Title: Fighter Pilots Aren’t Flying Enough to Hone the Skills of Full-Spectrum War - Defense One
Headings: Fighter Pilots Aren’t Flying Enough to Hone the Skills of Full-Spectrum War
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Fighter Pilots Aren’t Flying Enough to Hone the Skills of Full-Spectrum War
The Air Force is losing training time, experienced teachers, and its combat edge.

Content: This lack of readiness could jeopardize the lives of aircrews and other service members who depend upon them in combat, and put mission-essential tasks at greater risk. How did it come to this? Fighter force readiness has been declining since 2003, but it took a big dive in fiscal 2013, when funding cuts forced the Air Force to temporarily ground half of its active-duty, combat-coded squadrons and reduce overall flying hours by 18 percent. It got worse. In 2014, additional cuts led to shortages of spare parts and aircraft maintenance workers. Fighter pilots, who once averaged over 200 flying hours a year, struggled to get 120 hours that year. Last year, the average rose to 150 hours with a slight uptick in funding and by rolling in the surge of flying time accumulated during combat deployments. Flying in a combat environment may sound like an incredible opportunity to employ and refine high-end skillsets, but it isn’t. The vast majority of a fighter pilot’s time in a cockpit over Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria is spent holding (loitering), waiting to be employed in that low-threat environment. While they fly much more frequently, the opportunity to actually drop munitions comes infrequently.