April 4, 2020
F-35s Can't Solve This: Why the Air Force Still Has a Pilot Shortage
Well that's no good.
by Peter Suciu
The United States Air Force has a serious pilot problem—the service simply doesn’t have enough of them, and it is unlikely the shortfall will be resolved anytime soon. Air Force leaders have warned that this has been a problem since at least 2017, when the service faced a roughly 2,000-pilot shortfall.
The situation hasn’t improved, and in fact it has gotten worse.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein and Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Stephen Wilson told lawmakers on the House Armed Service Subcommittee on Readiness last month that as of the end of fiscal 2018 the service had a shortfall of 10 percent or roughly 2,100 pilots of the 21,000 needed to execute the National Defense Strategy.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/f-35s-cant-solve-why-air-force-still-has-pilot-shortage-140637
