New study shows grim outlook for future of Air Force pilot shortage • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by asark » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 2:19 PM UTC

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…

Something like this seems to be infecting our entire society.

See: Graeber's Bullshit Jobs—he blames, more or less, the takeover of Finance and with it a new form of managerialism, generally.

See also: common everyday experience and observation.

See also: the mysterious non-Baumol's cost disease not-so-slowly eating "the West"'s, and especially the US', ability to get anything done.

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

#22

Post by vasco » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 2:19 PM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #18

> A recent RAND study found the cost of training a basic qualified fighter pilot ranges from $5.6 million for an F-16 pilot to $10.9 million for an F-22 pilot. Those numbers seem outrageous to me. Why does it cost so much? Are there frequent plane crashes?

Just a single sortie is very expensive in just maintenance + supply. You need a whole crew to prepare a plane. Not to speak of the whole infrastructure required to train pilots, having places to fly from, teachers to learn from. It all adds up to a huge number, that when you divide by the number of pilots trained, doesn't get reduced by a lot.

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

#23

Post by tyingq » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 2:19 PM UTC

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/…

That's interesting. I'm curious how much of your college costs that ROTC participation covered. Just tuition, or housing too, or also a stipend?

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

#24

Post by jplayer01 » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 2:19 PM UTC

rco8786 wrote: post #4

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…

When I was young and single the last place you were gonna catch me relocating to was some sleepy midwestern town. That was a weird thing to just paper over

For the chance to fly a modern fighter jet? Wouldn't have hesitated at all, regardless of age.

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

#25

Post by randcraw » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

Weirdly, the article says almost nothing about the impact of drones on career pilots, especially their will to reenlist. The focus was fighter jocks, but I doubt most will end up flying commercially -- the skills of flying passengers or freight don't overlap much with dogfights, missile tech, or flying invisible.

The article also says nothing about which kinds of pilots are in shortest supply (fighter, heavy, rotary, carrier-based fighters, VTOLs, etc), or which service suffers most. It briefly mentions the cost of training fighers, but nothing on non-fighter pilots, which must make up the vast majority of onboard pilots, much less the cost of drone pilots. Nor does it mention the rate of departure for all of these MOSes.

IMO, this article went to press with far too little background research. That, or it was edited out later.

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

#26

Post by jcurbo » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 2:21 PM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #18

> A recent RAND study found the cost of training a basic qualified fighter pilot ranges from $5.6 million for an F-16 pilot to $10.9 million for an F-22 pilot. Those numbers seem outrageous to me. Why does it cost so much? Are there frequent plane crashes?

- Years of training on multiple platforms (initial pilot training, follow up training on the platform itself, possibly others)

- Maintenance and logistics of those platforms

- Probably amortizing the cost of those planes across each pilot using it for training

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

#27

Post by openasocket » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 2:21 PM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #18

> A recent RAND study found the cost of training a basic qualified fighter pilot ranges from $5.6 million for an F-16 pilot to $10.9 million for an F-22 pilot. Those numbers seem outrageous to me. Why does it cost so much? Are there frequent plane crashes?

I'm guessing it has to do with flight time. Flying a jet is expensive. A jet will consume something like $10,000 of fuel per hour of flight time. Not to mention maintenance costs, the costs of the maintenance crew, the cost of having dedicated f-16s and f-22s for training is probably included in there as well. Not to mention what is probably a high dropout rate. All that adds up. $5.6M still sounds high to me, but I imagine there are a bunch of other costs I'm not thinking about.

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

#28

Post by maxxxxx » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #18

> A recent RAND study found the cost of training a basic qualified fighter pilot ranges from $5.6 million for an F-16 pilot to $10.9 million for an F-22 pilot. Those numbers seem outrageous to me. Why does it cost so much? Are there frequent plane crashes?

It seems as expected to me. These planes cost tens of thousands per flight hour plus a huge support staff is needed. I don’t think they even fly that much.

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

#29

Post by maxxxxx » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

brixon wrote: post #13

usapatriot111 wrote: post #8

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

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

You can easily achieve this with tax cuts....

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

#30

Post by jwally » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #18

> A recent RAND study found the cost of training a basic qualified fighter pilot ranges from $5.6 million for an F-16 pilot to $10.9 million for an F-22 pilot. Those numbers seem outrageous to me. Why does it cost so much? Are there frequent plane crashes?

Per Wikipedia a B2 bomber has an hourly operational cost of $135,000.

No idea how many hours you have to train on the thing in real life to become proficient; but at that rate...yeesh!