Pilot shortage?

[taxi1]

Depends...if you're the guy in the gig you might want one over the other. Also, GS can probably do more officer like things in the squadron as govt agents (if that's something you want them to do).

I think a decent business model is GS pilots who are required to be IRR reservists, truly reserves. In case of a real conflict they could be mobilized and ordered about.

It’s a good model for DCOs too. There’s a fair number of DCOs at Pax that are GS.

 

[Brett327]

I can't speak to whether it's in Title 10 or elsewhere, but when "signing up," you owe the Navy 8 years. For non-USNA, that was 4 years active, 4 years IRR. For USNA, that was 5 years. When winged, you used to incur a 7 year concurrent obligation. That changed to 8 for reasons synixman mentioned. That's what he's referring to.

Got that much. Just trying to understand the implication that something nefarious is at work in getting around Title 10. Presumably, the Navy went through some sort of legitimate process to ask congress for an exception to what's in the law because it was deemed necessary.

 

[wink]

Does that matter?

edit. Late to the party. Others had my thoughts.

 

[Pags]

I think a decent business model is GS pilots who are required to be IRR reservists, truly reserves. In case of a real conflict they could be mobilized and ordered about.

It’s a good model for DCOs too. There’s a fair number of DCOs at Pax that are GS.

I don't know how you could mandate that. Especially when a lot of the pilots will likely be retirees.

 

[Pags]

and also the job protections and retirement continuity offered by Civil Service vs. "at will employee" for a contractor.

Yeah, that's the "if you're the guy in the gig" part I was getting at. I know you know but for others GS gets you more protection and better benefits. CTR gets you more money in your hands.

 

[DanMa1156]

For the life of me I don't get the shortsightedness of the "up or out" philosophy paired with the lack of career flexibility. A lot of people become pilots in the Navy because they want to fly, and have no desire to be a DH, let alone an admiral one day. Yet we constantly force folks out of the cockpit, and we refuse to create pathways that allow pilots to reach 20 years of just non-golden path flying billets. In turn, we push fully qualified and very experienced pilots, who have no desire to fly for the airlines but also no desire to be a staff officer, and replace them with nuggets. Instead, these folks could be rotating between instructor/station SAR/GITMO/etc and operational flying billets as Super JO's / FITREP fodder DH's who wear O4. Creating a real PIP that isn't just for show would also help.

I also disagree that all bonuses just go to folks who were going to stay anyway. I am at that juncture myself right now, and my decision to stay or not will absolutely be influenced by the size of the bonus. And my decision to take the 5 year bonus or wait until after the DH results to take the 3 year bonus will also be affected by the size.

To your first point: I assume that with how over time we've cut SAR stations, cut C-12/C-26 areas (none CONUS anymore, right? PAX was the last holdout and that went away a few years ago), contractor outsourcing, and making VR responsible for pretty much any "transport" mission, not to mention, as others have posted here in the path, random officer billets at recruiting stations used to be able to fly T-34s (?), that there just isn't enough room to do that anymore. Jet squadrons seem relatively small to me as a helo guy so I assume this isn't a problem for them, but in my opinion, in Helo land we are pretty over-manned on the JO accessions - and then the result is 50% of dudes won't fly past their first tour (spitballing), and then for the last 2 years we haven't been able to make enough DHs because of the multitude of reasons we have listed here many times before, not to mention in the last DH board there were ZERO CNATRA DHs. So much for ensuring PFIs don't become permanent department heads I guess... . I'm convinced the overmanning in HSC is a result of mission sets that didn't pan out as planned, FIRESCOUT, and the Navy's need to put butts in non-flying 2nd sea tour billets. Remember that when it was HS, the squadrons were roughly the same size as a VFA Ready Room - about half to 2/3rds as many JOs as a CVN HSC squadron has now... and they did ASW back then too.


To your second point: the combination of COVID drying up my opportunities I had lined up for myself (an airline gig + a C-17 Air National Guard unit) and the size of the bonus convinced me to stay in for DH. It wasn't for a burning desire to be a DH, although I will do that job to the best of my ability. I made it as clear as possible in the survey that Naval Aviation didn't really attract me back, COVID pushed me back and the bonus helped convince me. I also have a laughable number of friends whose line of thinking is "I'm not worried about joint credit/masters degree/post DH O-5 sea tour; I am going to become a PFI." I called up the PFI program manager and asked something to the effect of "ah, since these dudes are basically tenured to 20, does that mean that PFI accessions will be less and less every year until it reaches the point where you're only replacing retirees?" The answer was a resounding "yes." I think my friends are dreaming and I wonder if PFI wasn't a carrot the Navy could dangle at them how many of them would have walked away. I took the bonus and I recognize the implication is post DH they will also detail me wherever they want, but the way my timing worked was such that taking the 5 year bonus only added on one more year of service beyond what I would have done anyway, and I figure by the time I'm at 14 or 15 years, I'm going to bite the sunk cost and go for a pension.

 

[wlawr005]

@DanMa1156 The problem is that while you and I understand your circumstances the Navy data miners are simply going to correlate the higher DH bonus take rate to a dip in airline hiring and use that information to rebut any real retention problems.

The most telling information is those who are still getting out and taking jobs at regional or second tier cargo gigs until they can get hired somewhere else and I'm not sure that survey was suitably designed to appropriately aggregate that kind of data.

 

[DanMa1156]

@DanMa1156 The problem is that while you and I understand your circumstances the Navy data miners are simply going to correlate the higher DH bonus take rate to a dip in airline hiring and use that information to rebut any real retention problems.

The most telling information is those who are still getting out and taking jobs at regional or second tier cargo gigs until they can get hired somewhere else and I'm not sure that survey was suitably designed to appropriately aggregate that kind of data.

I thought that, until the bonus rates came out the other day, and HSC and HSM are on par with VFA now for the max bonus, this is only 2 years after the fact that HSC was slapped in the face with a laughable bonus that even the Commodore claims he verbally berated PERS for how they calculated it... and that began 2 year inability of HSC to fill all its DH billets; we'll have to see if this year breaks that streak.

The other thing was at the virtual Hook PERS brief last year, I remember the speaker saying something to the effect of "hey, you know, COVID hasn't helped us with retention as much as you think... we are still bleeding guys out of the Navy at the same rate, what's changed is that it appears to have leveled off and we didn't have another year of increasing walks." We'll have to see. Curious to see the DH results.

 

[robav8r]

Yeah, that's the "if you're the guy in the gig" part I was getting at. I know you know but for others GS gets you more protection and better benefits. CTR gets you more money in your hands.

^^^ This. I have seen this routinely in the NCR across a wide spectrum of jobs and career paths. Lots of folks want that safety & security blanket that comes with a GS job. But if you are a bit flexible, there is a bunch of money to be made in the CTR world. Your mileage will vary of course . . .

 

[HuggyU2]

The Navy used to have civilian pilots flying the T-39 for NFO training.

Contractors were still flying the T-1 at PCola on the USAF-side of Nav training as of 2016. The ones I met were all former Navy pilots.

 

[Gatordev]

Got that much. Just trying to understand the implication that something nefarious is at work in getting around Title 10. Presumably, the Navy went through some sort of legitimate process to ask congress for an exception to what's in the law because it was deemed necessary.

Sorry, I was mid-sentence typing and got a call... I took the post more along the lines of guys signed up for a job understanding they were going to be tied to the job for 7 years, and then after they signed the dotted line, the number was changed to 8 years "out of the blue." But I may have misread.

 

[Brett327]

Sorry, I was mid-sentence typing and got a call... I took the post more along the lines of guys signed up for a job understanding they were going to be tied to the job for 7 years, and then after they signed the dotted line, the number was changed to 8 years "out of the blue." But I may have misread.

That's part of what I was asking... did anyone have the length of their contract changed after they signed up? I honestly don't know, but that would be surprising to me if that had happened.

 

[Jim123]

There was one wings +7 person I vaguely remember who winged late (more flight school delays than usual) and a few years later had to dig out his contract to prove to the detailer than he only had a wings + 7 year commitment. All of the detailer's other customers at the time were wings +8. Seems kind of strange because those contracts went by commissioning date, should have been easy to figure out without "proof." Somebody must have fat fingered the wrong MSR year in the guy's service record back when he winged, I suppose just jammed in the same date for everybody in the winging class without checking anyone's contract. Maybe there was more than one person this happened to but I don't think it would have been very many.

Shady? That's plausible. Honest mistake? Plausible too.


My second sea tour (dissociated tour) detailer was one of those guys who'd blow smoke about how he was "my advocate." That was rich because he called me up out of the blue, a couple days after my XO had told him I was planning to extend shore my duty a few months to my MSR and get out. I was a pack kind of guy so for the detailer to be calling me, not the other way around, that was strange. He'd had a different guy with my PRD and my background suddenly drop out of his already-released dissociated orders. He didn't want to either gap the billet or to ordmod somebody else's PRD and send them to the billet. I already understood his job was about putting warm bodies in dissociated tours, and the fact that nobody had talked to me about a flying second sea tour plus the fact that I was discussing orders with the detailer, well that's just how the game worked, so no smoke please.

The same guy was notorious for not returning messages at all to my peers or my front office. Like I said, him claiming to be my advocate was rich. When my orders came in, the front end had a month of schools plus TAD to the ultimate command and the back end had an extra month, for a total of 26 months. First I'd heard of that, the official BUPERS career path briefs from his shop always said 24 there. (Maybe there's service commitment payback for coveted schools such as amphibious warfare indoc and R2P2.) It was minor in the big scheme of things but still shady.

I had good detailers too, most of them in fact- not necessarily because they cut me orders I liked but because simply because they played it straight. But it's really irritating to see guys like him get groomed for command from the time they're LTJGs, know it, and have an "I can't get fired" attitude when they're on their bureau tour. Take the good with the bad and life goes on, but one guy like him negates at least one great CO you had some other time.

When someone tells you the bonus matters only if you're sitting on the fence but they've already made their decision, odds are there was a guy like that who really soured them on staying in.



Still wonder why these pilot shortages keep happening??

 

[SynixMan]

I'm not aware of anyone's MSR changing once they entered the Navy. Unless I'm missing something, people's commitments were exactly what they signed up for, no? When you say "outside of Title 10," please elaborate.

I was only saying Millington added contracts on top of Title 10, not implying they retroactively changed contracts. That’s beyond the pale even for them.

10 U.S. Code § 653 - Minimum service requirement for certain flight crew positions

www.law.cornell.edu

The Army is doing the same move, taking everyone to 8. But hey, if we’re artibitrally changing contracts, why not make it 12, 15, 20 years? Big eyed pre-commissioning kids will still sign, right?

The larger point is these people aren’t dumb. They know the rules because they largely wrote them. Is it a nefarious plot to screw people over? No, but it’s ethically gray and a shitty way to treat people who’ve otherwise served honorably.

What was shittier was purposely writing shortened shore orders to leave people 12 months of service commitment. PERS finally got their hand slapped about a year ago for that (contra to the DoDI’s guidance on tour lengths). If my 33 month shore orders had been written for 36 back in 2016, I wouldn’t have had to take a disassociated tour.

 

[sevenhelmet]

@DanMa1156
...The most telling information is those who are still getting out and taking jobs at regional or second tier cargo gigs until they can get hired somewhere else and I'm not sure that survey was suitably designed to appropriately aggregate that kind of data.

As someone who got out in spite of COVID-19 and have had friends do the same, I’m inclined to agree- a lot of the valuable feedback might come from those people.

However, the trouble it it’s been death by a thousand cuts for some of us. Timing, golden path, material and training shortfalls, burnout, detailing, family, QoL... all of those played a role in my own decision to leave AD. And through it all, I got a real sense that things were drifting ever further from what I had been led to believe were organizational norms. During my JO tour just a few short years ago, it would have been unthinkable for a fleet squadron to be on single jet flow for 8 months straight, or to not receive a single FNG pilot for nearly three years. Or for there to be >90 aircraft on the ramp at the FRS, with only 8-10 flyable (or less) on a given day. Add all of that to a rigid timing and seniority construct that wastes expensively-attained qualifications, murky strategic goals, and absurdly long deployments with fewer of the perks that there used to be (e.g. theater security cooperation dets, actual port calls in interesting places) resulting in burnout, and it was sort of a perfect storm for me.

Still the hardest decision I’ve ever made. But even in hindsight, I would do it again.

Not all of this is fixable on a reasonable timeline. Its hard to offer constructive suggestions, even with the perspective of being gone for a little while. Personally, I think the Navy’s trying in their own, adorable Navy way. But I think it might be constructive for some senior leaders to realize that the system which worked so well for them doesn’t offer the same opportunities any more.

Also, sustained ops in the Middle East is killing us- there’s no way to get “the enterprise” back on top while that is going on. We need to be honest and introspective about what the mission really is over there.