A General Named Charlie Brown

The United States Air Force has implemented a new review process by which Pentagon brass hopes to reverse the service’s long-standing shortage of qualified fighter pilots.

USAF deputy chief of staff for operations Lieutenant General Jim Slife is reportedly endeavoring to determine whether the service needs hundreds more pilots to fill policy-making and managerial jobs—or if airmen of different backgrounds would fare equally well in such positions.

Slife’s review could well reshape the wielding of influence among Air Force planners and policymakers, shifting power from the eminently capable to bureaucrat drones—a policy popular throughout Washington D.C.

USAF Chief of Staff General Charles Q. Brown set forth: “Do all the pilot positions we have on staff actually require a pilot, or does it require someone with operational expertise? How do we ensure that all of our airmen, to the best of our ability, have a little operational acumen?”

In October 2022—the beginning of the U.S. federal government’s fiscal year 2023—the Air Force stood approximately seven-hundred pilots short of its 13,000-person active-duty roster and some 1,200 pilots shy of the eight-thousand aviators required to keep the entirety of the Air National Guard’s and the Air Force Reserve’s aircraft manned.

Broadly speaking, the Air Force’s pilot ranks are 91% staffed—more or less. While combat flying units have all the aviators they need, three-in-ten policy jobs sit empty for want of pilots to fill them—so averred General Brown.

In some cases, the aforementioned positions remain empty only because convention dictates they be held by current and qualified pilots.

To the subject of the unfilled administrative positions, General Brown stated: “You had a pilot come into that job, you liked it, and you said, ‘From here on out, I need to have that.’ That’s not necessarily the case.”

Brown posited General Slife’s review wouldn’t eliminate the Air Force’s pilot shortage altogether, pointing out the undertaking is a single aspect of a larger strategy devised to recruit and retain a pilot workforce sufficiently large, skilled, and stable to defend the nation.

Brown pointed out the USAF’s latest retention initiatives, which set out to pay aviators willing to remain in uniform beyond their standard ten-year hitches as much as $50,000-per-year in addition to their base salaries. Combat bonuses and other pay incentives are also on offer.

Moreover, the Air Force is looking into non-monetary means by which to better the lives of its airmen and their families. Stability-enhancing initiatives the likes of keeping fliers stationed at the same base for longer periods of time are currently being investigated. If enacted, such measures would afford aviators, their spouses, and families greater stability in the workplace, at school, and socially.

General Brown concluded: “We’ve got to manage this very closely to ensure we are doing the right things; don’t do a one size fits all.”

FMI: www.af.mil