Air Force offers drone pilots $125,000 retention bonuses
By Tara Copp
Stars and Stripes
Published: December 16, 2015
The Air Force is offering drone pilots a chunk of cash to entice them to keep flying unmanned aircraft from a desk, a career field the service says is taxing and critically understaffed.
WASHINGTON — To attract and keep a drone pilot workforce that’s been stretched thin by rising demands for global surveillance, the Air Force announced Tuesday that it’s offering up to $125,000 in bonuses to keep the in-demand skills from leaving for the private sector.
Personnel eligible for the cash awards would be the more experienced and current pilots in the force. Military personnel must be active duty lieutenant colonels or below who already have six years of experience flying remotely piloted aircraft and meet specific education and ratings requirements.
Drone pilots “are increasingly critical to national security, and our ability to retain experienced [drone] pilots will enable us to meet current and emergent mission requirements,” said Lt. Gen. Jay Raymond, Air Force deputy chief of operations.
The cash bonuses would amount to $25,000 annually for five years, but eligible recipients could elect to receive up to half of the bonus in the first payment, the Air Force announced in a news release.
The bonuses are meant to compete with the private sector, where drone pilot salaries start at about $102,000 yearly, according to the jobs website Indeed.com.
The Air Force has spent much of the year addressing the strain that rising demand for unmanned surveillance, intelligence gathering and targeting support have placed on the force.
Because of ongoing operations in Iraq and Syria, and rising requests for drone surveillance in Africa and the Pacific, the current force of drone operators is badly strained, Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh said earlier this year.
“They’ve been working six days on and two days off since they came into the job,” Welsh said. “Every time we go into one of those surge periods [where operational demand increases] they go to seven on, one off. This has never stopped.”
“That’s the stress, and we’ve got to figure out how to get ahead,” he said. “We can’t afford to lose these people.”
http://www.stripes.com/news/air-force-offers-drone-pilots-125-000-retention-bonuses-1.384525
