Air Force Fighter Pilot Shortage

[Traderd]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fighter-pilot-wanted-20130722,0,2152468.story

"It may be hard to imagine that life as a high-flying fighter jock has lost its swagger, but the Air Force revealed it has a shortage of 200 fighter pilots this year. And if something isn't done, the Air Force, which has about 3,000 fighter pilots, fears it may face a shortfall of 700 by 2021."

"Air Force pilots typically earn about $90,000 by the time they complete their 11th year. The median annual wage of airline pilots, copilots and flight engineers is $103,210, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest numbers."

"Neither US Airways nor American Airlines, which are in the middle of merging, has hired pilots in more than a decade, and are now beginning a large-scale recruiting effort to fill spots."

"US Airways and American are anticipating the retirement of more than 2,100 pilots within five years because of the mandatory retirement age of 65."

"The airlines are going to have more money to pay for pilots than the government," said Rob Streble, 52, secretary and treasurer for the US Airline Pilots Assn., a labor union that represents US Airways pilots."

Is this a sign of the great pilot shortage of 201X?

 

[3GRNDWN]

I hate to say it, but the increase in Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) will replace the decrease in fighter pilot numbers. The Air Force has already created a new AFSC for these RPA "pilots". No UPT required, just a little over 35 hours in a Diamond DA20 and then off to RPA simulator school. Other services are currently looking to expand upon this concept as well.

 

[pilotyip]

Looks they will have to drop that college degree requirement to avoid the shortage. I mean after all, Bong, McGuire, Yeager, and Johnson, all aces, did not have college degrees.

 

[VA AV8R]

Not sure 90K after 11 years of working (esp. the way things have been) is such a raw deal really. I'm sure others would agree. What about other factors, such as longer and more frequent deployments, etc. ?

 

[JimNtexas]

The 'shortage' is because of the up or out promotion system, not for a lack of volunteers.

Up or out directly forces out experienced officers who aren't needed in a higher rank slot, and indirectly because of the high degree of office politics and rear end kissing up or out induces.

No military pilot goes or stays because an airline might pay a few dollars more or less. A lot get out because they're tired of all the military games.

The British RAF seems to get along OK even though they tell a fair number of O-3 and O-4's 'sorry mate, you're aren't cut out to be Chief Air Marshall, but you're welcome to just come to work and fly the planes'.

 

[pilotyip]

The 'shortage' is because of the up or out promotion system, not for a lack of volunteers.

Up or out directly forces out experienced officers who aren't needed in a higher rank slot, and indirectly because of the high degree of office politics and rear end kissing up or out induces.

No military pilot goes or stays because an airline might pay a few dollars more or less. A lot get out because they're tired of all the military games.

The British RAF seems to get along OK even though they tell a fair number of O-3 and O-4's 'sorry mate, you're aren't cut out to be Chief Air Marshall, but you're welcome to just come to work and fly the planes'.

Or the military wants to reap a "Peace Dividend" after a war. The most expensive thing in the military in airplanes, so lets decommission a few Wings, Squadrons, and air Bases. Then we don't need so many pilots, we will force they out for even a bigger savings. Talk to any of the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf I pilots who experienced this wonderful system of Personnel management. The Southwest Asia vets are now about to get there, "Thanks for all your good work, but your all done. Military personnel management practices make the airline look like a dream.

 

[Scrapdog]

Looks they will have to drop that college degree requirement to avoid the shortage. I mean after all, Bong, McGuire, Yeager, and Johnson, all aces, did not have college degrees.

Uhh...no.

 

[SIG600]

Looks they will have to drop that college degree requirement to avoid the shortage. I mean after all, Bong, McGuire, Yeager, and Johnson, all aces, did not have college degrees.

Fail.

There are no fighter cockpits sitting empty. This is a "shortage" of fighter pilots willing to do BS staff jobs/non-vols/RPA/UAV etc for the majority of their career.

 

[Wesb737fo]

Looks they will have to drop that college degree requirement to avoid the shortage. I mean after all, Bong, McGuire, Yeager, and Johnson, all aces, did not have college degrees.

I think McGuire was at Ga Tech and left after his junior year. A lot of heros from that era left or never entered college before joining the fight. Bush Sr. Was one of the youngest. Yeager was definitely an exception. Different era for sure.

 

[pilotyip]

I think McGuire was at Ga Tech and left after his junior year. A lot of heros from that era left or never entered college before joining the fight. Bush Sr. Was one of the youngest. Yeager was definitely an exception. Different era for sure.

That is because a college degree has nothing to do with flying an airplane. Robert Lovett, WWII Asst Sec of War for Air, may have saved the US in WWII. He showed we needed quantity, not quality.

We will need 100K pilots per year, we will not get that many physically qualified college educated pilots. He would prove that college was not needed to fly an airplane. He had a test devised that would identify those traits and knowledge levels needed to be successful in pilot training.

He found that many college educated people could not pass this test, but many high school graduates could. These 19 year old pilots proved their worth all over the globe, flying equipment under conditions that would test almost all of us on this board.

Those tests are stlll pretty much the same as used today to screen military pilots.

 

[Wesb737fo]

That is because a college degree has nothing to do with flying an airplane. Robert Lovett, WWII Asst Sec of War for Air, may have saved the US in WWII. He showed we needed quantity, not quality.

We will need 100K pilots per year, we will not get that many physically qualified college educated pilots. He would prove that college was not needed to fly an airplane. He had a test devised that would identify those traits and knowledge levels needed to be successful in pilot training.

He found that many college educated people could not pass this test, but many high school graduates could. These 19 year old pilots proved their worth all over the globe, flying equipment under conditions that would test almost all of us on this board.

Those tests are stlll pretty much the same as used today to screen military pilots.

Not totally disagreeing with your thesis or embarrass you. Bong, McGuire and Johnson were college boys. Johnnie was a civil engineer. Yeager was the country boy and I'm sure there are a lot more examples, just can't think of any more off hand. cheers

 

[pilotyip]

Not totally disagreeing with your thesis or embarrass you. Bong, McGuire and Johnson were college boys. Johnnie was a civil engineer. Yeager was the country boy and I'm sure there are a lot more examples, just can't think of any more off hand. cheers

By 1943 the average pilot coming out of the training pipeline was 20 years old, many were 19, G W. Bush I was 18. They may have had some college but they were not college graduates.

Their performance should leave no doubdts in anyone's mind about how non-college graduates perform in the cockpit.

My PCC flying around Vietnam in 1968 was not a college garduate, no one can he was not one the finest piltos I ever flew with. Not only in stick and rudder skills, but in cockpit leadership. He went on to a fantasic career at Delta airlines.

 

[dicko]

The British and the Australians do not require a College degree to fly fighters. They do require good grades in High Scool Math and Physics. In those countries High Scool courses in those subjects have a standard equal to first year University courses here. I'm not saying its a better or worse system; just different.

Here's an example of a modern High School graduate fighter pilot. The book will make you cry laughing. If you look closely at the hero shot on the front cover, you'll notice he's wearing gold Elvis sunglasses under the visor

http://www.amazon.com/Fighter-Pilot-Mis-Adventures-Australian-ebook/dp/B008N4HY0E

 

[AdlerDriver]

Looks they will have to drop that college degree requirement to avoid the shortage. I mean after all, Bong, McGuire, Yeager, and Johnson, all aces, did not have college degrees.

The degree requirement isn't to fly aircraft for the military. It's to be commissioned as an officer. It just so happens that for the last, at least 50 years (give or take), the US military has only allowed officers to be trained as pilots.

I'm sure there are plenty of non-college grads who would be great pilots. The reality is that a military pilot is an officer and leader first. Short of battlefield commissions, you're not going to see non-college grads become officers in today's military.

 

[pilotyip]

The degree requirement isn't to fly aircraft for the military. It's to be commissioned as an officer. It just so happens that for the last, at least 50 years (give or take), the US military has only allowed officers to be trained as pilots.

Well not completely true, 45 years ago flying around Vietnam my PPC was a LTJG with only two years of college, got out went on to a fantasic career at DAL. In 1981, Secertary of the Navy Leman dropped the college degree requirement for Navy pilots and NFO's and went back to the Cadet program. And of course the Army has been cranking out pilots for years without a degree. BTW From my expereince a college degree also has nothing to do with leadership

 

[AdlerDriver]

Well not completely true, 45 years ago flying around Vietnam my PPC was a LTJG with only two years of college, got out went on to a fantasic career at DAL. In 1981, Secertary of the Navy Leman dropped the college degree requirement for Navy pilots and NFO's and went back to the Cadet program. And of course the Army has been cranking out pilots for years without a degree. BTW From my expereince a college degree also has nothing to do with leadership

You can split hairs if you like. IMO, 45 years falls in the "give or take" slop. I know there were a few oddball situations in the 60's. The title and subject of this thread, however, is fighter pilots. I don't put rotary wing and fighters in the same category, so I really don't care what the Army does - they don't operate fighters.
Can a person go out today and join the services that fly fighters and get commissioned as an officer therein without a college degree? No - so they may have all the natural flying talent in the world but that doesn't matter if they can't get past the first hurdle.

As far as leadership - I agree, simply attending college doesn't magically instill leadership skills. Officer candidates are given leadership training during the course of their curriculum at the service academies and ROTC. Success in college is just another layer in the filter. It's been a long standing requirement for commission and probably gives some indication of an individual's ability to discipline and apply himself in whatever specialty he chooses to pursue in the military.

 

[Paradoxus]

Pilotyip is correct in all respects. I can't think of any degreed aviator that I know with a particularly scholarly-bearing. Most seem to be readily-equipped with an deplorable penchant for dick-and-fart jokes and think Claire Chennault is a brand of hair gel.

 

[pilotyip]

You can split hairs if you like. IMO, 45 years falls in the "give or take" slop. I know there were a few oddball situations in the 60's. The title and subject of this thread, however, is fighter pilots. I don't put rotary wing and fighters in the same category, so I really don't care what the Army does - they don't operate fighters.
Can a person go out today and join the services that fly fighters and get commissioned as an officer therein without a college degree? No - so they may have all the natural flying talent in the world but that doesn't matter if they can't get past the first hurdle.

As far as leadership - I agree, simply attending college doesn't magically instill leadership skills. Officer candidates are given leadership training during the course of their curriculum at the service academies and ROTC. Success in college is just another layer in the filter. It's been a long standing requirement for commission and probably gives some indication of an individual's ability to discipline and apply himself in whatever specialty he chooses to pursue in the military.

Sounds like fighter pilot envy. The Army pilots don't count kinda of gave it away. A quick fighter pilot story, it is 1976; we have been at sea for 6 weeks. We being Ships' Company, "the career enhancing tour". We pull back in to Cubi Point. We are at the club for liquid refreshment. We are discussing "going ugly early?. You know all women are beautiful when you have not seen one in six weeks, "we kept women recognition photos in our staterooms so we recognize one when we saw one". This one fighter pilot was making moves on the ugliest creature you had ever seen, round eyed school teacher. So we decided that going ugly early did not apply to fighter?s pilots that had no standards. Another fighter pilot over heard this and said he was offended, kinda like people on this board hearing about the college thing. He said we should respect him because he was the defender of the fleet and how he would be the first one launched to intercept an incoming air raid, etc. Please we are sitting in a bar in the Philippines, enjoying a beer far removed from reality, thinking about women and this fighter pilot gets all bent out of shape because we made a joke about fighter pilot standards when making moves on women. He never understood. BTW the Threat from a submarine was much greater than the airborne threat, but we didn't bring that he would not have understood that either.

 

[AdlerDriver]

Both of you seem to have tunnel vision. I'm agreeing with you!!

I don't think it's necessary to attend college in order to be a good pilot. Period. dot. Okay? I think it might help some and not have much effect on others. It really depend on the person and their strengths/weaknesses.

My engineering degree made UPT easier for me than if I had just gone straight out of high school. Aerodynamics, systems, mental math associated w/ instrument flying all came very naturally as an extension of my college courses. So, I feel like I was better equipped to succeed thanks to my college experience. Was it absolutely necessary for me to get my wings? Probably not - but maybe I wouldn't have done as well and not gone to fighters. I'd rather be a little over-prepared than just scrape by any day.

Either way, this is all moot. Officers have to have a bachelor's degree to get commissioned - and they're the ones who fly fighters(and any other USAF, USN, USMC fixed wing). It's the officer part that requires college. Not the pilot part.

P.S. Yip, We must have posted at the same time because I just saw your last post. I don't understand your fighter envy comment and your whole story doesn't seem to have much relevance to what you and I were posting about (other than this whole thing started with a post about a fighter pilot shortage).

 

[B-J-J Fighter]

Rotary wing guys have more piloting skills overall than fighter pilots.

 

[AdlerDriver]

Rotary wing guys have more piloting skills overall than fighter pilots.

I'll have to take your word on that since I have only flown fighters and various airliners - no rotary wing. So, I wouldn't feel qualified to make such a definitive statement.

Since you must have flown both fighters and rotary wing to develop such an opinion, maybe you can give us the scoop on why that is.

 

[B-J-J Fighter]

No I haven't flown fighters but I have flown both fixed and rotary. I can assure you I can fly a fighter better than you can fly a rotary. You wil barely be able to keep a rotary in the air the first few times.

 

[Paradoxus]

Both of you seem to have tunnel vision. I'm agreeing with you!!

Acknowledged. I like to fight though, and love exposing the acccounting/economics/business majors as the dollards they are when their/there/its/it's/your/you're confuses them whilst atop the soapbox.

(?‿?)凸

Obviously, you're not a hostile. Cheers.

 

[AdlerDriver]

No I haven't flown fighters but I have flown both fixed and rotary. I can assure you I can fly a fighter better than you can fly a rotary. You wil barely be able to keep a rotary in the air the first few times.

It sounds like you're saying that if a person had only rotary wing experience, they would be able to use that skill foundation to have some basic success during a first attempt flying fixed wing. But, the reverse would not be true. A fixed wing pilot can't take his skill set and extend it to rotary without some additional training. I can buy that.

How about a total novice with no training in either? Does it take longer for them to master rotary or fixed or is it about the same?

About your comment: In my experience, it's usually a mistake to make such one-way, absolute statements like you did. It's probably better to avoid big generalizations and not assume everyone with a certain type of training is better or more qualified than others who are in a very different line of work. I don't doubt that the skills required to fly a helo are substantial. From what I hear, it's sort of like rubbing your head and patting your stomach and you always have to be doing one or the other or both? No gliding either.

If you want to take your personal fixed and rotary wing experience and come to the conclusion that your average rotary wing pilot possesses "more piloting skill" than your average fixed wing pilot, I won't argue. Like I said, I don't have the experience to form an opinion. It seems to me that you might make your point better if you defined what you mean by "more piloting skill". There are lots and lots of varied and unrelated skill sets in both rotary wing and fighter aviation that have nothing to do with each other.

Once you start specifically addressing fighter pilot skills and the quality of those skills, you lose credibility since you've never done it. When you talk about you being able to fly a fighter, you're really just talking about flying it around the sky, from A to B or maybe taking off or trying to land. That's just flying an airplane, just like you do now but probably a bit faster. Employing a fighter as a weapons platform against other aircraft and all that goes along with that would be just as foreign to you as rotary wing would be to me. The skills required to do that well are developed over years and years and have nothing to do with rotary wing flying.

One final comment: the first guy to wash out of my Air Force pilot training class was a former Army Cobra pilot. Among his many struggles in his failed transition was being able to think fast and stay ahead of the jet. Maybe he had some great piloting skills as long as he could keep the T-37 at helicopter speed - we'll never know - He didn't even make it to the first solo. That particular individual obviously did not benefit from his rotary wing training in the way you claim others might. It probably comes down to each individual and their strengths and weaknesses rather than what category of aircraft they happen to be trained on.

 

[pilotyip]

Helo pilots are looked down upon because they fly low and slow. But having hired a bunch ino the fixed wing world I can attest to their flying skills. Army training is the best rotor wing in the world, more corporations are using helos, they will hire almost only ex-military, because where else does someone turbine helo PIC? I know the fixed wing brotherhood looks down on the helo drivers as lessor pilots, I mean they have never been to FL410, or done a M.78 descent. Hovering into a dark LZ on goggles is much more demanding of a pilot?s skills than shooting a Cat II approach.

Someone has to figure out why uninformed management knuckleheads don't view a multi-crew PIC in a multi-engine turbine glass cockpit time in an advanced IFR helo like the H-60, H-46, H-53 or H-47 is not real flight time. However, PIC in a VFR only C-150 in the traffic pattern is the breakfast of champions for an airline career by those who set hard fixed wing limits and ignore helo time in total time. Why are most management and insurance company?s sooooo waaaayyyy out of touch with reality? Ops I am sorry I was management bashing again.

 

[JimNtexas]

Are fighters really that hard to just fly around compare to say, an R-22? I think not.

Taking off, flying around, landing a fighter? My impression is that the modern generation of fighters are pretty straightforward to just takeoff, fly somewhere, and land.

Fighting a fighter so as to win against another fighter...that's hard, very hard.

 

[SIG600]

Are fighters really that hard to just fly around compare to say, an R-22? I think not.

Taking off, flying around, landing a fighter? My impression is that the modern generation of fighters are pretty straightforward to just takeoff, fly somewhere, and land.

Fighting a fighter so as to win against another fighter...that's hard, very hard.

Jim gets it. Modern fighters are very easy to fly. Employment is a completely different world, and running intercepts at 1000+ knots closure, in a dynamic 3D environment, running 5 radios, multiple sensors, managing your three wingmen, executing CAS, and SEAD, etc etc etc. And yes I've flown helo's and in particular the R-22 mentioned. Night traps with pitching deck are FAR more challenging and completely terrifying, every single time.

Yip you're a broken record. A college degree is required, get over it. I'm pretty sure Adler has no fighter pilot envy, as he's an Eagle homo. Go back to fleecing aspiring pilots.

No I haven't flown fighters but I have flown both fixed and rotary. I can assure you I can fly a fighter better than you can fly a rotary. You wil barely be able to keep a rotary in the air the first few times.

http://toolmonger.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/CM_camotoolbag.jpg

(Hint, It's a picture of a toolbag)

 

[AdlerDriver]

I'm pretty sure Adler has no fighter pilot envy, as he's an Eagle homo.

Thanks for the support..... I think.

 

[JimNtexas]

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth I was an EWO in an F-4 Weasel Squadron that converted to the F-15A (Go Fighting Cocks!).

When I'd run in to my front seats friends after the conversation I'd ask them about the difference between flying the F-4 and the F-15. To a man they would always say that the F-15 was much easier to fly than the F-4.

The Eagle just didn't have the weird quirks and convoluted switchology that characterized the F-4 and other earlier generation fighters. It also had way better visibility and vastly better ergonomics.

Employing it as a weapon was said to be more challenging in a lot of ways than the F-4 because for one thing, they didn't have me to keep them out of trouble.

And because the airplane presented a lot more information and involved a much higher net energy level during engagements (and the F-4 was no slouch in the energy department).

From the little bit I know about the F-16, it's probably a bit more of a handful to just fly around than an F-15.

 

[pilotyip]

Yip you're a broken record. A college degree is required, get over it. I'm pretty sure Adler has no fighter pilot envy, as he's an Eagle homo. Go back to fleecing aspiring pilots.

My doesn't that make the world a better place, a colelge degree is required for what? to be a good pilot? Nah! I suppose you think helo pilots are low lifes also because they can fly with a degree?

Night traps with pitching deck are FAR more challenging and completely terrifying, every single time.

And you have expereince with this? I spend 2.5 years on the USS Enterprise, if they are pitching very much you don't fly in peace time. So is this carrier pilot evny?