A return of flying sergeants not likely
AF tests few enlisted airmen during pilot shortage
The Air Force will launch a high-tech training experiment testing both officers and enlisted airmen to prepare pilots for the cockpit faster.
But, despite a growing shortage of aviators, it won’t be a return to the wartime days of flying sergeants — at least for now, according to the Air Force.
The six-month initiative at a military reserve center in Austin, Texas, will reportedly include 15 commissioned officers and five enlisted airmen who have recently
graduated boot camp.
The initiative, dubbed “Pilot Training Next,” will use virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, biometrics and data analytics to determine if aviators can be trained faster and cheaper using technology, an Air Force spokeswoman said in an interview.
The Air Education and Training Command’s latest training experiment, set to begin next February, is meant to find out if technology can help airmen of different educational backgrounds learn faster in the pilot-training pipeline, the Air Force said.
“We are going to use immersive technology to see how we can help people learn more effectively,” Lt. Col. Robert Vicars, Pilot Training Next director, said in a statement. “This is an initiative to explore whether or not these technologies can help us learn deeper and faster.”
The Air Force, the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve, confront a shortage of about 2,000 aviators — and of that about 1,300 were fighter pilots. Many have been drawn out of the cockpit by an airline industry hiring binge or may have tired of a high number of deployments overseas.
Training military pilots takes time and money: Two years of undergraduate fighter pilot training costs taxpayers more than $1 million for each aviator. The Air Force has offered fighter pilots bonuses of up to $435,000 for agreeing to commit to another 13 years in uniform.
Still, despite the unusual move of including enlisted airmen in the experiment, they will not advance to undergraduate pilot training, according to Air Force spokeswoman Erika Yepsen.
For decades, the Air Force has reserved jobs for pilots to fly aircraft to commissioned officers who are college graduates.
However, to fill a gap of a shortage of aviators in wartime, enlisted pilots flew in World War I and World War II, historical documents show.
Thousands flew in World War II alone, but still made up only about 1 percent of pilots, documents show.
Air Force leaders should let enlisted troops fly manned aircraft again, said Michael Saunders, deputy legislative director of the Retired Enlisted Association’s office in Alexandria, Va.
“I think eventually they are going to,” Saunders said in a telephone interview. “There is a pilot shortage as a whole — not just the Air Force — and I think the Air Force is wise to look at all available assets, and I think it’s absolutely conceivable there are lots of enlisted people who could be great pilots.
“We’ve seen these outrageous bonuses that they have to pay to fighter pilots to try to keep them in,” he added. “Those dollars are a finite resource these days.”
The Air Force has opened the door for enlisted troops in one area: flying drones, which the service branch calls remotely piloted aircraft.
Since last year, the Air Force has trained enlisted airmen to fly the RQ-4 Global Hawk, a high-flying spy drone.
So far, 11 enlisted airmen have earned their wings as drone pilots, and that number could reach 100 by 2020, Yepsen said.
Kenneth E. Curell, 65, a former Air Force and Air National Guard fighter pilot who became an airline and corporate pilot, said in an email he did not believe enlisted airmen should be pilots of manned aircraft yet.
“If the objective is to proactively address pilot shortages, then the Air Force needs to experiment with and implement other options to entice prospective pilot candidates into the (Air Force) and promote initiatives that directly address areas pilots have identified as retention barriers,” the Centerville resident said. “Air Force leadership has not institutionally affected areas pilots perennially identify as retention barriers.”
Consequently, he added, pilots have “lost confidence” that initiatives put in place to tackle the pilot shortage will stay beyond the next round of senior-level leadership.