The USAF Is Short Pilots and Maintenance Personnel. SECAF Solution? Raise Pilot Bonuses and Pay Them to Drone Drivers.
Jonn mentioned this in an article earlier today. But I’ve got a bit of a different take on it than he did.
Per this report from Fox News, the USAF is short 700 pilots, and the SECAF expects the pilot shortage to increase to 1,000 over the next few years. The shortage is greatest among fighter pilots.
The SECAF also indicated the service is short 4,000 mechanics. Both shortages are causing issues.
Now, the reason given by the SECAF for the pilot shortage is that the current deployment cycle is causing lowered quality of life among pilots, causing many to leave the service. She also says that “airlines are forecast to be hiring a lot more” in the near-term future, which will make the problem worse soon.
The SECAF’s proposed solution? Increase the USAF pilot bonus to $35k annually – and pay that bonus to drone drivers also.
Maybe raising the pilot bonus is necessary; maybe not. At this point, I’m not really convinced that that’s either necessary or will work. I’m willing to listen to a good argument – but I haven’t yet heard one.
And maybe it’s just me, but from what the SECAF’s saying . . . I just don’t “get it”.
Per the SECAF, the biggest current USAF shortage seems to be among fighter pilots. I thought airlines generally preferred to try and hire those with multi-engine ratings and experience flying larger aircraft – like C-17s and C-130s. Maybe I’m wrong.
Plus, I need an explanation of how paying drone drivers a bonus would help. Aren’t many of them not rated to fly manned aircraft? And even if some RPA pilots are qualified to fly manned aircraft, doesn’t my question in the previous paragraph apply? Do airlines really go after RPA pilots?
In short – is this bonus proposal by the SECAF something that might actually work? Or is it a “solution in search of a problem” that will suck up money but will do little or nothing to fix the actual problem at hand? At this point, I’m just not convinced it will work as advertised.
If “quality of life issues due to multiple deployments” are driving this, it seems to me that a better solution to the pilot shortage problem might be for the USAF to simply train more pilots – then use some of those additional pilots to “spell” those who have done repeated deployments and/or replace those who choose to depart. Alternatively, if instead it’s lack of flight time due to ground duty assignments that’s driving experienced pilots to “punch out” and leave the service . . . I’m not sure that a bigger bonus will work particularly well.
Finally, I also don’t see how increasing the pilot bonus will do a damn thing to cure the shortage in maintenance personnel. Someone needs to explain that one to me, too. Last time I checked, you can’t fly an aircraft that’s grounded due to lack of maintenance.
Well, Madame SECAF? Could you perhaps enlighten us? What are we missing?
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Air Force
Money can overcome only so many issues. If the op tempo is so bad that retention takes a nosedive, there comes a point where even $35k/yr or more only creates a small and insufficient rise in retention.
Many critical jobs in all services have this issue; Special Operators in all branches, IT joes, Navy nukes, to name a few.
How do you justify hammering the dogshit out of people for 80-100 hours a week, when they can walk out the door and make nearly double (even with bonus) for 50 hour weeks with little to no road time?
We used to have a saying: “We’re just fuses. They’ll use us until we blow, then go out and buy new ones.” Sadly, the C-of-C seemed to actually believe that.
It hasn’t been that long ago that we read about the air farce dumping hundreds with early outs, dismissals, requested resignations etc…then need to call the a.h. in the off white house and ask him WTF he is doing! But we know don’t we, trying to destroy, weaken the U.S.
This happened to me. Initially signed up for that sweet 50k reup bonus in 2009 (I wasn’t maint or aviation, but yeah, nice bonus). Thought I would keep doing my job, deploying, having a good time, right? Wrong. A few weeks later I received orders to be a recruiter for 30 months where I spent the entire time being belittled like a PFC and working the aforementioned 80-100 hours a week. I survived the duty, got promoted to SSgt, and they dangled a 20k reup bonus over my head in 2013 (at a time when bonuses weren’t a thing). Despite my success I just got fed up and am now living the contractor life. I made substantially more when deployed – not so much stateside. Still, I’m contributing to national security, work only 40 hours a week, and can’t be made to do anything else if I don’t want to. Oh, and I actually have time to do things like schoolwork, hang out with my wife, and go to the gym. I wouldn’t have this life if it wasn’t for the military, but at times it felt like a cesspool that I had to take a swim in to move on to bigger and better things. They truly grind people out like link sausages then are left scratching their heads when people want to leave. But it doesn’t matter to them, because the Sgt/SSgt recruiters are going to be the guys that have to do all the heavy lifting when retention blows.
Hondo, Hondo, Hondo – you can’t ask common sense questions of people like us. We will fall down laughing.
The lack of maintenance people is more important than the shortage of pilots. We can’t help it if that is more obvious to us than it is to someone who thinks drone drivers are as important as fighter jocks.
Like the other service branches, throwing money at something to see if it sticks is the only answer they have. They are as blind as blind mole rats, and just about as dumb.
When I worked at Pease AFB the clerk who worked at the dry cleaners was an E-5. I doubt that the AF has changed much since then. I am not sympathetic.
I also have trouble believing that they cannot keep fighter pilots because they make them fly too much.
Just one more reason I am in favor of the draft.
Interesting analysis here:
https://www.facebook.com/cbyrneiv/posts/10154386072807436?pnref=story
I’d be interested in seeing the detailed breakdown of those purported “pilot training costs”. I’d be willing to bet that only a relatively small amount of them are truly attributable to training a given individual, and that a large fraction are “sunk costs” (e.g., facility maintenance/operations, aircraft maintenance, instructor salaries and benefits, etc . . . ) that would have been incurred whether or not the individual left the service at first opportunity. An example: if an aircraft is used for flight training, it will require roughly the same amount of maintenance whether a given class has 19 or 20 students. In fact, it will require some level of maintenance even when there are no students and it is not flown at all. Thus, attributing 1/20 of the cost of operating and maintaining a training aircraft as being the cost of training a specific individual is misleading – the vast majority of that cost would have been required whether or not the individual attended the course. Only the additional flight-hours and any additional maintenance corresponding to those additional flight hours are properly costs attributable solely to training that individual. Ditto for instructor salaries/benefits, facilities, etc . . . . People play “total cost” games all the time, and tend to use whatever number is in their best interest. For example: the overall “procurement” cost of a weapon system includes R&D, contract overhead, setting up the production line, etc . . . ; for a particular major end item that may be $50M each. But that includes a substantial amount of fixed cost in R&D, overhead, and production setup – and is based on the assumption of producing a set number of items. However, the cost of procuring additional copies over and above the original number – termed the “flyaway cost” of the item – can often be substantially cheaper than that if the order is placed while the production line is still in operation. This is because the “sunk costs” associated with design and starting production don’t have to be paid; all you have to pay is the incremental costs… Read more »
Nice explanation. The Air Force (and to a lesser extent the Navy) have been pushing this type of math for years when it comes to pilots.
How much money does it take to train a infantry battalion commander? Consider all the costs of every exercise he ever did, and his prorated share of infrastructure cost.
The USAF is also the service that gave us an aircraft with a $2B unit price. So that doesn’t surprise me a whit.
And don’t get me started on the F35.
Oh I’ll get you started on the F35! Challenge accepted!
Tell us the cost breakdown of the F35 Hondo. I double. dog. dare. you.
Boom.
Kinda hard to discuss production or flyaway costs for a weapons system when development isn’t yet complete and the system hasn’t yet been fielded. Gotta know costs of production of the first production run before you can come up with either.
Otherwise, the only terms applicable are “a sh!tload” and “a much bigger sh!tload” for flyaway and production costs, respectively. (smile)
The Lightning II has been fielded. Just not to many squadrons.
I suspect the craft will eventually come out looking better. I remember the stink raised about the “gold plated” Abrams and the “death trap” Bradley.
As for the drone pilot shortage, I think I may have found a solution.
http://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=A0LEVvzLrqxXsBUABVAPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw–?p=Largest+Rc+Airplane&fr=yhs-iry-fullyhosted_003&hspart=iry&hsimp=yhs-fullyhosted_003
These folks pay for the privilege of flying drones. And they do it without millions of dollars of training.
Actually they have been known to take manned aircraft rated pilots and send them to fly RPAs. It happened to a friend of mine who flew C-130J’s, as a fully mission qualified pilot who had deployed. They send him off to fly RPA’s and if he comes back he has to start all over again on the Hercs, like he never flew them. That’s what’s messed up. And then another friend who is a instructor pilot for his squadron, they are sending him to another base and giving him a non flying job. But yep they are short. And they keep shorting themselves, then complain about how they are short.. And the cycle continues.
One of my son’s friends, who graduated from the Air Force Academy last year, desperately wanted to be a pilot. Instead, they forced him into RPA instead.
This is all because the services (predominately USAF and USN) aren’t training enough pilots. Following the end of the Cold War the USAF made a conscious decision to keep pilots in the cockpit for a larger share of their career (as opposed to mixing flying and non-flying assignments). Because the service did away with many of the pilot/non flying billets these folks occupied, the service could reduce total output and still fill the flying billets.
Unfortunately; the airlines really like former service pilots, which makes the remaining smaller pool that much more valuable. 20 years ago, if the airlines came calling (as they periodically do in 15-20 year cycles) the service could take the hit and just reduce manning in the pilot/non flying pool, today that buffer just doesn’t exist.
An additional strain on the system is that the pilots most likely to be “poached” carry advanced certifications such as instructor pilots, which drives down the pilot training output even further. Not to mention that the lack of mechanics impacts available flight hours to train pilots in the first place.
Disagree. They’re training enough pilots, but as Rob pointed out above, they’re forcing actual pilots into drone duty.
If they left pilots to fly real planes and allowed techs to run drones, we would be better off.
Lose the idea that pilots must be commissioned officers while we’re at it. Most pilots want to fly a plane, not a desk.
Maybe now that turd Brandon “Ass Drone Boy” Bryant can finally fly without the aid of LSD.
Shitbag.
Huh. They do everything they can to push us out of the service and then are surprised when we actually DO leave. Imagine that!
Yes, you’re good at what you do, but you cost too much to keep. It’s cheaper to let you go and hire someone less skilled or experienced than to keep paying you to do the job you’re good at.
You’re right, that’s the biggest issue here. In a way, there is nothing surprising about this – it happens every few years. Screams of, “OMG! We don’t have enough pilots/maintenance/whatever!” are followed in a couple of years by, “OMG! We have too many pilots/maintenance/whatever!” The personnel world seems to be in management by crisis all the time. They are either “firewalling the throttles” to bring in as many folks as possible or pushing the throttles back to idle – there does not seem to be any happy medium. Not saying it is their fault, just explaining the world they live in.
There are many other factors but this is the biggest one.
The shortage of maint people has more to do with the fact that nobody wants to do it. Word is getting out about the 15 hour work days 7 days a week, terrible working conditions, and a lack of respect for their job by both pilots and non-aviation people.
Drone pilots have a really demanding job. People just jump to conclusions because it sounds easy. If people here had the opportunity to work as a drone pilot for a week I think they’d change their tune.
It’s not the deployments as much as all of the other BS and lack of flying at home.
https://www.jqpublicblog.com/
Is a good source.
I would have some sympathy for Air Force personnel, but then I recall my Dad in his 3rd B-17 in less than two years, finally making his 35th and final combat mission over Germany as a Bombardier in late June, 1945.
“Quality of life” was hoping your buddy in the rack next to you, in the open bay crew quarters, came back healthy, and not full of bullets or flak.
There was no waiting for orders to see if you would actually drop ordnance on this flight. No orbiting for an hour or two waiting for the ground pounders to give you precise coordinates. No precision munitions that insure you won’t have to come back tomorrow to bomb it again and again and again.
Show me a pilot today, that flew through flak so heavy “…you could walk across it”. Show me a pilot today, that had to maintain his slow and ponderous heading, while a dozen enemy fighters do their best to blow you out of the sky by tearing his aircraft apart bit by bit. Not only going TO the target, but coming back FROM the target.
So yeah. Pilot “quality of life” problems? Sorry. I’ve no sympathy.
We all fight the war we are given. Our dads had to fight a real, shooting air war against first class opponents. They were also focused on bombing the snot out of said opponents so they could all go home as soon as possible and live their lives as civilians again, in much more comfortable circumstances. It’s different when you are talking about a career.
A man named John Boyd had a comment here that’s IMO relevant, and worth looking up when you have the time.
It boils down to the following: you can worry about having a career, or you can do something that matters. Doing both at the same time often isn’t possible.
Boyd was in the USAF. He retired as a Colonel. But he was far more influential, long term, than virtually any of his contemporaries in DoD.
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=38799
If you’re USAF, you probably haven’t heard of the man; the USAF doesn’t give the man his due and doesn’t like to talk much about him. That’s a damn shame.
It also is IMO one of the reasons the USAF has issues. From my perspective, far too many in the USAF are interested in having a good career vice serving the nation.
There were plenty of us in the USAF that followed Boyed. Most didn’t make it past O-4 and were forced out.
I think you’ve just proven the correctness of my last 2 para above.
I’m no pilot but I am in the AF so I’ll let you know what I know Hondo. The AF uses its pilot pool for all aircraft meaning every single RPA/drone/fighter/bomber/tanker/cargo plane is flown by an officer who is a pilot. The two areas that bleed the most pilots are the RPA and fighter pilot community. From what I hear, the environments are fairly toxic towards morale & health; especially for RPA where you have a group of pilots who trained to fly aircraft, got shoved into flying a box in Nevada (usually), and then get zero respect from anyone anywhere for the brutal hours and schedule they keep because, “they don’t REALLY deploy” “REALLY fly” “REALLY kill people” “REALLY work” “you get to sleep in your own bed each night” (nevermind that they often are on a night shift and flying at night so their “plane” will be in the air during daylight hours over Asskrakistan) and then they get lumped into a special category called “the RPA community” so they can be denied hazard pay, flight pay, and generally get shit on just a bit more. Yeah, those guys quit as fast as they can so they can go do real flying, which leaves everything shorthanded. Then you have the fighter pilots, who spend their time not fighting because the RPA guys are always told to take the shot while they don’t get to ever kill anything (at least that’s how the fighter pilots tell it!) and they’re the first in line to get transferred into an RPA slot when those poor disgruntled SOBs manage to quit or get transferred to a different flying job. Now take all that I just said about the RPA pilots and add that to the ego and air of superiority that a stereotypical fighter jock has when they get moved in to fill an empty slot. Now add in that the AF decided to do all the sequestration cuts in one year (2013-14 to be precise) and left the force the smallest that it has ever been in history, which means the… Read more »
True.
Appreciate the info, Cable Dawg and Sorensen 25. But I have to reply to a few of your points above. 1. “They don’t REALLY deploy.” (Cable Dawg) If you’re talking about the folks serving at Creech, well no – they DON’T really deploy. Those RPA personnel who are sent to OCONUS areas in-theater on TCS or who are serving at sea deploy. Those sent normal PCS to locations in CONUS? Um, no. Calling that a “deployment” is BS. It’s a PCS assignment in CONUS. Last time I checked, Creech AFB is in CONUS. It doesn’t even qualify as a bona fide remote or hardship assignment; it’s within an hour’s drive (probably 45min, actually) of the center of a major metro area (Vegas), fer Christsake. (You want remote, talk to the folks at Dugway Proving Ground or Fort Hunter Ligget. Or maybe 29 Palms or Fort Irwin or China Lake NWC.) Given the normal and customary commute many people in other parts of the country have daily to/from work, any complaints about the commute to/from Creech or claims that it’s “remote” are, bluntly, whining. 2. The complaints about working nights or having to work weekends periodically (which is what I presume you’re referring to by the “7 day week”, Sorensen25) are similarly whining. EMTs, ER doctors, nurses, firefighters, police, and some industrial and construction workers work nights and weekends – either periodically or routinely. Ditto some of the people running the command center of bases/posts/camps/stations or major HQs. Yeah, that sucks at times. But it’s part of the territory and comes with the job. It also won’t be much different if they move to the commercial airline world. Last time I checked, a big chunk of airline flights are at night, particularly on overseas routes – and airlines fly on weekends, too. If people are actually working 7 days a week without a break, that’s a valid beef. It’s also the sign of a chain-of-command without the guts to tell higher HQ they need more resources to do the mission assigned – or perhaps of a clueless higher HQ (or one… Read more »
Two cents here: 15 hour work days? And you don’t like that?
Okay, then, my first duty station (NPC, WDC) had 6-section duty status. That meant that if I started my workday at 7AM and my duty section was up, I was there until midnight, period, every 6 days, including weekends and holidays. You don’t like that? Tough bananas. Go join the USAF, it’s country club.
But that wasn’t so bad, compared to my first civilian job, which was doing AV shows for a growing AV company. Started the day at 7:30AM, frequently worked through lunch hour to meet a (money) client’s demands, and stayed until I got the workload finished, had no one coming in on a second shift because there was none. I did that for almost five years until I found something else.
That kind of demanding job isn’t just in the AV industry or CG animation or any particular line of work. It happens to nurses, doctors, first responders – everywhere. It’s stressful and takes a toll on whoever does the work. Firefighters don’t get a coffee break when there’s an 11-alarm fire. They stay until it’s dead, period.
So I don’t know what that whining is about in regard to 15-hour days, but it is nothing but whining.
No argument that many civilian careers require long days as well, Ex-PH2. Just ask anyone who owns a business.
However, most businesses also learn – quickly – that they can’t demand that kind of effort continuously from their employees. If they do, they end up losing employees.
The military has one advantage in that respect: leaving on 2-weeks notice isn’t generally an option. (smile) But leaving at the end of an enlistment (or, for officers, resignation after completing ADSO) IS an option. So the military has to avoid overworking people also.
By and large, the military also “gets it”; in my experience, military personnel get as much or more time off as most civilians. But for the military, it’s more “peak and valley” – and when it’s time to surge, the military is more likely to demand continuous effort than civilian employers. But there is the occasional jackass (either individual or unit) who abuses their personnel to make themselves and/or their organization “look good” when there’s no need. Or who is too damn afraid to tell their boss, “I don’t have enough resources to do that.”
Try 3-section duty on a submarine. 12 hour days on non-duty days was the norm. And on duty days, well, there was a standing order we were supposed to get 5 hours sleep. It NEVER happened.
And that was in port. At sea was worse.
Hondo I understand your point of view, and I am not a pilot of any flavor nor can I call any pilots personal friends. But I am a Cable Dawg and that means that I go everywhere on a base and I rub shoulders with everyone at some point or another.
I have empathy for the RPA pilots because of the raw deal they get stuck with. The complaints that get thrown their way from everyone else are legitimate. Then there are the complaints they themselves have, which are usually minor, but point towards a bigger issue in terms of morale for them.
You nailed it when you talked about “pilots just want to fly,” while the upper echelons are all concerned about making sure that “real pilots” are flying everything. I like the fact that the AF is exploring the return of the Flying Sergeants (enlisted pilots) even if they’re only looking at unmanned surveillance craft for now. Doubtlessly, because they’re worried about the horrors that could be unleashed on an unsuspecting world if mere enlisted peasants were given access to an airplane with weapons on it.
Give me a moment to catch my breath after all the laughter that sentence just caused me.
In the end it all boils down to an issue of trust. And I think everyone here understands how the DoD has institutionalized mistrust of subordinates. Cover your own ass at all costs, then wonder why morale is low and people keep leaving for the private sector. “Can’t be us,” they say, “We’re all good leaders! Our checklists and reports all say so!”
And if I roll my eyes any harder at that sort of thinking they might fall out.
I get what you’re trying to say but most jobs in the military (yes, including combat arms/infantry while in garrison) get things like federal holidays, 96s, etc. When I was a recruiter, it was very common to go 3 months without a day off working from 0700 to 2200-2300. Many a time we wish we were deployed again or in the fleet, because it was easier. All of us were war veterans who deployed with ground combat units, so it isn’t about “not having it hard” or “whining” or whatever, this job along with other stateside jobs can absolutely suck worse than being deployed. I’ve been on both sides of the fence, trust me.
But yet recently, a co-workers brother was at 30+ years old enlisted as an E-6 to play a musical instrument in the USAF band, she couldn’t understand my reaction of “you’re kidding me” it took me 5 years + to obtain the rank of E-5 and I always thought the job of the USAF was to maintain aircraft to perform specific missions, what does playing a saxophone,trumpet or tuba have to do with maintaining aircraft and missiles ?…heck, I would go back in but I’m 61 years old, but I did work corporate aviation for 25 years after getting out, so I still have current aircraft maintenance experience.
Personally, I am a bluesman musically and can’t stand the music of Sousa, I always thought that USAF band shit was a useless waste of funding
I think the problem(s) the USAF has can be attributed to many factors. A few I have experienced first hand.
1) Maintenance and Operations receive manpower based on their mission sets and the number of aircraft assigned. Recently the AF decided to move some aircraft into the backup aircraft inventory (BUAI). When that happened Maintenance and Operations lost manpower because aircraft in the BUAI don’t count when allocating manpower or funds. These aircraft still require routine maintenance and can be tasked for missions, but since they are in the BUAI they don’t count for getting money or people.
2) Joint basing. When the DoD decided to create the Joint Bases they didn’t accurately account for manpower or funding to support them. If a Joint Base has the AF as the lead agency the other services on the base typically lose or have their infrastructure support personnel and funding severely reduced because as one Commander said to me a few years back “It’s not our base it’s yours so you pay for it.” Where the AF is not the lead service they lose or have their manpower and funding reduced because if the base doesn’t belong to the AF why should they have to pay to support it.
Pilots and maintenance are short, and the DoD created this shortage. But many other career fields in the AF are just as short but no one says anything about them. Pilots and airplanes are what gets the headlines because saying you don’t have enough Finance troops or CE structures people doesn’t have the same conveyance of doom that the operators do.
Just my opinion.