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

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

#151

Post by aristophenes »

scottlamb wrote: post #146
aristophenes wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see this is that the US Air Force does allow enlisted to fly. First, get a college degree, and go through the application process to become an officer. Prior enlisted with the smarts to do it are seen as better officers. Then once you've done that you can get a pilot slot. Why would I want someone who is not willing or able to get a college degree pilot my $150 million dollar jet?

> Why would I want someone who is not willing or able to get a college degree pilot my $150 million dollar jet? You could ask this same question about almost any requirement. You just finished saying that prior enlisted are seen as better officers. So why not require all officers to have previously enlisted? (in addition to college or instead of college) And there are blanket answers to your question that apply to ju…

Requiring officers to be enlisted first would be a great idea, in my opinion. And yes, most jobs nowadays require a college degree, and flying F-22s is one of them. Again, the problem is not that they can't find enough people to train, show me anything that says that. It's that they can't retain the people they have already trained.

Since their incoming pipeline is completely full, if you want to use enlisted pilots you are going to have to pull some officers out of line to replace them with enlisted.

I'm not saying enlisted guys can't do the job, just that this is the way the system works, and this part doesn't seem to be too broken. If you're enlisted and want to do it, the government will pay for your entire college and give you a stipend on top (ROTC, GI Bill), you can even do it part time while you are still enlisted in the military[1], then give you a nice raise to become an officer. Pretty good deal.

The numbers might not always add up for free tuition, but there are a lot of schools in the yellow ribbon program that will cover additional costs for servicemembers[2].

[1] https://www.military.com/education/money-for-school/air-forc... [2] https://www.benefits.va.gov/GIBILL/yellow_ribbon/yrp_list_20...

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

#152

Post by jillesvangurp »

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…

All of that can be automated. For new drone systems it makes a lot of sense to strive for fully autonomous systems. Why have some human in the loop for things a computer can do faster and more efficiently? That stuff will eventually trickle down to civilian aviation as well. Just like self driving cars are likely to happen in the next years; self flying planes are just as feasible. The shortage for pilots is short term. Pilots starting today in their careers need to consider that they might be automated away some time during their career.

Fortunately, a large part of the planes flying today will still be flying for years to come and they won't be flying themselves. E.g. the B52 program was just extended to 2050 I believe. Replacing that stuff will take decades even when it is feasible technically.

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

#153

Post by Itaxpica »

richardhod wrote: post #61
nradov wrote: post #33

The Army also has a pilot shortage, but they've done a little better than the Air Force due to allowing warrant officers to fly. Many pilots just want to fly , they don't want to deal with all the other management responsibilities and staff assignments that come with being a commissioned officer. When the Air Force split off from the Army they decided they only wanted commissioned officers as pilots and eliminated WO…

It's interesting how the US military copied the British class-based system of management, officers v other ranks. It does stymie a lot of creativity and talent.

This is true of basically every army on Earth, because it works. In fact, the USSR notably attempted to do away with the idea of an officer class in the Red Army (since it was seen as un-Socialist) and wound up changing their mind and re-instituting officers about a decade later.

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

#154

Post by darkpuma »

larkost wrote: post #150
darkpuma wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the best pilots in history had no university degrees. Chuck Yeager famously had none. Jacqueline Cochran had none. Amelia Earhart dropped out of Columbia. Charles Lindbergh dropped out of UW-Madison. Howard Hughes dropped out of Rice. Hanna Reitsch dropped out of medical school at Kiel. If the idea is simply use willingness to pay for / put up with university as a proxy to test seriousness and dedication, why…

One of the arguments for pilots to be officers is that they are the ones who ultimately make the final decision on dropping bombs. The U.S. Air Force took a heavy mental beating over the horror of indiscriminate bombings it conducted in the Vietnam War (that was not a war...), and has internalized it. The thinking is that officers are personally responsible for the command decisions that they execute. If you are orde…

The supposed connection between ethical behavior and university degrees is totally spurious. It's a post-hoc justification for blatant class discrimination, plain and simple. I recommend you dig into the life of Jacqueline Cochran in particular; she was far more than merely one of the best pilots to have ever lived.

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

#155

Post by mbrameld »

chrisseaton wrote: post #115
jessaustin wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

,,,voluntarily transitioned within service... My impression is that very little about the military is voluntary. If they need pilots to fly different craft, the pilots will fly different craft.

Large job changes like that aren’t forced in my experience. If the person isn’t happy doing it the results are unlikely to be good, so they always try very hard for volunteers. It’s a volunteer service after all.

Hi, have you heard of the NCORP? It's how the Air Force levels out enlisted career fields. Since the Air Force sets force-wide promotion rates, some career fields end up with too many folks in some of the NCO grades.

When that happens, they take the most junior folks in the grade and force them to retrain into another career field. They give you a short list to choose from. Most of the jobs are special operations and aircrew. You have a short period of time to make a choice and submit a package. If you don't act, they pick one for you. They picked airfield management for me near the end of an enlistment that earned me a 5.0 SRB when I re-upped as a 3C072. I self-promoted myself to Mr, instead. This was in 2008. The Air Force has been bad at staffing for a long time.

Once you have volunteered, the needs of the service are what matters. They attempt to accommodate, but in the end if they need you somewhere they're going to put you there.

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

#156

Post by chrisseaton »

mbrameld wrote: post #155
chrisseaton wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large job changes like that aren’t forced in my experience. If the person isn’t happy doing it the results are unlikely to be good, so they always try very hard for volunteers. It’s a volunteer service after all.

Hi, have you heard of the NCORP? It's how the Air Force levels out enlisted career fields. Since the Air Force sets force-wide promotion rates, some career fields end up with too many folks in some of the NCO grades. When that happens, they take the most junior folks in the grade and force them to retrain into another career field. They give you a short list to choose from. Most of the jobs are special operations and…

> force them to retrain into another career field. They give you a short list to choose from. Most of the jobs are special operations and aircrew.

How can that possibly work? How can you force someone to retrain into special operations? How does anyone build the motivation and determination to pass the qualification courses for that when they don't even really want to be there? Why would special operations even want someone who wasn't remotely a volunteer?

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

#157

Post by lutorm »

aristophenes wrote: post #112
richardhod wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how the US military copied the British class-based system of management, officers v other ranks. It does stymie a lot of creativity and talent.

The way I see this is that the US Air Force does allow enlisted to fly. First, get a college degree, and go through the application process to become an officer. Prior enlisted with the smarts to do it are seen as better officers. Then once you've done that you can get a pilot slot. Why would I want someone who is not willing or able to get a college degree pilot my $150 million dollar jet?

Why would I want someone who is not willing or able to get a college degree pilot my $150 million dollar jet?

Because very little you learn in college is relevant to whether you can fly those military jets?

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

#158

Post by lutorm »

tenpies wrote: post #11
usapatriot111 wrote: post #8

country doesn't need that many pilots if it doesn't wage endless wars, though.

Except they do. Pilots also fly in humanitarian aid, fly out civilians and medical casualties, carry out Search and Rescue, and perform reconnaissance during natural disasters.

That all applies to transport aircraft, not to combat aircraft. An F-35 is pretty useless for any of the roles you outlined.

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

#159

Post by lutorm »

tomohawk wrote: post #81
brixon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how else would we go into deeper debt? the budget deficit and debt is not going to grow on it's own.

Entitlement programs dwarf military spending. https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-the-Federal-US-budg...

They're called "entitlement" because people explicitly pay into them and then the government has to pay those benefits. That's not relevant if you're talking about the discretionary budget.

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

#160

Post by true_religion »

chrisseaton wrote: post #156
mbrameld wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, have you heard of the NCORP? It's how the Air Force levels out enlisted career fields. Since the Air Force sets force-wide promotion rates, some career fields end up with too many folks in some of the NCO grades. When that happens, they take the most junior folks in the grade and force them to retrain into another career field. They give you a short list to choose from. Most of the jobs are special operations and…

> force them to retrain into another career field. They give you a short list to choose from. Most of the jobs are special operations and aircrew. How can that possibly work? How can you force someone to retrain into special operations? How does anyone build the motivation and determination to pass the qualification courses for that when they don't even really want to be there? Why would special operations even want…

The big hurdle is volunteering to be in the military. Once you have though, you can’t quit whenever you want and can’t skip without serious punishments.
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