Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New study shows grim outlook for future of Air Force pilot shortage

federalnewsnetwork.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 175 posts

Re: New study shows grim outlook for future of Air Force pilot shortage

#101

Post by solatic »

jwally wrote: post #14

An Anecdotal "I quit" I read a couple of years ago about the (then impending) pilot shortage: https://www.jqpublicblog.com/punching-out-latest-dear-boss-l... Dear Boss, I’ve fucking had it. I’m finally giving up on my Air Force and I’m throwing in the towel. Flying fighter jets is no longer cool enough to outweigh the bullshit, and so I’ve broken the mach for the final time. You’re going to believe that I’m leaving b…

I just finished reading "Blood Makes The Grass Grow", about a Norwegian soldier who decided to leave the Norwegian military to join the Kurds and fight ISIS on the ground because his skills weren't being put to use in the Norwegian military. In it, he talks about how the Norwegian brass painted him as a traitor and a war criminal, and shunned him from his old unit.

Every Western military suffers from this. Every. Single. One. And the reason is Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy: there are two kinds of people in bureaucracies: those who serve the bureaucracy's goals, and those who serve the bureaucracy; ultimately the organization is led by people who serve the bureaucracy rather than people who serve the bureaucracy's goals. It's simply unavoidable in a military which must necessarily be a large bureaucracy.

Re: New study shows grim outlook for future of Air Force pilot shortage

#102

Post by drharby »

umvi wrote: post #6

Seems like the Air Force is trapped in a vicious underhiring/overhiring cycle. When I was in college I did Air Force ROTC. A lot of my peers had pilot slots; I was poised as a 17D (Cyber Ops). After graduating, my training date was put on hold virtually indefinitely. Eventually I got an email that the Air Force had commissioned way too many officers and were looking for people to voluntarily leave with no commitment/…

Yea afpc decision making is always short term 3year scale thinking with real consequences rarely analyzed, just number crunching whether or not current training pipelines are optimized for minimal idle time of trainees.

When a t34 rudder issue it a fleet in the navy pipeline, numbers for 92T slots dropped accordingly, so the marker for pilot qualification is as much luck as it is merit

Re: New study shows grim outlook for future of Air Force pilot shortage

#103

Post by MockObject »

aurailious wrote: post #79
openasocket wrote: post #36

This is probably part of the reason why the USAF is leaning so hard towards unmanned systems in the future, because it opens up a lot of doors here. Drone pilots can be put pretty much anywhere in the world so they don't need to be forward-deployed, which will probably help attract people. The physical standards can be strongly relaxed, no need to worry about eyesight or their ability to handle 8Gs, which increases t…

> Drone pilots can be put pretty much anywhere in the world so they don't need to be forward-deployed, which will probably help attract people. Unfortunately the USAF likes to put all their drone pilots at Beale which from what I have heard isn't a very big difference in experience from Minot. Also right now all drones are required to be full pilots and officers. This is a big factor in the shortages problem. No one…

I guess that's changed since 2016?

https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/28/us-air-force-allows-enli...

Re: New study shows grim outlook for future of Air Force pilot shortage

#104

Post by ken »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #2

This is interesting because the military pilots I know simply love to fly. It's an amazing opportunity to fly amazing kit, and to get tons and tons of airtime. The pay was never that great, and young people in their early 20's shouldn't mind deployments in the midwest or wherever. Also, it's a very aspirational job: "Jet Fighter Pilot". They make video games of that. Every little boy, at some point, considered wantin…

"Job dissatisfaction, career dissatisfaction, frequent and long deployments, poor quality of life, non-competitive pay and lack of personal and professional development are among the reasons cited"

It sounds to me like "fly jets" is the only upside, and every other part of the job is pretty lousy.

> They make video games of that.

Video game design is constrained by what is feasible to program, and what makes a decent game. Tetris and Minecraft are incredibly popular, but that wasn't because brick laying was ever an aspirational job.

Apparently fighter pilots only fly ~16 hours a month [1]. Against a typical 40-hour work week, that's less than 10%. No matter how much I love flying, it's tough to sell me on a career where I'll spend more than 90% of it doing the parts I hate.

For techies, working at a startup is cool ("aspirational"!) these days. How many programmers would you still get if they earned less than $50K, would spend less than 10% of their workday writing code, and had to basically retire from coding altogether by 45?

[1]: https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/03/01...

Re: New study shows grim outlook for future of Air Force pilot shortage

#105

Post by sawjet »

aurailious wrote: post #79
openasocket wrote: post #36

This is probably part of the reason why the USAF is leaning so hard towards unmanned systems in the future, because it opens up a lot of doors here. Drone pilots can be put pretty much anywhere in the world so they don't need to be forward-deployed, which will probably help attract people. The physical standards can be strongly relaxed, no need to worry about eyesight or their ability to handle 8Gs, which increases t…

> Drone pilots can be put pretty much anywhere in the world so they don't need to be forward-deployed, which will probably help attract people. Unfortunately the USAF likes to put all their drone pilots at Beale which from what I have heard isn't a very big difference in experience from Minot. Also right now all drones are required to be full pilots and officers. This is a big factor in the shortages problem. No one…

There are drone pilots jobs in more favorable locations for the Air Natl Gaurd, at least.

Re: New study shows grim outlook for future of Air Force pilot shortage

#106

Post by Gene_Parmesan »

WkndTriathlete wrote: post #87
craftyguy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civilian pilots can, and do, all those things. And in much cheaper aircraft to fly/maintain.

I'm skeptical that when disasters strike that any private/civilian organization has the capacity to actually mount an effective relief operation. (Excess capacity is unprofitable and would be trimmed out before the disaster happened.) The military, on the other hand - by definition, in times of peace - has plenty of excess capacity to execute an effective relief operation.

Excess capacity and, for sure, logistics. Despite their other failings, there's still no one else with the experience and infrastructure necessary to carry out huge-scale international relief efforts quite like the US military.

Re: New study shows grim outlook for future of Air Force pilot shortage

#107

Post by asark »

reallydude wrote: post #80
magduf wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have always been 3rd-party choices on the ballot.

I think it's ironic that your comment was downoted. The mentality of Americans is warped beyond repair. If you don't think you have a chance of winning, it's not "realistic" or what-have-you, until you get to the lottery... See the sister comment about voting for HC against DT because it's all or nothing.

It's a structural problem with how our elections work. No sense blaming individual voters for chosing "vote with the intent to maybe (but almost certainly not) affect the outcome" versus "definitely do not affect the outcome, but maybe (but almost certainly not) send a message".

Re: New study shows grim outlook for future of Air Force pilot shortage

#108

Post by fatbird »

tomohawk wrote: post #76
chrisseaton wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now he is a contractor flying drones for them getting paid 3x as much while drawing a hefty retirement. Contracting him could easily still be cheaper than having him still be in.

Not in this case. He's already going to get retirement benefits. Now, he's being payed a lot more, and part of that pay is for an additional retirement benefit. Contracting is really for short term needs. You pay short term wages (which bundle in insurance, retirement, profit, etc) for contractors. However, if the organization will continue to have that same need for several years, then paying people short term wages…

But now he doesn't fly planes, which saves them a lot of money, and I doubt he'd have voluntarily transitioned within service from jets to drones, no?

Re: New study shows grim outlook for future of Air Force pilot shortage

#109

Post by elygre »

solatic wrote: post #101
jwally wrote: post #14

An Anecdotal "I quit" I read a couple of years ago about the (then impending) pilot shortage: https://www.jqpublicblog.com/punching-out-latest-dear-boss-l... Dear Boss, I’ve fucking had it. I’m finally giving up on my Air Force and I’m throwing in the towel. Flying fighter jets is no longer cool enough to outweigh the bullshit, and so I’ve broken the mach for the final time. You’re going to believe that I’m leaving b…

I just finished reading "Blood Makes The Grass Grow", about a Norwegian soldier who decided to leave the Norwegian military to join the Kurds and fight ISIS on the ground because his skills weren't being put to use in the Norwegian military. In it, he talks about how the Norwegian brass painted him as a traitor and a war criminal, and shunned him from his old unit. Every Western military suffers from this. Every. Sin…

From an interview with the soldier [1] (translated by me):

"I've been fascinated by war as long as I can remember. I always dreamed of being a soldier, and of experiencing war myself, says "Mike""

The Norwegian forces in Iraq were tasked with training Iraqi security forces [2].

[1] https://www.nrk.no/norge/xl/_mikes_-kamp-mot-is-1.13728665 [2] https://www.nrk.no/urix/norske-soldater-i-irak-1.12382560

Re: New study shows grim outlook for future of Air Force pilot shortage

#110

Post by asark »

closeparen wrote: post #69
aristophenes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That excitement has to last through years of training with crappy hours in crappy locations. Doesn't matter if you are cool fighter pilot if you can't be there for your family, move them out to the desert, don't have any say over when and where you will go for weeks at a time when you aren't deployed, gone for months or a year at a time when you are deployed, move from one crappy location to another every couple of y…

> if you can't be there for your family Aren't fighter pilots pretty young? I work in an office and I don't know anyone under 30 with a family. If SF cost of living is enough to delay marriage and kids, you'd really think the demands on the military would be too. I get that there are middle-aged career officers, but I don't see why guys in their 20s are having kids before they get out.

Military folks tend to get married and have kids much younger than the office-worker set, from what I've seen.
Post reply on HN