Civilian Life Has Appeal for 'Burned Out' Air Force Pilots

Robin Olds was the quintessential fighter pilot.  A warrior as insubordinate as his mustache was long, he walked with a defiant swagger and a flight suit that was never quite fully zippered up. He is a legend in the flying community, the embodiment of a devil-may-care flyboy.  But despite all his ferocity and determination, its possible Olds wouldn’t make it very far in today’s Air Force.  In fact, it is quite likely this World War II and Vietnam ace would have cut his career short and followed a different path.  For despite all of its efforts, the Air Force cannot seem to retain its pilots.

The current situation was not unexpected. In a joint editorial last year, the former Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force called it a “quiet crisis.”[1]  And while initially, the problem was most acute with fighter pilots, another shortage is now emerging within the ranks of mobility pilots.

To offset this, the Air Force has offered bonuses to pilots who complete their ten-year service commitment.  Over the last decade, this bonus was typically $125,000 for an additional five years of service.  With the emergence of the critical gap in fighter pilots over the past few years, the Air Force increased the bonus for fighter pilots to $35,000 for each extra year of service a pilot committed to, up to $315,000 if a member signed on for nine more years.  Despite this, only 39.5% of fighter pilots took the offer.[3]

Consider that for a moment.  The Air Force will pay pilots nearly a third of million dollars on top of their already generous salary to serve out their career flying a fighter jet, yet less than half take the deal.

Clearly, something is amiss, but are airline pilot salaries driving aviators from the ranks or is it merely provided a safe landing spot for them?  

When asked if more money would have kept him in one former Air Force pilot Mike Walters was adamant, “No, no. Absolutely not.  That was not a player at all.  I thought the money was fine; it was the quality of life that was the driver in my decision. I don’t think you can throw enough money at somebody to make them stay in if they’re thinking about going to an airline. It’s got to be something that they want to do in the first place. The heavy concentration on money is definitely the wrong avenue.”

And although providing the extra cash to incentivize remaining in the Air Force seems logical, it may not be doing anything at all.  Illustrating this point was a recent op-ed in War on the Rocks entitled “Why I Took the Bonus.”[4]  The author, Air Force pilot Matthew Taylor, laid out a heartfelt argument espousing the noble adventure provided by a military life.  What was overlooked was specifically why the monetary bonus made the difference in his decision to stay in the Air Force versus fly for an airline.  From the sounds of it, Major Taylor did not need a financial incentive; he finds his primary reward in camaraderie and patriotic service. Walters saw this as a common phenomenon. “Generally speaking,” he said, “the guys that took the bonus were guys that were going to stay in any way.”

It is likely that financial considerations are less important to the pilot shortage discussion than other Air Force cultural problems and operational commitments.

When separating from the active duty Air Force, personnel complete an exit survey[5] to better understand why personnel are leaving.  In 2015, pilots exiting the ranks listed “additional duties” as the top reason for separating, while “maintaining work/life balance and meeting family commitments” comes in not far behind as second.  The availability of jobs in the civilian sector only comes in at a more distant third, suggesting the narrative of airline hiring as the causal factor for the pilot exodus as hollow.

“Additional duties,” noted Justin Reynolds, a former pilot who left the Air Force two years ago, “are not just extra paperwork.  It’s not just that I want to fly my airplane and everyone else can screw off. What has happened is that the support systems that used to be in place, the people who were expected to do all the other qweep around you, they aren’t there anymore”.

Qweep, in Air Force parlance, is a term used for the totality of tasks which have slowly been encumbered on personnel over the past decade.  Tedious jobs, such webpage maintainer, newcomer orientation manager, drug control officer, records custodian and other secondary duties have been insidiously shifted to operational personnel who receive no formal training in the execution. Individually, these tasks seem harmless enough, yet an Air Force memo last summer identified 61 separate and very disparate duties placed on squadrons.

To their credit, Air Force leadership is attempting to reign in additional duties, yet despite setting themselves a deadline on October 1, 2016,[6] for implementing changes, aircrew in flying squadrons report few tangible differences.

Of course, bureaucratic mire is normal in any organization, but the military is under a unique stress which may be exacerbating the problems. The DoD has been engaged in non-stop combat operations since 2001.  Meanwhile, the Air Force has fewer people in uniform than at any other point in its history.  “That’s the biggest problem we’re facing” acknowledged Secretary Wilson, “We’re burning out our people because we’re too small to do what our nation is asking.”

Already short-manned, aircrew have felt the brunt of this toll.  “I’ve functionally been at war since I joined the military,” noted Reynolds, “I never knew what was going to come next. I left my first assignment having spent between 250 to 280 days gone every year.”  It is this operational tempo which is why that among the top five reasons why pilots gave for leaving the Air Force was “the potential to leave your family for a deployment.”

It is difficult to quantify the total impact that 15 years of continuous conflict, but there is no question that it is hurting our military.  In her recent speech, Secretary Wilson noted, "We’re burning out our people. Surge has become the new normal in the United States Air Force. You can do that for a year, or two years, maybe even three or four years. But I met someone last week who has just come back from his 17th deployment. Seventeen deployments…at some point, families make a decision that they just can’t keep doing this at this pace."

An Air Force pilot’s first opportunity to leave the service is after about 11-12 years of duty.  This number is a result of a ten-year contract which an Air Force aviator incurs on complete of about 1-2 years of pilot training.  This means that pilots now coming up on the end of their contract would have entered the service in roughly 2005.  Their entire service has been under a grueling war-time tempo that has disrupted families, broken marriages and undermined readiness. 

Observing the morass of conflicts, the pilots have watched first-hand as their efforts have been so frequently for naught.  "I dedicated half of my working life to this place, and it looked just awful,” recalled Reynolds on his return to Iraq in 2013, “the whole point was to build these guys up so they could take care of themselves. But based on what I saw then and what I’ve learned now, I can’t help but be demoralized and disappointed. I’ve spent my entire career losing a war.  It doesn’t feel great.”

The brutal pace of operations is not abating.  Escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula, a recommitment to the war in Afghanistan and continued combat operations in Syria mean that the nation will continue to press its airmen.

The Air Force understands this and is fighting hard to reduce the deployments.  In a policy memo released on October 5, 2017, the service announced a plan to curtail overseas tours and spread the burden of family separations.  But many airmen struggle to trust the service and just as with the additional duties, personnel in flying squadrons report no tangible changes.

As aviators come up on the end of their contracted service period they face a choice; take the money on the table from the Air Force or take a chance with the airline industry.  Taking the guaranteed money from the service comes with a price though.  Once the pilot has signed the new contract, there is no risk for the Air Force in deploying them once again. “Signing that bonus meant that there was a command post in Pakistan or Afghanistan with your name on it, that you were going to be babysitting for a year,” said Reynolds, “there’s a penance to be paid there.” 

David Max Korzen is a writer based in Washington, D.C.  He is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a graduate of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Notes:

[1] http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/07/us-air-force-short-700-fighter-pilots-our-plan/129907/

[2] https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1455.html

[3] https://warontherocks.com/2017/04/why-i-took-the-bonus-a-view-from-inside-the-air-forces-pilot-retention-crisis/

[4] https://warontherocks.com/2017/04/why-i-took-the-bonus-a-view-from-inside-the-air-forces-pilot-retention-crisis/

[5] http://docs.house.gov/meetings/AS/AS02/20170329/105795/HHRG-115-AS02-Wstate-GrossoG-20170329.pdf

[6] http://www.af.mil/Portals/1/documents/SECAF/160816_Airmen%27s_Time_Memo.pdf?ver=2016-08-19-123457-897