An acute shortage of Air Force fighter pilots could grow even worse, with almost a third of all jobs becoming vacant in the coming years, senior service officials said Wednesday.
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Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James announced the expanded RPA retention bonuses – which are expected to be in place no later than October 1 – during her State of the Air Force news conference at the Pentagon on Wednesday.
Officials are announcing a US$35,000 (S$47,000) bonus for drone operators who sign up under a new contract, and the military is using increasing numbers of contract workers to conduct non-lethal drone patrols.
The Air Force is seeking to boost by $10,000 the retention bonuses for remotely piloted aircraft – or drones – from $25,000 to $35,000 as part of an overall plan to stem the exodus of pilots for better pay with the airlines, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said Wednesday. “It’s actually something you have to fight for and maintain”.
“I am very concerned with occasions when they are not showing themselves as the professional air force I have seen over the years, and you have seen the examples of that: low passes over our ships, aggressive acts over our aircraft”, Goldfein stated. She added that Air Force needs the authority to increase bonuses for all pilots in order to address the shortage.
Air superiority is not an American birthright.
The Air Force did not have immediately available statistics on how many flight hours its non-deployed pilots were getting each month. Robert J. Leese said in a follow-up email.
Goldfein said that so far the pilot shortage isn’t affecting air operations over Iraq, Syria and Libya, nut the ongoing deployments continue to affect pilots’ decisions on whether to stay in the service.
James and Goldfein said they want to improve pilots’ quality of life and their military service conditions, including training and housing. Fueling that problem, he said, has been the persistent overseas deployments as the USA has been engaged in air wars for more than two decades. “It gives them more family time, and more opportunities for development”. Currently, they offer $25,000 a year to stay up to nine years. Because enlisted airmen are only now starting the process to become RPA pilots, it will be at least seven years before this becomes an issue. “It’s about $180,000ish”, Stefanek said, and intangible benefits also accrue. When he was a captain in the 1980s, he said he typically participated in three major Air Force training exercises and an additional one involving the Army each year.
The retention problem is growing, officials said, as the commercial airline industry increases its efforts to recruit experienced Air Force pilots to replace its retiring pilots.
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“I’m hoping that if we take a balanced approach, we can get these folks to stay”.
