Vol. 58, January 2025
Key Points
The U.S. Air Force has suffered a persistent
shortage of approximately 2,000 pilots for over
twenty years, with fighter pilots comprising over
half of this shortfall. This gap severely degrades
the Air Force’s combat readiness and ability to
prosecute a peer-level warfighting campaign.
Pilot experience is a critical advantage in combat
air operations. Experienced combat pilots have
higher mission effectiveness rates, can adapt
to unpredictable adversaries, and are crucial to
maturing the skills of new pilots.
Combat squadrons need a healthy ratio of
experienced pilots to ensure the Air Force can
prevail in a peer-level conflict. This ratio is
much greater than the minimum viable needed
for peacetime operations. The Air Force must
establish this higher ratio well prior to conflict
since it takes years to generate an experienced
pilot.
The Air Force must recapitalize and grow the
capacity of its combat air forces to deter and, if
necessary, fight and win in a peer conflict. This
requires a concurrent growth of its combat pilot
corps, or it could further strain the readiness of
its Active Component (AC) squadrons by reducing
their pilot experience levels.
The Air National Guard and USAF Reserve, the
Air Force’s Reserve Component (RC), capture
experienced pilots exiting its Active Component
squadrons and often retain these pilots until they
retire. Taking full advantage of these accessions
would help the Air Force to grow its cadre of
experienced combat pilots across the Total Force.
Current Air Force plans seek to divest nearly a
quarter of the service’s combat aircraft inventory
over the next five years, and the bulk of this
divestment is in its Reserve Component. Migrating
RC units away from combat flying missions risks
irreversibly losing this crucial pilot experience.
Recapitalizing the Air Force’s RC and AC combat
units in parallel will be key to affordably growing
the size and experience levels of the nation’s pilot
corps to meet warfighting requirements.
e Air Force’s pilot corps is now too small and poorly structured to sustain a
healthy combat force that can prevail in a peer conict and meet the nation’s other
national security requirements. History has demonstrated that without the strategic
depth of experienced aircrew and aircraft, air forces collapse in conicts because
they cannot ow enough forces forward to continue operations as losses mount.
While this crisis extends across the entire pilot corps, the shortfall in ghter pilots is
especially dire, comprising over half of the shortfall.
1
Fighter aircraft are foundational
to establishing air superiority, suppressing and destroying surface-to-air missile
defenses, interdicting time-sensitive and mobile targets, and supporting troops in
contact—all missions that are essential to eective joint force operations. Combat
pilot experience is equally critical to success in peace and war. Experienced pilots have
better survivability rates and mission outcomes in combat and confer those benets
to their less experienced wingmen. e Air Force’s combat pilot experience levels
continue to drop as the service suers from ongoing budget-driven force cuts and
reduces opportunities that are essential to pilot career progression.
e solution to these challenges requires the Air Force to increase its aircraft
inventory, grow its pilot corps, and experience its combat pilots across its Active
and Reserve Components—its Total Force—simultaneously. Leveraging the depth
of pilot experience in the Reserve Component (RC) should be a major part of this
solution. e RC represents the bulk of the nation’s experienced combat pilot corps,
as many of the seasoned pilots who exit the Active Component continue to serve
in the Air National Guard or Air Force Reserve. Pending actions to decommission
RC combat squadrons risk losing this experience, further depleting the Air Force’s
warghting capacity, and devastating the Air Force’s ability to fulll the nation’s
current and future global security requirements: defend the U.S. homeland, deter
nuclear threats, and remain ready to prevail in a major conict with a peer adversary.
To meet these goals and succeed in a great power conict, the U.S. Air Force must:
• Recapitalize nearly its entire inventory of combat aircraft
• Increase its combat capacity by growing force structure
• Grow and preserve its Active and Reserve combat pilot corps commensurate
with the size of its combat aircraft inventory and create enough strategic depth to
replace aircraft and airmen lost in combat
Each of these actions requires the thoughtful addition of budget and
resources, consistently and predictably. By optimizing the balance of combat
aircraft and pilot training across its Total Force, the U.S. Air Force can grow and
retrain its cadre of experienced pilots while accelerating the absorption of new.
Abstract
Want Combat Airpower?
Then Fix the Air Force Pilot Crisis
by Heather R. Penney
Senior Resident Fellow, the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies
MITCHELL INSTITUTE
Policy Paper
