According to Gordon Lubold, writing at Foreign Policy and repeated at the Stars and Stripes, the US Air Force is concerned about the “possible exodus” of military pilots to an ever-enticing private sector:

Over the next year, the commercial airline industry is going to begin hiring tens of thousands of new pilots as aging flyers retire and the industry regains its economic footing. That could put dark clouds in the way of the Air Force’s wild blue yonder as it tries to persuade pilots to stay in a service even as top officials worry that pilots don’t have enough yoke time.

“If pilots aren’t flying in the Air Force because of our readiness issue, we worry that a number of them are going to say, ‘I’m flying somewhere else,'” acting Secretary of the Air Force Eric Fanning told Foreign Policy in an interview this month…

The article seems to be somewhat based on slightly dated data, which indicated the Air Force was concerned about the low number of pilots who took the bonus this year. The AF subsequently revised that conclusion, but some of the observations remain valid, including a possible

number of lagging indicators that don’t tell the real story of how furloughs, the government shutdown, and lower readiness rates will affect the force over the next few years.

While there will certainly always be people who aspire to become Air Force pilots, the Air Force will be challenged to make the career — not just the “job” — desirable enough that experienced pilots want to stay in. As many observers have noted, with the wars winding down (ie, less opportunities to use their craft), an emphasis on unmanned vehicles (including non-volunteer tours by pilots), and the perception of an emphasis on non-tactical objectives (PT tests, the politics of the organizational climate, and just general “queep“), it is entirely possible that pilots may move their careers elsewhere.

After all, the DoD has previously told its troops to “vote with their feet” if they’re not happy with the state of affairs in the military. It seems some think pilots are prepared to do just that.

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