Pilot shortage: new report calls for more Air Force fighters and larger Reserve
The Mitchell Institute report comes after Air Force Chief Gen. Allvin publicly called for a beefier Air Force.
Audrey Decker | January 24, 2025
Air Force
The Air Force has long struggled with a shortage of fighter pilots, with 1,150 empty billets in 2024, and aviators leaving the service in droves. How can they turn things around? Buy more planes and keep more pilots in its reserve component, says a new policy paper from a prominent aerospace think tank.
The service’s pilot shortage is driven by recruitment challenges, lengthy training pipelines, high exit rates, and a lack of readiness in its training aircraft. If the service doesn’t close the gaps in pilot production and absorption during peacetime, it likely won’t be able to do it in a major conflict, said Heather Penney, a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, and author of the report.
One of the report’s key recommendations to address the “pilot crisis” is to buy more aircraft and modernize the fleet, since dwindling fleet sizes and aging aircraft limit the hours pilots can train. Of the 1,206 fighter jets the service has in its “mission inventory”—which doesn’t include training and test aircraft—just 724 were mission-capable in 2024, according to a Mitchell graphic.
“We're getting smaller, and because the jets are getting older, they're not as mission capable, so we can't fly them as much, and this risks the Air Force's ability to train the experienced combat pilot force it needs with sufficient depth,” Penney told reporters Wednesday ahead of the report’s rollout.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2025/01/pilot-shortage-new-report-calls-more-air-force-fighters-and-larger-reserve/402493/?oref=d1-homepage-river
