This article surprised me. Hasn’t “fighter pilot” been, for decades, one of the most coveted slots in the military, with only a tiny minority actually qualifying for the position?
Is it akin to the “hospital needs neurosurgeon” problem - “we urgently need more, but we can’t lower the standards?”
Does the Navy have the same fighter pilot shortage problem?
The article seems to make it clear. Fighter pilots can walk into highly paid jobs in the commercial world and they USAF doesn’t have a big enough budget to train replacements quickly enough. It’s not that there’s not enough people who want to be fighter pilots, it’s that the USAF only has so many slots per year it can afford to train and so people are leaving the AF quicker than they can train new ones.
The obvious answer to me would be to purchase less planes (eg less F-35’s) in order to have more budget for training new pilots and offering higher pay to experienced ones to try and keep them in the USAF. I’m guessing there is political reasons why they can’t do that.
Or they could make it more attractive for pilots to stay.
How? The article also mentions burn out. Because of the shortage of fighter pilots the ones the do have are being frequently rotated into the middle east to fight never ending wars there. So they can stay in the air force and spend months at a time away from their families or take a higher paying job for a commercial airline where they’re pretty much guaranteed to be able to spend one or two nights a week at home even if they fly long haul international.
Pretty much the only “carrot” the military has is money. They offer retention bonuses, more promotion opportunity, and improve special duty pay. And a lot of it has to do with spending priorities… You need to make desirable military jobs competitive with their civilian industry equivalents if you want to retain skilled personnel. Unfortunately, we live in a world where Congres wants to slash budgets, personnel costs, headcount, benefits and entitlements, and where military pay raises don’t keep pace with inflation. You can’t have it both ways.
I would have thought that Air Force transport pilots would be a better fit for commercial aviation than fighter jockeys, but whatever.
I know this may come off a flippant, but why not outsource, like any other high-tech industry seems to be doing nowadays? I bet there are vast numbers of foreign nationals would gladly commit to six our eight years with the USAF, in return for, say, a green card.
I doubt that a foreigner would be trusted with something as important and expensive as a current-generation fighter, or that they would quality for the necessary security clearances. The word is that the F35 has a lot of secret electronic capabilities.
How long are pilots currently obligated to serve?
Foreigners would never be allowed to be officers or get the necessary security clearances.
Take a minute to Google “Operation Diamond.” If we took a foreign national and handed them the keys to a multi-million dollar jet housing our most cutting edge military tech, how long do you think it would be before someone flew one to a hostile country?
Six to eight years is not the problem. Retention is the problem. The entire issue they are having is that pilots do their six years and then quit, while the military is trying to retain them for a twenty-plus year career.
Oh no! There are slightly less pilots to fill the ranks of your vast super army, America! Who will defend freedom from the barbaric commies now?
Well Australia, the UK and Israel are all buying F-35’s and pilots from those countries are already being trained in flying the F-35 so presumably that wouldn’t be a problem. However people from those countries are not that likely to be influenced by the offer of a green card. The USAF would have to pay them considerably more than they are getting in their home country, so again it comes down to money.
The basic problem is the US has been continuously at war since 2001, 15 years, considerably longer than either Vietnam or WW II. Who wants to be away from home six months of the year or more bombing pieces of desert for that long?
How many fighter pilots that are currently on active duty have ever flown a single defensive combat mission against an identified belligerent enemy?
Seems to me that the only reason we “need” more pilots is because the military-industrial complex “needs” to sell us more fighters.
I’d welcome any statistical data that defends the need for more fighters and pilots.
It’s interesting about the comments about much higher pay in the commercial world, but when you read articles in flyer forums about pay there are numerous posts complaining about low pay for pilots for the regional/secondary airlines…
Growing up, the one thing I wanted to be was a U.S. Naval Aviator. That dream ended in high school when I damaged my knee, and exactly a year later when I destroyed both knees. Would’ve been great, but now that I’m older I don’t really want to be a fighter pilot.
But if the Air Force or anybody else wants a middle-aged fat bastard with game legs to fly a helicopter (of any kind), I’m not that hard to find. 
That’s exactly what I thought when reading the OP.
I used to fly for a regional, now charter.
There’s a big difference in pay at a regional vs a “major” airline. Military pilots can sometimes go direct to a major without putting in time at a regional. And rightly so - they often have the right sort of experience. I work with a few of these types now.
As mentioned earlier, I think there may be some preference for transport pilots over fighter jocks. Not sure how much, but the theory is those folks are already experienced in multi-crew environments. That said, I’ve flown with some single-seat fighter guys who were outstanding.
As I understand it, commercial pilots have a huge range of salaries. New pilots for the regionals make atrocious salaries, but senior pilots at the major airlines are very well paid. Good military pilots can skip the entry-level jobs, and jump straight into the upper-level airline jobs where they can earn six figures.
ETA: ninja’d by actual pilot! At least I’m not completely wrong.
I read a couple of years ago that after all of the training and expectations a lot of pilots were pressed into drone service. I don’t know if that’s still the case.
It still is. The USAF is hard up for drone pilots. In fact, they’re opening up flying drones to enlisted personal (the Globalhawks, I believe). They’ve even bumped up the age cutoff to 34 for drones.
-Randmcnally, who, if he can get is stupid fucking medical cleared because of a goddamn tooth, will be off to OTS to be a drone pilot.
It’s like baseball; AAA doesn’t pay that well, but you get a big raise if you make it to the majors.
You’ll actually take a pay cut the first year and a bit at a major, but it goes up from there. People at my company are often hired by a major, and end up making a lot less at first. But over time they will do much better.