combat aircraft

T

HE US AIR Force is short of

nearly 2,000 pilots, a deficit

that could ‘break the force’,

according to Secretary of

the Air Force Heather Wilson.

The active-duty air force, Air

National Guard and Air Force Reserve

Command together require around

20,000 aviators to crew a combined

force of nearly 5,500 aircraft.

This is not the first time the air force

has suffered a pilot shortage. And if

history is any indication, it won’t be the

last. Since WW2, boom-and-bust cycles

in pilot retention have mapped neatly

onto the rising and falling fortunes of

the airline industry and changes in the

pace of overseas deployments.

The air force suffered through aircrew

retention crises in the early 1950s, the

late 1960s, the late 1970s, the whole of

the 1980s and again in the early 2000s.

The service solved the problem then. It

can solve the problem today.

Indeed, the service’s pilot shortage

in 1967 and 1968 was nearly twice as

bad as today’s is. Cash bonuses and

deployment limits — not to mention a

downturn in airline hiring — solved the

1960s aircrew crisis. The same solutions

should work now.

Conversely, it should be clear what

won’t help to keep pilots in cockpits. It’s

counterproductive to blame Americans

in general for being unpatriotic or

somehow unfit for military service.

It’s not the case that only nuclear

families with one male, and presumably

heterosexual, breadwinner can support

good, country-loving combat pilots.

Two decades of wartime deployments

are taking their toll on morale at

the same time that the air force is actually

planning to add several fighter squadrons to

its structure

There is no evidence that the military’s

increasing acceptance of women,

homosexual and transgender people —

in a word, ‘diversity’ — somehow makes

it harder for the air force to retain pilots.

Women have served in the air force

since 1948 and were eligible for combat

roles starting in 1993. The service fully

integrated black airmen in the 1940s,

’50s and ’60s. In 2011, President Barack

Obama lifted a long-standing ban

on openly gay people serving in the

military — a move that had no negative

impact on military readiness.

During an April 2018 Senate Armed

Services Committee hearing, US Air Force

Chief of Staff Gen David Goldfein denied

that openly serving transgender airmen

negatively affect unit morale. Indeed, in

early 2017 Wilson told Congress that the

air force must ‘keep pace with today’s

family, or we will lose talent.’

Tough deployment schedules

It’s apparent from the historical record

that wartime deployments and airline

hiring sprees are the biggest drivers

of air force aircrew shortages. Tens of

thousands of pilots left the military when

the United States demobilized at the end

of WW2. The outbreak of the Korean War

Left page: The

boom in airlines

hiring pilots is

one of the critical

factors affecting

USAF pilot

numbers.

Rich Cooper

Above: An

F-22 pilot

from the 94th

Expeditionary

Fighter Squadron,

deployed for

Operation

‘Inherent Resolve’.

ANG/SSgt

Colton Elliott

http://www.combataircraft.net // July 2018 37

36-39 Pilot Crisis C.indd 37 21/05/2018 10:18