How many fighter pilots are there

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Burton Field moved to a new position in the 99th Air Base Wing. A deeper look at those numbers shows more about the challenge facing the Air Force. On the active-duty side, Jacobson said, the Air Force finished short about 1, rated company-grade officers — lieutenants and captains. But it was over capacity among its field-grade officers, particularly majors and lieutenant colonels, by Those numbers combined account for the overall pilot shortfall on active duty. Other factors, such as weather and maintenance shortfalls, also hamstrung pilot production, he said.

Or in other words, as the Air Force shuffles rated officers to keep its planes in the air, headquarters staffs are paying the price in reduced intellectual capacity and capability. Ultimately, this could end up driving out experienced pilots who are majors or lieutenant colonels. The overall gap between how many pilots the Air Force actually has versus how many it needs has not shrunk in recent years, but instead has widened slightly from the roughly 2, shortfall the Air Force reported at the end of The Air Force had 18, pilots at the end of , an increase of pilots from one year earlier.

The Air Force has consistently been well over-manned among 11M mobility pilots, such as those who fly the Pegasus. In , mobility pilot manning was at percent. As the KC came online, overmanning declined, hitting percent in Jacobson said the Air Force has over-produced mobility pilots in the past, and is working on re-directing some of them to other pilot categories.

This left the service with fewer squadrons where a newly-trained fighter pilot could obtain more experience. And for the Air Force, standing up squadrons of pilots flying remotely-piloted aircraft such as the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper also took a bite out of the fighter pilot community.

The Air Force took fighter pilots out of their squadrons in and to help fill the need for RPA pilots. The reduction of available aircraft also made it harder for fighter pilots to meet their flight hour targets, GAO said. And reduced aircraft readiness — caused in part by the fact that older, legacy aircraft require more maintenance and are out of action for longer periods — further limits pilot training.

Between fiscal and , GAO said the Air Force trained 12 percent fewer new fighter pilots than it had targeted, and the Navy and Marine Corps each were 8 percent under their training goals. Retention of fighter pilots is also declining. Between and , the take rates for fighter pilots declined from 63 percent to 35 percent, a 28 percentage-point drop. The Air Force pointed to efforts such as adding contractors to do administrative support work as an example of the steps that have been taken to address pilots workload concerns.

Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter at Defense News. He previously reported for Military. Before that, he covered U. Air Force leadership, personnel and operations for Air Force Times.