"USAF pilot training issues" Topic

Faced with massive personnel shortfalls, USAF training has become more focused on simulator time than flying which seems to be compromising quality of pilots:

link

That article could have been written any time during the last 30 years. The USAF has always mismanaged their pilot force. They bounce back and forth between the two extremes of not having enough pilots, to having too many. One of the challenges is that the training pipeline is so long. Undergraduate Pilot Training is over a year long, and at the end of it you get a pilot who is qualified to fly a training aircraft and that is all.

At the end of the Cold War the amount of Fighter Wings was cut in half even as the first Gulf War was going on. You had more pilots than the USAF knew what to do with. Reduction in force occurred. Just a couple years later and the USAF was screaming pilot shortage.

On the issue of flight simulators, they keep getting more sophisticated, but there really is no substitute for actually being in the jet with the noise, the g forces, crappy comms, and all the other crap that goes way beyond the sterile simulator. The commercial airlines use simulators exclusively for training is order to save money on jet fuel.

I'd happily volunteer, but suspect I'm too old, and they won't want me.

High Gs at my age are probably not a great idea either.

Not to worry, the AI drones are coming for us all.

Not that it is to the same level, but studies show that
since qualifications for auto driver's license here
in our state include a minimum number of actual driving
hours under the supervision of an experienced driver
(usually a parent) the number of teen driver involved
accidents have declined.

As USAFpilot said, there's no experience, however
glitzy, like actually doing the task. Simulators might
serve as an intro, but can't replace the real thing.

Given ALL the layoffs by various airlines, and soon for those to include pilots, my guess is a lot of them may want to re-up with the USAF soon, if they get the chance, and are young enough.

Yes Thresher01, there is a symbiotic relationship between the airlines and the military. The airlines draw upon retired or separated military pilots for their recruitment to fill airline pilot jobs, and in reverse, the Air Force and Navy Reserves re-recruit former military pilots who are furloughed from the airlines.