No, but there is a specific pay scale for aviation Civil Service work.
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Pilot shortage?
- Thread starter webmaster
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SELRES_AMDO
Well-Known Member
It could actually be more than your figure if you include personnel costs.
A F-18 runs over (on avg) 10K per flight hour. 12M in flying costs comes pretty quick. That doesn't include what it cost the Navy to pay for a body. Salary costs with benefits runs over 150K per year for a LT.
You sparked my nerd nerve so I just did some quick excel math as I happen to have an old copy of the FY-18 DoD flight hour rates. For me, the Navy spent between $5.5-$6 million to get me from brand new ensign to SWTP Level IV. That includes my annual salary.
VX GSs are often 14s but as you mentioned their scope of responsibilities is larger than just pilot. They're often leading or involved at the top level of large T&E projects. But it's a great gig for XPs who were happy at wanted to stay being XPs without working for an OEM and the moves/travel that can involve.
But if it makes you feel better. I recently did some math and it cost FedEx a little over 10k for every block hour for me; and I have been doing quite a bit of high block trips lately, which helps the numbers in their favor.
And you don’t even want to know per landing. 8 landings this month, 47 grand
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There's reasons why I'm glad I'm now logging a ton of multiengine heavy time...but hearing stats like this one ranks right up there near the top. Can I retire yet?
Furthermore, that $10K per flight hour, which is in itself a fairly conservative estimate, is the unburdened cost, meaning it does not account for the cost of the airplane itself or the cost of its eventual replacement. Accounting for that approximately doubles the cost per flight hour, at least based on the most common published number for F/A-18E flyaway cost, amortized over 8000 flight hours. (The airframe was designed for 6000, but we all know they’ll be pressed into service far longer, at ever increasing per-hour mx cost.)
Bottom line, the business of flying modern, multi-role fighters and training their pilots is expensive, and it’s worth really carefully considering their use. Operation Enduring Training off the coast of Oman comes with enormous financial and opportunity cost. On the pilot side of the argument, so does a rigid adherence to timing/up-or-out/golden path.
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Something else to think about - have our practices in personnel and assignments kept up with what we expect of our pilots compared to the 20th century? Also, has the structure of squadrons evolved to support increased expectations from pilots?
I ask the above based off an assumption I'm making that pilots flying F-XX or F/A-XX in 2021 have way more asked of them than when life was Sparrows and dumb bombs. I'm supposed to be proficient at every mission out there, able to do everything from Harpoon and SLAM-ER to CAS to an FI DCA to an OCA with HARM/AARGM. And the threat is a peer threat now. Deep down inside I have just a tiny sliver of doubt that, in my TMS, if - today - we were to do something like put yellow striped weapons on, employ against actual emitters, with permanent blue air kill removal, doing all the high end things we can say we can do on paper, but with sim unboxed... it wouldn't go so well. Hopefully the threat has the same issues.
Is the design of a squadron where I spend more time on collateral duties than training to do all the above the right way to do things? Is 36 months and then you may never see a grey jet again the right way to do things? Is that the way things have always been done? Maybe we need to evolve the design of our squadrons and the way we do manpower to keep up with the mission. Maybe we need to change the way we assess readiness and the ability of squadrons to do all the things they say they can do.
I ask the above based off an assumption I'm making that pilots flying F-XX or F/A-XX in 2021 have way more asked of them than when life was Sparrows and dumb bombs. I'm supposed to be proficient at every mission out there, able to do everything from Harpoon and SLAM-ER to CAS to an FI DCA to an OCA with HARM/AARGM. And the threat is a peer threat now. Deep down inside I have just a tiny sliver of doubt that, in my TMS, if - today - we were to do something like put yellow striped weapons on, employ against actual emitters, with permanent blue air kill removal, doing all the high end things we can say we can do on paper, but with sim unboxed... it wouldn't go so well. Hopefully the threat has the same issues.
Is the design of a squadron where I spend more time on collateral duties than training to do all the above the right way to do things? Is 36 months and then you may never see a grey jet again the right way to do things? Is that the way things have always been done? Maybe we need to evolve the design of our squadrons and the way we do manpower to keep up with the mission. Maybe we need to change the way we assess readiness and the ability of squadrons to do all the things they say they can do.
SELRES_AMDO
Well-Known Member
Yes. And if we added direct labor costs at just the squadron level then the cost would go up even higher. 10K-20K cost per hour is just consumables, fuel, AVDLR, and contract work. The true cost is probably triple that figure when you consider all of the actual man hours that go into maintaining aircraft.
The Navy's funky accounting and budgeting keeps the true cost down.
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.
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.
Ha, same for me! There was a guy in my HT squadron with 28 or 29 month orders. Thought he was doing his community a solid by extending so long (what first tour JO doesn't think that way, like "they'll scratch my back at the end of this,") but at his first mid-term FITREP counseling he was advised to the effect "yo dude, you're waaaaaay behind on quals because you aren't competing with your peers, you're competing with people who have been here almost a year already." Did PERS stop doing that? I know my relief is being sent to my command TDY for his Disassociated Tour to avoid allowing him in his 12 month gate, and of course, those 2 months of TDY time don't count towards his disassociated tour time.
The problems are:
1. This is what we signed up for. Everyone knew from some point in flight school when they give you a brief you are doing a disassociated tour. There remains an insanely high number of people going into their first shore tour who still believe they will be able to "get out if it." There a few each year who do somehow, whether it's a hookup from the detailer, unbelievably lucky timing, or spouse co-lo that keeps one person on shore duty for a kid, there are always exceptions... as a result, way more people believe they will be the exception to the rule than are, and then they are sad about it.
2. I can't speak for all, but at least most disassociated tours require someone with aviation skills and knowledge. It's not always a perfect match of skills, but I know in my job, there would definitely have to be a pilot or NFO, and one of the two that I work on would almost have to have been someone with an HSC background. Do we need all these jobs? That's a different question; I have 2 billets, one is a 1 of 1 and one is a a 1 of 2, so I don't think we're particularly overmanned, but I imagine there are some places that don't seem like having a body there is value added.
SELRES_AMDO
Well-Known Member
I meant they are civilians and don't have ridiculous collaterals given to them. A civilian gets to do what is in their position description and nothing more.
@DanMa1156 PERS got caught with their hand in the cookie jar violating the DoDI. I remember one of the PERS-43 briefs at Hook or NHA where they said something along the lines of “yeah so turns out we can’t shorten people’s shore tours to make them retainable, so we ‘fixed that glitch’”. That was the 18/19 timeframe, and I believe folks showing now are all getting what they should.
What I really meant was, most people in aviation probably signed up to be aviators. Not shooters, not FACs, etc regardless of what brief we were given when we signed the dotted line. Perhaps it’s not in the cards right now but “not flying” seems to be a consistent reason people don’t want to stay. Not saying it’s right or wrong but I hear it often enough.
The Army does Warrant Officer pilots who only fly. Why can’t the Navy do the same?
I've got a family member who's an aviator...he had a pilot spot, but switched to NFO specifically due to the 6 year vs 8 year commitment. I thought that was rather short sighted on his part and told him so, but he didn't want to hear it.