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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of repeated overseas deployments, and the threat that ultimately the job they trained to do — fly planes — is being superseded by remotely-controlled drones.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?"
Outsource routine missions to the Indian Air Force and grant thousands of H1B visas to fill the rest of the vacancies.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
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.
Pilots have always left the air force for private jobs. I think the issue is likely that fewer are signing up to replace them, because the news is out that pilots don't make much money.
If you pay commercial pilots more, then more pilots will join the air force for 5-10 years in order to become commercial pilots later.
Sure, we're likely to see many pilots retire at 65 and all that, but with all the industry consolidation the fact is that new pilots can't make money. There are tons of people with experience flying airliners who can't get jobs flying airliners.
TOP GUN made a lot of people sign up for the navy
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.
We're in incredible physical condition, none of us have near-sightedness, or color blindness. We love the military in particular and the government in general. And combat and sports are what we excel at!
You've definitely found the recruitment pool you're looking for!
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
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
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.
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?
You mean telling pilots that they can't go to school or be released for staff jobs, because they are needed in Afghanistan 6 months of the year then laying them off because they haven't been to school or a staff job wasn't the best way to handle manning. Next you will be telling me that we should start giving medals to people who do things in combat instead of to people who do things in PowerPoint. Because of several factors, in the U.S. we are rapidly moving to a combat Air Force with leadership who have never flown in combat. My last 2 squadron commanders have yet to see the desert. And I recently talked to some U-2 guys who's squadron commander wasn't even qualified in the jet. (He failed out of training, but still kept his command slot) Right now if you want to get promoted in the USAF you simply cannot waste time on things as trivial as flying, and if you don't get promoted, you get fired. BTW Sorry for posting anonymously, but it is easier than having to explain this to Public Affairs.
"Gone are the days of fighting cables and air pressure. It's all computers. "
I've been in the back seat of an F-16 D-model (I was a crew chief and we got rides when there was no one scheduled to go up for other purposes). The G-forces are considerable and you certainly do "fight" them (straining maneuvers etc). Flying any modern fighter takes considerable physical endurance.
A "belly" doesn't indicate lack of resistance to G's.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I've heard the Air Force make this complaint before: No pilots, mission endangered...
My! How they do drone on.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The F-35 is not the problem. There will always be people lining up to fly the newest, hottest fighter. The problem is finding pilots for slow, unarmed, propeller-driven cargo planes on the milk run into Kabul or Basra.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Actually, that's kind of what happened to me. I was just an EE with thick glasses and bad hair, but through an unlikely series of events, I ended up as a test subject to see if people with laser vision correction could effectively fly military aircraft. 10 years later, it turns out they can.
"Fighter Drawdown Dynamics: Effects on Aircrew Inventories" - a 2009 study from RAND, says "to maintain the health of fighter units, the number of new pilots entering them must be reduced, ultimately to below 200 per year by 2016." Fighter pilots are high-maintenance - they have to fly frequently to stay good. Having too many fighter pilots for the number of available aircraft results in a big pool of mediocre pilots.
The USAF seems to be having trouble balancing their personnel pipeline.
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.