Who would ever need something like that? And what sort of man would fill a job opening like that?
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NEWS Air Force leadership talks frankly about pilot retention
- Thread starter ChuckMK23
- Start date
Don't think that contractors would have replaced -201 or HCS-5. You need a squadron that can deploy. We used those units in the initial surge to invade Iraq - where will that capacity come from against a near peer?
I don't disagree, but we're looking a pilot large shortage over the next 20 years due to retirements only not even counting industry growth, and the shortage is global. We've seen guys pushing to get out for the last 3-4 years with the shortage looming but this year will be the first year there's actually a personnel deficit in the airline system. For years the Navy has been actively trying to prevent pilots from leaving the service flight current. It's only going to get worse.
While PERs may not offer up that they're reducing CNATRA billets, they already have started to. My squadron had 16 billets pulled from them over 3 years in order to shift more training burden to the reserves and make the Marine Corps and Coast Guard pony up their share of IPs. They've all started to experience the same personnel retention challenges. PERS priority is always going to be to fill fleet billets first (as it should be) so it will be interesting to see how the beast adapts. A lot can change in 20 years.
T-39 pilots weren't instructors but then again they didn't really need to be. The Air Force GS pilots flying their CSOs around in the T-6 were.
The Army ran into a similar problem with their fixed wing ISR units. Their solution was to take the long term endurance missions (Iraq, Afghanistan, training etc.) and give it primarily to contractors to free up the manning to allow their MI aviation brigades to maintain their surge capability.
If the Navy chose to further contract out their adversary training mission and CSG vertrep they'd free up the manning and hardware for more surge capability. Unfortunately everyone has an empire and I don't foresee communities willingly giving up their peace of the pie (that they know they probably won't ever get back) to support such an endeavor.
If the military goes to more civilians for ancillary type flying the concern is going to be saving manning more so than $$$. In typical fashion they'll legitimize extra expense as being "cheaper in the short term" and always having the ability to shut it off.
When looking at market economics the Air Force is already noticing that they're having problems filling their GS positions because their pay isn't competitive compared to the airlines so they're starting to push iniatives to increase them for those positions.
On the contractor side of the house, the company goes to the customer and says they're having retention issues and they're going to have to start paying more fix them. Customer has the option of saying no, or yes... if it's something deemed critical the answer is typically yes. Rise and repeat. There are some projects right now where companies are projecting they'll need to increase pay by 20-25% and pay their folks $1000/ day to keep them from bailing for the airlines. In Iraq back in its heyday, companies were paying pilots $2000/ day to meet demand for qualified personnel. I don't expect them to pay nearly that much for a domestic gig but if it comes between paying enough to staff a contract and losing a profitable contract, a Contractor is going to adjust its pay/benefits package to keep manning up to keep the contract.
Yes, you may free up hardware but I think it would be difficult to bring reserve aviators into a deploying command. -85 is just beginning to rebuild its reserve pilot manning. -84 struggled to get reserve pilots because mobilizing was pretty much guaranteed.
As was stated on the last page that shortage will raise wages across the board making contractors more expensive and not the money saving measure some hope. An O-3 right now is a lot cheaper than some of those contractors, the T-39 pilots were making pretty good bank before they went away, if the market gets tighter it'll get worse.
As for the USAF and CSO training, I don't think that'll go further than that anytime soon. CSO training has been a bit of an afterthought to the USAF for a while and not really indicative of what they do on the whole for training.
Funny you should say that; I've had 2 recruiters contact me about a JMPS contractor position in Lemoore. "We just can't seem to find anyone who wants to live there."
FWIW - if anyone is interested, I'd be happy to pass your name / linkedin profile onto this company. (They are specifically looking for Hornet types, but were open to the idea of someone else when I told them that pretty much everyone in the Navy is using JMPS nowadays, including a slimy helo guy like myself).
It seems like the only thing the focus the USAF has had lately with the airlines is piss off USAF pilots who rightly see that the airlines aren't the core issue.
If the USAF thinks they can compete in the free market with the current military personnel management system they're in for a rude awakening. I hope the airlines laugh them right out the door.
It always amazes me these discussions never focus on flight time. When my dad was flying toward the end of his career and F-8 Crusader hours got a little pricey, his squadron got three "bug mashers" to keep the aviators amused. It worked quite well and this was during the hey day of airline hiring.
Air Force: hey could we develop a win-win plan where you stop hiring away our pilots and they're forced to stay here without us actually making their jobs more attractive?
Airlines: No
Meeting over.
Airlines: No
Meeting over.
