{"id":15871,"date":"2012-02-02T01:40:07","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T04:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=15871"},"modified":"2012-02-02T01:40:07","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T04:40:07","slug":"air-force-drawdown-may-make-fighter-pilots-scarce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/air-force-drawdown-may-make-fighter-pilots-scarce\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Force Drawdown May Make Fighter Pilots Scarce"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reports are already starting to emerge on how a reduced Department of Defense budget will affect each of the services.\u00a0 The Air Force seems prepared to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.airforcetimes.com\/news\/2012\/01\/airforce-5-a10-squadrons-cut-013012\/\">mothball multiple A-10 squadrons<\/a> (though its not the first time this has been proposed):\u00a0 <!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As part of the Defense Department\u2019s efforts to trim close to $500 billion in spending over the next decade, defense officials said Friday that the service intends to cut five A-10 tactical squadrons,&#8230;a Guard F-16 tactical unit and an F-15 training squadron.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A smaller group of Air Force fighter (and attack) pilots will undoubtedly mean the competition for fighter pilot jobs will increase in the coming years.\u00a0 So long as the Air Force continues to get sufficient applications and maintains its current rate of retention, it will be able to have extremely tough standards for pilot candidates.<\/p>\n<p>Assuming a high rate of retention (which <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/31\/commercial-pilot-jobs-to-takeoff\/\">some have doubted<\/a>), the budget drawdown could theoretically minimize the &#8220;fighter pilot shortage&#8221; &#8212; by significantly reducing the number of fighter pilots in the Air Force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reports are already starting to emerge on how a reduced Department of Defense budget will affect each of the services.\u00a0 The Air Force seems prepared to mothball multiple A-10 squadrons (though its not the first time this has been proposed):\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[332,134,222,186,5285,2],"class_list":["post-15871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-a-10","tag-air-force","tag-f-15","tag-f-16","tag-fighter-pilot","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}