in 1950 caught the air force by surprise.
‘The scramble was on to build a pilot
force capable of meeting the demands’,
Lt Col John Rhodes explained in a 1987
study of pilot shortages for the air force’s
Air University in Alabama.
The air force lled the 1950s pilot gap
by recruiting retired WW2 combat pilots
and rapidly boosting its training output.
By 1966, the service actually had a pilot
surplus. The active-duty force needed
38,000 pilots, according to o cial
statistics. It had 40,000.The Vietnam War changed all that. Just
a year later in 1967, the air force needed
46,000 pilots but only employed 38,000.
That 8,000-pilot gap, accounting for 17
per cent of the aircrew requirement,
was the biggest in USAF history. Today’s
shortfall is roughly half as great.
The air force moved quickly to address
the shortage, increasing new pilot
output from 2,000 per year in 1966 to
3,500 in 1970. In 1969, Chief of Sta of
the US Air Force Gen Joseph McConnell
ordered that no pilot should do twotours in Vietnam until every pilot had
completed one.
Those initiatives helped to shrink
the pilot shortage to just 300 in 1971.
As US forces left Vietnam in 1972, the
aircrew de cit became a whopping
2,800-person surplus. It didn’t hurt,
as Rhodes noted, that there was a
simultaneous reduction in airline hiring
commensurate with rising fuel prices
and a weakening economy.
America’s arms build-up in the
1980s meant greater demand for
military pilots. Active-duty air force
aircrew requirements swelled from
23,000 in 1980 to 25,000 in 1988. But
the economy was strong and airlines
were hiring. The service registered, on
average, an 800-pilot shortfall every year
for eight years starting in 1980.
By then the pattern was clear. Wartime
grew demand for pilots — and stressed
those pilots — faster than the air force
could boost training and retention
incentives. True to form, force structure
cuts during the post-Cold War ‘peace
dividend’ resulted in an 800-pilot surplus
in 1994. Aircrew de cits returned in
1998 amid sustained airline hiring, and
deepened during the so-called ‘War on
Terror’ beginning in 2001.Above: Air
Education
and Training
Command has
told its squadrons
to increase pilot
production.
Rich Cooper
Left: A lack of
experienced
instructors
is hitting the
B-Courses that
take pilots from
the T-38 to the
operational
squadrons.
Rich Cooper38 July 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net
OPINION // US AIR FORCE PILOT SHORTAGE
36-39 Pilot Crisis C.indd 38 20/05/2018 11:35