William W. Taylor

The composition of Air Force active and reserve forces is often contentious, especially during a force drawdown. This document seeks to inform force composition decisions by clarifying issues that affect the suitability of missions for assignment to the reserve components.

The number of fighter aircraft in the Air Force inventory is decreasing, but the demand for experienced fighter pilots is increasing. The authors use a dynamic mathematical model to show that, to keep from damaging fighter unit readiness, fighter pilot production in the active Air Force must be reduced and new approaches to developing and managing personnel with fighter pilot-like skills must be adopted.

What qualifications determine whether a fighter pilot is experienced? Surveys of expert pilots revealed that, while flying time is an element of the experience needed for both combat and staff jobs, other things are also important. The Air Force needs to measure and credit different types of experience-including time spent in advanced simulator systems-when revising its definitions of pilot experience.

One-liner: Addresses the impact of changing skills required of fighter, mobility, bomber, and Special Operations Forces pilots on decisions about replacing or extending service lives of trainer aircraft. 450-character abstract: This monograph examines how the skills needed to perform future military missions might affect the capabilities required of new pilot training systems. In the next few years, the Air Force must decide to replace or extend the lives of two of its trainer aircraft. This monograph addresses which skills should be taught in undergraduate flying training, which are so different that they cannot be taught in current training aircraft, and what impact these issues have on decisions to replace or extend the lives of the aircraft.

A thorough analysis of the Air Force's ability to adequately train and absorb new fighter pilots into its operational units. The U.S. Air Force currently faces unprecedented problems in its efforts to provide adequate training for new and inexperienced pilots in its operational fighter units. On the one hand, there are too few fighter pilots in the active component to meet current and anticipated demands. On the other hand, the number of new fighter pilots entering operational units currently exceeds these units' absorption capacity, yielding a degraded training environment that ultimately threatens to compromise military readiness. This report assesses the Air Force's training dilemma with a view toward finding ways to remedy it in both the short and long term. Toward this goal, it defines the key parameters that influence a unit's absorption capacity, presents a best-case scenario on which to base numerical analyses, and offers several options decisionmakers can exercise.Although there is no simple resolution to the Air Force's training problem, a thorough understanding of the dynamic processes involved in aircrew management, together with a comprehensive analytic framework, promises to greatly aid decisionmakers in their efforts to address this issue. [AF] The U.S. Air Force is currently facing a critical dilemma in its efforts to train new and inexperienced fighter pilots. Although the number of fighter pilots in the active component currently falls short of meeting the Air Force's needs, operational units are unable to absorb the inflow of newly assigned pilots to a sufficient extent to address those needs. This report evaluates key factors that affect the Air Force's absorption problems and offers several options decisionmakers can exercise to remedy them. [AF]