It has all happened before Combat Aircraft examines what history teaches us about the USAF pilot shortage
A STRAIGHTFORWARD SOLUTION
REPORT David Axe
THE US AIR Force is short of nearly 2,000 pilots, a deficit that could ‘break the force’, according to Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson. The active-duty air force, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve Command together require around 20,000 aviators to crew a combined force of nearly 5,500 aircraft.
This is not the first time the air force has suffered a pilot shortage. And if history is any indication, it won’t be the last. Since WW2, boom-and-bust cycles in pilot retention have mapped neatly onto the rising and falling fortunes of the airline industry and changes in the pace of overseas deployments. The air force suffered through aircrew retention crises in the early 1950s, the late 1960s, the late 1970s, the whole of the 1980s and again in the early 2000s. The service solved the problem then. It can solve the problem today. Indeed, the service’s pilot shortage in 1967 and 1968 was nearly twice as bad as today’s is. Cash bonuses and deployment limits not to mention a downturn in airline hiring solved the 1960s aircrew crisis. The same solutions should work now.
