The overall shortage of U.S. Air Force pilots could mean that recent T-38 pilot-training graduates could find themselves assigned to non-combat roles, such as instructor pilots or flying transports and air-to-air refuelers. Graduates of T-38 training usually go on to fighters or bombers, but the acute shortage means that there aren’t enough pilots available for the other duty tracks.
When is the USAF gonna reinstitute enlisted pilots? They’ve been using them as drone pilots for the same reason as this … NOW take the next step. By my 4th year in USAF, I had earned all the rating via aero clubs. Why not use that path as a litmus test to pick qualified people to fill the holes? The preoccupation w a degree is part of the problem! Lower the requirement to a AA or equivalent w/ the requirement to finish within – say – 5 years later? Somebody needs to wake up !!
Besides history, tradition, and senior staffing considerations being major obstacles, the AF will never bestow the legal authority required nor compensate an enlisted person to the level commensurate with the responsibilities of a military pilot.
I lived with T-38s for two years at VANCE AFB, a pilot training base. From their introduction in the early '60 until now, they remain such a beautiful and workhorse aircraft. One of the very best buys the USAF ever made. But a friend of mine, who enrolled through a Guard KC tanker group, he skipped the T-6 and the T-38 completely. He did already had some busjet right seat time. He went straight into the AF Beech Jet and then to KC school where he was quickly type rated in B707 and B720. He missed getting to have the fun of those two initial planes, but as said, not what you want, but what the USAF needs. .
IF they need NON combat pilots WHY oh WHY have them train in a T 38. that is by definition a trainer for supersonic flight!. No transport, bomber support aircraft in the USAF inventory is supersonic NOR can any of these pull 9 gs which is the focus of the T38 seat. SO you need more pilots go from basic flight to multi engine training for the aircraft needed skip the t 38 EXCEPT for fighter pilots.
A bit near and dear as I was invovoled in the first serious T 38 replacement contract which got screwed up in AF politics.
This is exactly why the Army has had a Warrant Officer Flight Training program at Fort Rucker, AL, for decades, which does not require a college degree. A significant number of Army pilots, both rotary and fixed-wing, are warrant officers produced by that program.
The Air Force also has a history of having more applicants than pilot slots. That is no longer true for a variety of reasons, and until the upper brass acknowledges what they’re doing isn’t working this will continue to worsen. The Air Force Academy grad egos in leadership are putting the nation at risk, and they need to be held accountable for their inaction.
Last year the Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown said (his words, not mine) there are too many white pilots in the Air Force. I’m thinking he is turning down white applicants or maybe they are going elsewhere, or maybe nobody is applying. If they are 1800 pilots short, this is a good opportunity to open up pilot training to non whites only that are already in the Air Force with an attractive sign on bonus.
Part of the problem (maybe a big part) with the Air Force pilot shortage is the logjam in the training programs. I know a pilot who completed undergraduate flight training and was sent to his first squadron. There he is expecting to wait 16 months before he actually starts training in the aircraft he is assigned to fly. The clock on his ten year committment doesn’t start ticking until that training is complete. I know other that waited about 9 months.
In the meantime they do menial busy work.
The training squadron for this aircraft type is so desperate to do training that they are accepting the training simulators under conditional acceptance just to get them.
Both Bob Hoover and Chuck Yeager became outstanding pilots primarily through their military training and experience rather than through formal academic education. Hoover attended Berry High School in Alabama and entered aviation. Yeager, was a Hamlin High School graduate from West Virginia. Military tech trade training worked.
I’m curious, what is your evidence that Brown said this in “his words”? I can find evidence that a right-wing US Senator accused Brown with the phrase “too many White officers”, but thse are the Senator’s words, not Brown’s.
Same here in the UK. I graduated as a rotary wing Army pilot - as a Corporal! No formal educational qualifications (though I added some along the way later).
The Army were more interested with your potential than your history. Yet the Royal Navy and RAF still insist on Commissioned Officers only as pilots.
During WW2 the RAF had many non-com pilots, but the inception of the nuclear armed V-bomber fleet years later prompted them to change to officers only.