Rand study on USAF pilot retention

[Brett327]

I should've been more specific/picked a better quote but my skills weren't quite up to the task I guess. I included a post of yours from that 2014 thread below.

I guess I was asking if in your opinion the current retention struggle is statistically relevant or if this whole thing is just overblown melodrama. Do you still think this is a short-term issue? Because I do think the institution has changed; just not for the better. I'm not sure I'd say 2019 is better than 2014, but then again it's not really my fight anymore.

It seems to me like the VFA and VAQ DH numbers weren't looking great even in 2014...if some dudes rambling on an internet forum were able to figure out there was an issue...why was Big Navy so asleep at the wheel?

Nobody in that 2014 discussion was characterizing it as overblown melodrama. We were still trying to understand the scope of the problem. Since then, PERS has done a number of things to improve retention, but those will take time to show whether they're effective or not. I stand by my original analysis that PERS and the NAE can only do so much so fast. They lack the legal authorities to increase the bonus structure beyond what it is at today. The FITREP system is about to undergo a revolutionary change, which I think will alleviate some of the issues people have with it, but again, this is a years-long process and it won't provide immediate relief. These are examples of the inherent institutional inertia that I spoke of in 2014. That has not, and will not change.

Are we better today than in 2014? Hard to tell. Anecdotally, the VAQ FRS CO has seen a marked decrease in 1310 LTs who intend to separate at the end of their commitment. If that pans out, then that's progress. Whether that happens for the VFA folks remains to be seen, as there are other unique factors at work in that community. This year the VAQ command screen was about 75% 1310, after several years of heavy 1320 majorities. What impact this will have also remains to be seen, but I think more 1310s in front offices can only be a positive thing.

Short term? Time will tell. We're 5 years in (which is probably what I had in mind as short term), and I wouldn't expect the pendulum to swing aggressively the other way in the next 18 months. Mark me down as a poor soothsayer.

 

[Flash]

UAVs have the noble goal of allowing USA to conduct combat ops without putting Americans in the line of fire and the goal of LVC is to maximize the training potential while minimizing cost. Both good goals that happen to be at odds with lots of folks desires to fly a jet with five or more kill marks under the canopy rail and to have a fat log book that helps them transition to the airlines.

While a noble goal it is not a realistic one, especially against an adversary with the technological capability to counter our current advantage in UAV's. Hence the continued need for pilots, for a looonnngggg time.

What will UAVs assisted by AI be doing in 5yrs? 10? 20?...I imagine the future will be a lot more enders game and ready player one. If a big war comes I also think that that future will be here sooner than we imagine now.

If a 'big war' comes against the wrong adversary I think we will find ourselves being forced to go without some of the latest technology that has given us an edge lately.

UAS being its own community/pipeline within naval aviation would be great. Your automatic pool of talent is the NAMI whammy crowd, i.e. officers who otherwise want to be aviators but anthropomorphically/medically can’t. They would not have the same training pipeline or long service commitment.

And depending on the platform, you could create an enlisted rate (AU? AQ?) to be the pilots....The Navy creates/ merges/ adjusts ratings all the time to evolve as the mission evolves. Likewise for officers (e.g. 1840). I wouldn’t be suggesting a change if there weren’t lots of signs pointing to pilot manning problems across multiple services.

The Navy hasn't come anywhere near close enough to getting to critical mass to need a separate community of UAV folks in aviation yet, we operate only a fraction of the UAV's that the USAF does and at least VP actually seems to have a decent plan in place to man their VUP squadrons with VP folks.

Best retain Navy UAV ops in their core communities to keep them focused on what they should be doing instead of giving them too much autonomy and see them go right off the rails, or better yet have the latest bright idea fairy take them from the Navy and put them against the latest target de jour. There are several good reasons the Marines no longer have a VMAQ community but a big one is that they lost control of it decades ago.

 

[Jim123]

It's not that Big Navy is limited to how quick or agile they can be when addressing a pilot shortage (it's a bureaucracy managing thousands of people- of course it's going to be slow whenever it changes or adapts to the latest thing), it's that when a lot of JOs and DHs have believer, as far back as 2014, that a shortage was brewing, the brass was actively denying it in brief after brief... until barely about a year or two ago. That caused unnecessary self-inflicted damage by turning even more people off.

 

[Brett327]

It's not that Big Navy is limited to how quick or agile they can be when addressing a pilot shortage (it's a bureaucracy managing thousands of people- of course it's going to be slow whenever it changes or adapts to the latest thing), it's that when a lot of JOs and DHs have believer, as far back as 2014, that a shortage was brewing, the brass was actively denying it in brief after brief... until barely about a year or two ago. That caused unnecessary self-inflicted damage by turning even more people off.

That's a fair criticism, but there's not much any of us can do about that now except acknowledge it and move forward.

 

[Angry]

That's a fair criticism, but there's not much any of us can do about that now except acknowledge it and move forward.

Is there a reason why the brass who were denying it can't be held accountable? I'm genuinely asking this question, in line with my "no one is around to take responsibility" comments from earlier.

They were either a) ignorant that a problem truly existed and thus bad at their jobs or b) knew that a problem existed and lied about it - clearly an ethical failure, especially since the primary motive for lying would be to obscure one's own shortcomings. I'm not interested in seeing someone hang from a yardarm because they didn't correctly mitigate a manning shortfall, but I feel like it would send a good message to future leaders to see someone held accountable for their inaction in SOME fashion.

 

[squorch2]

If you haven't already, check out Tom Ricks' The Generals.

Upshot: There's a pretty solid trend of US military leadership ossifying until major conflicts happen, then loads of stars are fired and young turks promoted quickly.

Even more succinctly, US mil leadership ossifies quickly outside of war, and until Vietnam, would get refreshed during major conflicts.

 

[Hair Warrior]

Good concept. One could argue we’re in Phase 1 of great power competition right now, even if it’s below the threshhold of armed conflict.

 

[UInavy]

....great power competition ......

Don't forget to work in "reps and sets".

 

[RedFive]

I have no idea how many of those people exist but it certainly wouldn't be a bad idea for the USAF to start recruiting at game conferences. Plenty of people would love to get paid to play video games, the difference between "flying" a UAV and playing a game is pretty minimal.

Are you kidding? No, it's not. Yes, HSC-3 considers sim time to be actual time, but there's a world of difference between flying MQ-8 in the sim and flying it at Point Mugu or on an LCS. First of all, the sim works every time, all the time. Second, I lost fucking link in the downwind at Point Mugu. Third, while I admit it's somewhat of a remote possibility, there is real risk associated with sending a flying blender through real time and space, especially one in which your SA is mostly confined to the view from a soda straw (FLIR). If I crash in a video game, I load my saved game. If I mid-air with a Cessna, have a flame out, or lose a tail rotor at the perch, the situation changes considerably.

The rest of your post sounds like a romantic ideal.

Srsly? You said that in the same breath as this:

I imagine the future will be a lot more enders game and ready player one.

While UAVs have a place, I think you're too idealistic about their future.

While a noble goal it is not a realistic one, especially against an adversary with the technological capability to counter our current advantage in UAV's. Hence the continued need for pilots, for a looonnngggg time.

I can't agree enough with @Flash. If I had the time and energy to do so, I would write a high-side white paper on how to defeat MQ-8 and what we should do to mitigate those offensive measures. In verbal discussions with Fire Scout engineers I've brought up these weaknesses and I get shrugs. I know @Pags and a couple others here work on it and I applaud your tireless efforts to continue pushing it forward with upgrades, but it definitely has its limits. Idealizing UAV capabilities only does them a disservice in the long-run.

 

[Swanee]

The Navy hasn't come anywhere near close enough to getting to critical mass to need a separate community of UAV folks in aviation yet, we operate only a fraction of the UAV's that the USAF does and at least VP actually seems to have a decent plan in place to man their VUP squadrons with VP folks

I think it's an important step to begin to take for the Navy UAS communities- developing a separate, professional career field that can train and sustain itself.

The Marine Corps has made the huge mistake of making it the B-Billet world for traditionally winged guys since it's inception in 1984. That means that there is no community buy in from the officer ranks, as everyone was just there for a couple years and then is going back to "real" aviation. There is no real direction or sense of community, and standardization is incredibly tough when each squadron may be commanded by a pilot or NFO from completely different type.

At least you guys are keeping the Triton in VP and the Firescout in H(SC?). But soon enough you're going to want ENS Timmy to be a UAS guy from the get go, so that when he's a DH he's been in the community for 10 years, and as a CO he's been there close to, if not, 20. And it's a horrible idea for UAS to be the Nami Whammy platoon. You don't want any community to have the land of broken toys stigma- especially if they are in the business of killing.

Otherwise, as is Navy fashion, the UAV tour will be off the golden path, and you won't get the quality or buy in, as you're not sending your top guys there. The community will always play second fiddle to whomever owns it, and will never be as good as it could if it were allowed to stand on it's own two feet as a professional warfighting discipline.

 

[Pags]

While a noble goal it is not a realistic one, especially against an adversary with the technological capability to counter our current advantage in UAV's. Hence the continued need for pilots, for a looonnngggg time.



If a 'big war' comes against the wrong adversary I think we will find ourselves being forced to go without some of the latest technology that has given us an edge lately.



The Navy hasn't come anywhere near close enough to getting to critical mass to need a separate community of UAV folks in aviation yet, we operate only a fraction of the UAV's that the USAF does and at least VP actually seems to have a decent plan in place to man their VUP squadrons with VP folks.

Best retain Navy UAV ops in their core communities to keep them focused on what they should be doing instead of giving them too much autonomy and see them go right off the rails, or better yet have the latest bright idea fairy take them from the Navy and put them against the latest target de jour. There are several good reasons the Marines no longer have a VMAQ community but a big one is that they lost control of it decades ago.

Like I said to gator, i agree that there are issues that will make the use of UAVs more difficult to use then has been the case in recent history. However, I'm equally sure that this capability won't just be cast aside when it gets hard. People will figure out a way to make it work because we'll pretty much have to.

The notion of a more autonomous drone and more survivable data links aren't that far fetched. War has always been a catalyst for development so I'm sure there will be a push to come up with something. Maybe some sort of adaptable/hopping mesh network with multiple nodes that can detect and react to attack. Or something even cooler that we don't even know about yet. In 1939 the number of people who knew about radar, jet engines, radar guided missiles, ballistic missiles, computers, and nukes were probably very low for each technology. However, the pressures of war with the appropriate increases in funding and risk acceptance led to huge advances in these fields in six years. I'm sure we'd see something similar for WWIII provided it laster longer than a few hours.

 

[Pags]

Are you kidding? No, it's not. Yes, HSC-3 considers sim time to be actual time, but there's a world of difference between flying MQ-8 in the sim and flying it at Point Mugu or on an LCS. First of all, the sim works every time, all the time. Second, I lost fucking link in the downwind at Point Mugu. Third, while I admit it's somewhat of a remote possibility, there is real risk associated with sending a flying blender through real time and space, especially one in which your SA is mostly confined to the view from a soda straw (FLIR). If I crash in a video game, I load my saved game. If I mid-air with a Cessna, have a flame out, or lose a tail rotor at the perch, the situation changes considerably.

The MQ-8 sim is admittedly not the best. It's failure to model things like data link loss arent great. It probably wouldn't be too hard to model the appropriate behavior if there was a demand from the fleet.

As to risk from other aircraft that's why you fly it in controlled airspace under positive contact. Does that completely mitigate the risk? Not at all. But unless the flaming Fire Scout falls on the MCS the physical risk to you personally is very minimal.

Srsly? You said that in the same breath as this:

While UAVs have a place, I think you're too idealistic about their future.

I disagree. There are real limitations that I've acknowledged will need to be overcome but that's how these things go. There's too much goodness to just walk away from them because they're not perfect.
[/QUOTE]

I can't agree enough with @Flash. If I had the time and energy to do so, I would write a high-side white paper on how to defeat MQ-8 and what we should do to mitigate those offensive measures. In verbal discussions with Fire Scout engineers I've brought up these weaknesses and I get shrugs. I know @Pags and a couple others here work on it and I applaud your tireless efforts to continue pushing it forward with upgrades, but it definitely has its limits. Idealizing UAV capabilities only does them a disservice in the long-run.

Like I said, the limitations are pretty well known. I'm sure the Fire Scout engineers shrugged not because they don't believe you but because there's no requirement or money for them to do anything about it. Without you writing this white paper and getting it discussed it will get no traction. Write your ideas down and get your leadership on board. Also, don't misconstrue my future vision to mean fire scout. That's old technology. Let's call it the equivalent of the airplanes that were used during the Pancho Villa excursion vice the aircraft that were used in 1918.

Finally, I've moved on from Fire Scout, so I've got no dog in that particular fight.

 

[Pags]

Is there a reason why the brass who were denying it can't be held accountable? I'm genuinely asking this question, in line with my "no one is around to take responsibility" comments from earlier.

They were either a) ignorant that a problem truly existed and thus bad at their jobs or b) knew that a problem existed and lied about it - clearly an ethical failure, especially since the primary motive for lying would be to obscure one's own shortcomings. I'm not interested in seeing someone hang from a yardarm because they didn't correctly mitigate a manning shortfall, but I feel like it would send a good message to future leaders to see someone held accountable for their inaction in SOME fashion.

How does that even work? Do you pull a guy out of retirement just to publically abuse him for what is essentially your enjoyment?

It's not like people made these decisions on purpose. They were people trying to make the least bad decisions they could. Not sure how you hold someone accountable for doing that .

Shit, even if they did it on purpose then that's called downsizing or layoffs and that just business.

 

[RedFive]

As to risk from other aircraft that's why you fly it in controlled airspace under positive contact. Does that completely mitigate the risk? Not at all. But unless the flaming Fire Scout falls on the MCS the physical risk to you personally is very minimal.

Well, I'm not worried about me, I'm worried about what the computer will do if [insert failure here] happens at the perch with the LSE 20 feet away or while one of my maintainers is walking through the arc. I know the risk is minimal because of how/where we fly it, but just like the automatic approach in the 60 or a Tesla "autopilot," they should be used as a tool. Computers are amazing tools, but they can never replace human decision making -- even Data would acknowledge that!

I disagree. There are real limitations that I've acknowledged will need to be overcome but that's how these things go. There's too much goodness to just walk away from them because they're not perfect.

Well, then I think we just agreed on the same thing from different viewpoints. I'm not suggesting we walk away from UAVs, but as a prior aerospace engineer who designed UAVs, a pilot, and a (conscripted ?) UAV operator, I think we need more awareness of their limitations and less hype about their ability to replace humans. A self-driving Tesla is super cool and I can't wait to have something to lessen the burden of a boring highway drive, but it's not going to navigate downtown Ensenada or safely traverse a snow/sand-blown road anytime soon. Sensors fail. Computers glitch. Life is too important to blindly trust a machine with no self-awareness.

Like I said, the limitations are pretty well known. I'm sure the Fire Scout engineers shrugged not because they don't believe you but because there's no requirement or money for them to do anything about it. Without you writing this white paper and getting it discussed it will get no traction. Write your ideas down and get your leadership on board.

Well, they were surprised by the issues I brought up as though it had never occurred to anyone. Perhaps I'll give it a shot in a couple months when I get time, but I'm really not sure my efforts would make much difference.

Finally, I've moved on from Fire Scout, so I've got no dog in that particular fight.

Awesome! Congrats!

 

[Flash]

The notion of a more autonomous drone and more survivable data links aren't that far fetched. War has always been a catalyst for development so I'm sure there will be a push to come up with something. Maybe some sort of adaptable/hopping mesh network with multiple nodes that can detect and react to attack. Or something even cooler that we don't even know about yet. In 1939 the number of people who knew about radar, jet engines, radar guided missiles, ballistic missiles, computers, and nukes were probably very low for each technology. However, the pressures of war with the appropriate increases in funding and risk acceptance led to huge advances in these fields in six years. I'm sure we'd see something similar for WWIII provided it laster longer than a few hours.

I'm sure there will be advancements in autonomous drones and more survivable datelines but from what I've seen right now that is a very long way away. As an EW guy who worked both the EA and ES sides, the issue with datalinks might not be insurmountable but it will be a very hard one to mitigate and will likely never be 'solved'. There is only so far innovation can get you before you run into simple physics, and unless you have a black hole handy that is a hard problem to get around. Having observed the bigger picture of UAV operations for many years has made me very aware of their wonderful capabilities as well as their serious limitations, a career in EW has made me wary to rely on them in anything more than the most permissive of environments.

Autonomous operations is a whole other ball of wax and one that can often be easily defeated by the simplest of measures. Unlike an autonomous car that knows what 'Stop' and 'Yield' signs look like good luck trying to make sure that a UAV 'knows' what an enemy tank, locally modified, looks like compared to a friendly one through a hazy undercast at dusk. That would be hard enough for a person to do, just look at how may 'Scud launchers' we blew up in the Gulf War...oops, tanker trucks...and that just scratches the surface of 'autonomous' operations.

Something not mentioned yet though doesn't have anything to do with technology though, instead 'politics'. The idea of having 'automatic drones' roaming the airspace is a huge political football. It is hard to overstate the specter of drones that exists in other countries and not just the Middle East, the mere suggestion of deploying ISR-only UAV's often runs into political obstacles the moment it is brought up. Even domestically it can be controversial with some companies running into employee objections on the use of AI. So the idea of 'autonomous military drones' would have to overcome quite a big hurdle politically and publicly before being fielded.