As Need for New Blood Mounts, Education Brass Considers Changes to Traditional Training Pipeline

The Air Force's recruiting and training situation is scarcely better than it was last year, amid a growing industry-wide pilot shortage. 

The USAF thinks it can train 1,470 new pilots in fiscal year 2023, something its own AF Times calls a "lofty goal amid an enduring shortage of flyers". The target is not far off the original plan to graduate 1,500 new, combat-ready pilots per year by 2024, but so far its efforts to even reach its overarching goal of 21,000 pilots haven't panned out. Usually, the service is only about 19,000-strong, across active duty, reserve, and Guard pilots overall. 

The usual culprits abound in the Air Force shortage just like the airline pilot shortage: Training is long, and expensive, and a qualified airman can write his ticket wherever he wants if he's ATP-qualified. As carriers began sweetening the deal for prospective pilots, retention in the Air Force became even tougher - certainly not helped along by an increasingly politicized work climate, or the brouhaha over exemptions from vaccination requirements. A once unified service has seen one controversy after another, and from the number of aviators jumping ship for the civilian world, it would seem the average pilot is more mercenary than ever before. 

The Air Force, as it stands, is hoping to just be able to replenish its stocks of trained, mission-ready pilots, and even that seems to be a continuing challenge. Air Education and Training Command boss Lieutenant General Brian Robinson said that producing 1,470 UPT graduates would be tough a "challenge". 

“We are doing the best we can with the resourcing levels that we have, in terms of manning, weapons system sustainment, parts and supply, things of that nature,” said Robinson. Recent efforts to improve and modernize the student pilot curriculum have been put at odds with the need to continue pumping out graduates at a gallop in an increasingly unstable world. The old ways are being rethought, the very idea of a UPT class starting, training, and graduating in unison on the outs. 

“Probably, I need to get away from calling it the ‘pipeline,’” he said. “Here’s the training criteria, the competencies you need to demonstrate, and once you’ve demonstrated them, you’re on to the next piece." 

That training system may mirror Part 61 pilot training, and anyone familiar with the headaches that entails can see where it ends up - classes with wild fluctuations in student load, a feast or famine environment for instructors. Additionally, Robinson said that previous changes to the curriculum, integrating tablets and tech to streamline lessons, seemed to have a negative effect on community and unit cohesion, atomizing students into their own isolated worlds. 

“Culturally, that’s a challenge. We’ve experienced some of this as we looked at Pilot Training Next. When we think about esprit de corps and unit camaraderie and unit identification, it’s disruptive to that (traditional UPT) model." 

FMI: www.af.mil