones, why not just get a bunch of pimply-faced snot-nosed kids to fly them?

-- Ethanol-fueled

Time for TOP GUN 2

[Joe_Dragon]

TOP GUN made a lot of people sign up for the navy

pfft

[meglon]

....the Air Force is caught in a quandary. Where are they going to get the pilots to fly their shiny new F-35s?"

And here i thought their quandary was wondering: if, when, and for how many trillions of dollars it was going to be for the F-35 to be anything more than a theft of taxpayer money by the MIC.

do like airlines, GO CHEAP

[alen]

at this point to be a pilot you have to be in the top 5% of your HS class, go to the air force academy, go to flight school and then train on your aircraft

where to be an airline pilot all you need is to go to flight school and pass a test

this isn't the 70's and 80's. if you're in the top 5% of your HS class you can make a lot more money in medicine, banking, law and lots of other careers

Can't see there being a shortage of fighter pilots

[willy_me]

A shortage of pilots is possible but not fighter pilots. The jobs that will require pilots will be the boring jobs - not those where you get the break the sound barrier. For every F22 pilot I'm sure the air force requires 100 other pilots and it's those for which the air force might be hard-up to find replacements.

Re:Maybe fix them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the USAF can import foreigners on H1-B visas to train as pilots. I mean if these people are the best and brightest why wouldn't the USAF want them too?

Re:Drones

[Anonymous Coward]

Who wants to be a pilot and put your butt on the line every day as you enter enemy territory when you can be a drone pilot half way across the world and go home to your wife and kids every night.

Besides, it's looking more and more like "fighter pilot" is a dead end job and won't be around forever. Why send one fighter when you can send 10 drones that can outmaneuver any manned plane for the less cost and no risk to pilots life.

..and in either case your targets are not likely to even be military targets. That must bite into the motivation factor, knowing that you'll be second guessing if you're shooting up pajero full of teens going to the market, paramilitaries on your side or "enemy combatants". It's not a dead end job but there is no glory.

Great!

[Dcnjoe60]

Great, now the military is going to want to increase H1B Visas for their shortage, too.

Re:PIlots don't make much

[ShanghaiBill]

nobody flies fighter jets in the Air Force and then goes on to fly for regional carriers for $25k a year.

Flying an F-16 is not very good preparation for flying a 737. What the airlines really want is C-17 or C-130 pilots, with plenty of multi-engine experience.

Re:Obvious Solution

[TubeSteak]

The Indian Air Force embarrassed the USAF in Cope India 2004 and again at Red Flag in 2008.
The first time was against USAF F-15Cs and the second time, against the F-22.

The real problem for the USAF is that the F-22 and F-35 will always run out of missiles before they run out of targets.
And when that happens, their close combat abilities cannot out-class previous generation fighters.

Re:Not pilots , assassins.

[manu0601]

There is a difference

.

When you kill with physical presence, your enemies can try to kill you.

When you kill remotely, your enemies only possible retaliation is exploding bombs on your territory, because you are not the battle field anymore

Drone killing and terrorist bombing are two sides of the mirror

Re:Maybe fix them?

[hairyfeet]

That was the F-22 and the bigger problem is that all the MIC has been able to build since the early 90s is large clusterfucks and huge bills, the tech has been crap!

If the USAF wasn't run by brown-nosing MIC asskissers they would scrap the F35, use the F22 for as long as its worth using then dump THAT turkey as well and take a page from the Israelis and buy more F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s. The lines are still popping them out and they even have the Stealth Eagle if you decide you HAVE to have stealth but frankly the enemies we are likely to face? stealth isn't gonna matter, goat herders in caves aren't using advanced radar, in fact nearly all of our realistically possible enemies are using old as hell Soviet era stuff, just look at North Korea getting busted trying to buy old surplus Mig 21s from Cuba.

Sadly I look at the current "strategy" of our armed forces and you know what it reminds me of? The Axis powers in WWII. The USAF like The Germans is betting waaay too much on "Wonder weapons" that spend more time on the ground than flying, are incredibly expensive so we can only afford a handful (thus making sure you can NEVER get economies of scale on planes or parts like we have on the Teen series, and because of the crazy price per unit most likely won't be flown against anybody where its tech can be useful for fear of losing it) and take a hell of a lot to maintain. Compare this to the fact you can get the SU27 at 30 mil a pop, the MiG 29 at 27 mil a pop which means any enemy with real resources will be able to spam us.

Then you have the USN which seems to be taking a page straight from the IJN in that just as the IJN stuck with outdated tactics and weapons (didn't have much choice really) likewise the USN is acting like its the late 50s and going carrier batshit. I mean when the next nearest potential enemy has a grand total of two (and last I checked one of the Chinese carriers was nothing more than a hulk) and you have ELEVEN? That is fricking dumb and it gets even worse when you realize that the Chinese have a sea skimmer now that will reach out 900 miles at 1 foot off the water (thus making the Phalanx useless) and they are already working on a 1200 mile version. Again unless you are going after goat herders which aren't a threat to carriers so no more than five TOPS would be needed carrier groups will be sitting ducks, the enemy could just spam sea skimmers and turn the task force into nothing but debris without risking a single pilot.

At the end of the day we need to go back to the pre WWII way of buying weapons, where we put out a spec and they weren't getting shit until a prototype was available for testing, stop giving the MIC blank checks for turkeys like the F-35, and finally use some of that money they have been throwing at the MIC to offer ALL of our brave men and women better pay, thus increasing the chance to get pilot butts to put in those seats.