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With this data, the Army can tailor solutions to address the issues that cause pilots to leave. Aviation has always been a highly desirable branch, and gaining a slot has been a matter of performance or differentiation from peers (whether OML or via a competitive application process). If you havent already read, Welcome back to Part 2 of our series about career progression for Air Force pilots, from the pilot perspective. The Army must also capture the opinions of those it can still retain. In my next 6 years I flew a total of 50 hoursAnd it's not for lack of trying, I was just in assignments (that I didn't ask for and tried to get out of) where there were no aviation units around. If hed gone to UPT right after college, its more likely that hed get a lot of his deploying done before his kids were that old, or even before they were all born. More career Enlisted apply than street2seat on a yearly basis. The OPTEMPO is higher now than it was at the height of GWOT. The earlier you can, INTERVIEW PREP PACKAGE (eCourse + 1-on-1's), 1 HOUR INTERVIEW PREP ADD-ON (Add'l 1-on-1 Coaching for eCourse & Package Customers), 1 HOUR APP REVIEW ADD-ON (Add'l 1-on-1 Coaching for eCourse & Package Customers), https://www.dvidshub.net/image/3982524/f-35-sky, https://www.dvidshub.net/image/4798866/f-22-europe, https://www.dvidshub.net/image/5765915/b-2-and-boom, https://www.dvidshub.net/image/491088/deployed-civil-engineers, https://www.dvidshub.net/image/6100141/c-17-air-drop, The Ultimate Guide to Earning a Pilot Slot in Air Force ROTC, Part 1, As Stan would be finishing up his 5-year ADSC, hed need to be shopping for Guard and Reserve UPT board announcements on. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. They wont, we already dont get the congressionally authorized flight pay. The disparity grows as pilots continue service, with a difference of $1,560.80 per month in favor of a major with fourteen years of service compared to a chief warrant officer 4 with fourteen years of service. I just signed my WOFT contract at MEPS on Thursday with the idea of a 6 year ADSO. Full disclosure, I was a street to seat Warrant that served for 24 years. While Stans Option #3 seems to bypass a lot of this, lets look at what hed have to do: This plan assumes that Stan can get hired by a Guard or Reserve unit at this point. The 10 year ADSO was based on whether or not you pinned WO1/2LT by a certain date, not by when you started or graduated IERW. The Army, by contrast, could only say that Army senior leaders recognize there are growing civilian opportunities for Army pilots. The Army likes to have a balance between the two but they can change that over night. Believe it or not, more than a few fellow senior non rated Army officers are jealous when it comes to flight pay. One can just see all those 2LTs cringing when the folks at the bottom of each class are forced to take Aviation during the branching ceremony. Signal: The IT department of the Army. This mindset is far from universal, but its prevalent enough that the Academy actually had pilot slots go unfilled a few years ago! Gen. McCurry also said, People still want to fly. This is both expensive and time-consumingtough to fit in around a 9-5 as an engineer, especially if he has a family. There are also discussions within the Army aviation community of additional changes that would make becoming a warrant officer even less appealing. No one knows somehow, my S1 doesnt know either. There is no reset. On this career path, Stan is most likely to leave young kids at home with his spouse while he deploys. 10 year ADSO is official 78 212 212 comments Best Add a Comment awestm11 3 yr. ago "Army Aviators don't want to stay in the Army even though we pay them less, deploy them more, and treat them worse than their peers in other branches and civilian careers, so we will just force them to stay in longer. We want as many applications as we can, so if anybody has any questions, be sure to contact that warrant officer recruiting team, Kearns said. I ended up discovering that Stan was most worried about frequent moves and long deployments stressing his family during an Active Duty flying career. Regarding the future Army Commissioned Lts in wishing to branch aviation, that will be an issue next year. By policy, the Army must review the AvB program quarterly to determine the program's effectiveness. Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible. All branches in the military are facing a pilot shortage. I ended up not joining because they increased the ADSO. I think it would be a great idea to leverage senior NCOs to enter pilot training with a waiver. Well, the short answer is, we dont know. Theres no debating that the military has a near monopoly on the most exciting aviation available to humankind. United States, and the U.S. Army Re-serve, unless otherwise stated. That's my issue (age waiver). I wish thiswasa little more clear. The AvB is used to offer bonuses to aviators with critical skills or MOSs. This of course will do nothing to fix the problem of toxic leaders, poor assignment choices, or any of the other issues. Yes, most of us eventually plan to move on to the airlines. My formation barely ever conducts social events. I remember similar drama during my Fourth Class (freshman) year at the, Now that Im older and wiser, one of my many. Once he identified some units in which hes interested in, hed need to start. Aviation: dude it's a 10 year ADSO, so I hope you like aviation, cuz you ain't going anywhere else. What is the real answer? Your flight school ADSO is based on when you graduate WOBC and pin on your flight wings. When discussing any big-picture career options, I always make sure to follow Simon Sineks advice and Start With Why. TheGovernment Accountability Office reported, for example, that it can take two years and three to eleven million dollars to produce a mission-ready fighter pilot. Posted on . Army rescinds COVID-19 vaccination requirements, $84 million contract awarded for Excalibur replenishment, Army officer part of newly resumed cooperation for International Space Station, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Sarah Stone is just one of four, Army CIO speaks at Army Europe and Africa 2022 Cybersecurity Summit, Transcript: Media Roundtable with Mr. Douglas Bush, ASA for AL&T, July 27, 2022, Transcript: Media Roundtable with Dr. Raj Iyer, Army Chief Information Officer, and LTG John B. Morrison, Jr., Army Deputy Chief of Staff G-6 June 09, 2022, Vietnamese-American service members parallel paths to the American dream, Bengali chief warrant officer finds the American dream through serving, Soldiers inspire new Army directive on parenthood, pregnancy and postpartum policies, U.S. Army STAND-TO! I bet less than 300 WOFT selected are non prior service on a annual basis. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); The articles and other content which appear on the Modern War Institute website are unofficial expressions of opinion. Having looked at these options, lets go back to our original thought: If you missed your shot at the Ultimate Military Pilot Career Path are you screwed? Our young NCOs want to become warrant officers and get out and fly. If retention suffers too much, the Army will face a pilot production shortfall that will add to the existing shortage. Start date has no impact on this. I retired in 1998. These trips have to be funded at his own expense and would require him to use leave that wont be available for family trips. That's what the Army was counting on. Probably a 11-11.5 year commitment. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Back To Top Warrant Officer Candidate School is a five-week program. If I am branched Aviation, this ADSO will begin upon completion of my flight school ADSO. 10 years after flight school graduation. But Im a guard guy so RTAG is at the end of hooker advanced airframe for me theyll be hiring, all my airline buddies said everything is ramping back up. Sometimes that's necessary, but there's got to be some balance. Anyway, I just clocked 20 years, 5 1/2 years of that has been spent in the Middle East and for what? It's almost as though he completely and totally ignored the concept of morale and esprit de corps. It does have the potential to get him to the airlines more quickly, and hed do all of his military flying in the Guard or Reserve (with Quality of Life far superior to Active Duty, in most cases). Therefore, this option is virtually free for Aviation officers. . c. Officer Candidate School (OCS) graduates accepti ng an appoint in the Regular Army or a Reserve Appointment with a concurrent call to active duty incur a 3-year ADSO (see AR 350 . Well look at three cases: Although each of these career paths has potential for almost infinite variation, this diagram represents likely versions of each: Looking at these side by side, its clear why #1 is the Ultimate option. Also new is that time in grade for WOs doesn't start until you graduate flight school. Especially if they view retention as a big enough problem to justify an additional 4 year commitment from aviators. Army, Coast Guard . But ifonline discussions are any indication, this ADSO will turn away a lot of prospective pilots. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account. I have a high schooler who is applying to engineering programs for school and is interested in an ROTC path that might include aviation. The DoD report to Congress included a description of Air Force efforts to assess the problem: The Air Force gathered data on what drives separations from an October 2015 Fighter Pilot Retention Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st century event, the 2015 Air Force Exit and Retention surveys, the August 2017 Dedicated Aircrew Retention Teaming Summit, and a series of three aircrew retention crowdsourcing surveys sent to 9,000 aircrew members that culminated in March 2018. It seems the 10 year ADSO is now official. F-35s in feature image: https://www.dvidshub.net/image/3982524/f-35-sky. He was thinking about turning down an Active Duty UPT slot and fulfilling the alternative 5-year USAFA non-pilot ADSC as an engineer or something, then pursuing a UPT slot with a Guard or Reserve unit. (Yes, they say ADSO instead of ADSC because the Army and the Air Force refuse to do anything the same since they divorced back in 47.) You don't have to have a college degree to apply or be accepted into it, he said. Moving to a random Air Force Base for less than 1 year while Awaiting Pilot Training (APT), Moving to a base for 6-10 months for initial aircraft qualification. If pilots today are so unhappy that they are leaving in numbers higher than expected, why would prospective pilots accept a much longer service obligation for that same experience? The service should find a better way of addressing its shortage of pilots. pay, allowances, benefits, and responsibilities as a member of the The answer is clear. Im a turd for putting 2021. The 10-year service obligation is the result of a numbers-related calculus related to Army manning and will not address the problems that make Aviators leave. The congressional study on pilot retention noted, One of the most important variables in meeting pilot requirements is the retention rate, as this is used to estimate what level of new pilot production is needed.. In an all-volunteer force, you won't be ready if most of your personnel in a critical branch want to get out. However, increasing the service obligation of new pilots is the wrong course of action. If you accept an Army scholarship or fellowship, you will owe 3 times the amount or schooling in days. This can exceed a 6 year obligation. The institution of the new ADSO stands in testimony to a DOD organization entrenched in process and procedure at the expense of adjustment to any current reality. junglerekon 2 yr. ago The TIG start isn't official yet. (Well assume a move to the Guard or Reserve after completing your initial 10-year UPT ADSC. Not difficult for the Army in finding 300 additional NCOs for the WOFT program if need be. D. Your email address will not be published. To create a mission-ready helicopter pilot, the Army invests between six hundred thousand and one million dollars during approximately one year of flight training. The Army has had pilot shortages off and on ever since I can remember. However, Army aviation should not be compared with the other military branchesnot least because of the widely varying costs of producing pilots. Stans Active Duty pilot peers would have spent 8-11 years since graduating from college flying for the military full time. More than likely, the aviations slots will be filled by personnel lower on the OML. The Army increased monthly pilot pay from a maximum of $850 per month to $1000 per month, offered $35,000 annual bonuses to qualified warrant officers who extend for three years, and reduced combined training center rotations to two per twelve-month period for each combat aviation brigade. The Army lowered the max TIS to 8 years for WOFT applicants a few years ago without a waiver. 10 is a big commitment either way. There is still an aviation bonus for mid career tracked guys, and while some success has been had with that, I dont know if theyve gotten the response desired for the blood money though. . As a result, the US Army Aviation Center of Excellence initiated a survey to better inform future incentive and quality of life programs designed to increase retention.. Does anyone know the current selection breakdown of street to seat vs prior service? In the report provided to Congress, however, increasing the service obligation was not mentioned as a possible solution to pilot retention shortfalls. One problem with pilots is that we don't age well (I'm not a military aviator, just a private pilot) so there would be an issue of reaching a physical condition expiration date at some point. Additionally, Cadets awarded Aviation Branch cannot participate in the Post of Choice program due to the inability to project requirements beyond flight school. I'm not ignoring anything that has been posted within this thread -- again, it's all been awesome -- but I want to feel as sure as possible that the opinions expressed here are an accurate assessment of the average Army Aviation experience. Next, hed go to his first assignment. I want to do it for as long as I can. The policy also applies to Army Reserve and National Guard components, but their obligated service will remain part-time, he said. Though I agree that there is a retention problem, especially within aviation, I'm not sure the Army is focused on the right issue here. Lets assume though that Stan can get hired by a unit, and is scheduled to start UPT as soon as his regular ADSC is up. I honestly don't believe that the way out of this is getting more people to fly that have less time available left in their military careers. I'm roaring and ready to go. This means that aviation formations get screwed doubly they have to support everyone's demands, while being vastly outnumbered. His answer was, Of course not. So the recruitment piece has not historically been our challenge, it has been capacity and production. But what if the new ADSO invalidates this assumption? Nope. It was not a wild decision to take a small hit to accession to make sure you have mid careerists. I know there are exceptions to the rule, and I know some people haze junior warrant officers. The severity of the decline in recruiting will be unknown until the recruiting data comes in from the first affected class of cadets and warrant officer candidates. , this is far from guaranteed. 4 years closer to RTAG if they're hiring. As a Guard or Reserve pilot, you may need to find a full-time flying job in addition to your military flying (full-time Guard/Reserve pilot jobs are available, but you should join with the expectation of needing civilian employment in addition to your military flying). While I completely understand the desire of people to fly, there is more to it than that. These investments set the Army apart from all the branches, he said. Another disparity is the pay inequality between the militarys pilots. The pay raise was the first in two decades to help balance pilot numbers at all ranks and stay competitive with the civilian market. 1 Sacknuts93 3 yr. ago Probably not. Can you imagine thesmile on more than a few faces of the last graduating class in Fy 2020 in September. Not difficult for the Army in finding 400 additional career minded E-3 to E-7 for the WOFT program if need be. Glad I retired when I did. On the reset year, units focused on team building, socializing, individual skills, and professional development. Fiscal Yr 2021 starts Oct 1, 2020. I feel that part of the problem is that the Army assessed too many senior NCOs into flight school, which helped get them into this box that they are in. 2-4 more moves for assignments during his Active Duty career. The Department of Defense released a report in July 2019 that laid out the challenges the military faces with pilot retention and included plans of action from each branch. That is not a good thing. You get to the airlines sooner, and you spend more years at a major airline. Anything and everything related to or affecting US Army Aviation. Reading your first paragraph and skimming the rest I couldn't agree more. Army and Air Force use this pay. Another anecdote, when I was deployed there was a desire to have experienced cockpits on higher risk/higher visibility missions usually two pilots with 1000+ total hours. Why not allowing retired personnel to do what they always wanted? I don't know too many that would care to be told to mop the floor of the pilot's office, fill the refrigerator, go help wash the aircraft the things that junior warrants typically do when they are new to a unit out of flight school. (Yes, they say ADSO instead of ADSC because the Army and the Air Force refuse to do anything the same since they divorced back in '47.) That will solve our retention problem!" Theres no debating that the military has a near monopoly on the most exciting aviation available to humankind. So now the prior Enlisted must do at least 11.5 years and advance to the grade of W3. In a worst-case scenario, hes looking at: Wow, thats a lot of moving and time away from home! The same goes for great deals like going to Test Pilot School, flying the E-11A BACN, and much more. Even just a year or two of delay erases any possible advantages of this career path. This! This global pandemic has made unprecedented impacts on the worlds economies and our way of life, Koziol said. arent bad, and patriotism also factors in for most of us. F-22 crew chief: https://www.dvidshub.net/image/4798866/f-22-europe. "Army Aviators don't want to stay in the Army even though we pay them less, deploy them more, and treat them worse than their peers in other branches and civilian careers, so we will just force them to stay in longer. Your link has been automatically embedded. ADSO is completed. If you want military aviation to be a part of your life for more than 10 years, possibly even 20+ years, you should pursue any path that will get you there! We need people with your background, dedication and professionalism in the warrant officer cohort. Rather, the Modern War Institute provides a forum for professionals to share opinions and cultivate ideas. Because honestly put the lifestyle sucks nowadays. That means, we need you! im hopeful the army can fix this problem ASAP. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. It further acts as a disincentive to those who would like to do the mission, but are unwilling to sacrifice a decade of their time in the event they don't like the lifestyle. If you, the seasoned army aviator, were still a senior in college and told that to become an aviator you had to sign for a 10-year + flight school ADSO, would you do it? Expect bonuses to disappear as well. You get to the airlines sooner, and you spend more years at a major airline. For the next decade of your life, you will deploy a lot and have little or no control over your assignment locations. I crushed the SIFT, passed my flight physical, have a great OML standing, etc., so I should have a good chance of getting my top pick. USMA graduates accepting an appointment in the Regular Army incur a 5-year ADSO (10 USC 4348). By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. I would be inclined to say that your contract is still 6 year ADSO. I dont agree with this decision at all but mean forcing people to stay helps retention because you know, they are forcing you. Aviation Warrant Officers have a 10-year service commitment after completing Warrant Officer Flight School. The first step the Army must take is to implement exit surveys for pilots to determine why they are leaving. There are also a lot of great flying opportunities that you can only do on Active Duty. Below are the commissioning ADSOs by source of commission: ROTC Non-Scholars have a 3-year commissioning ADSO. But then again, it's 4 more years of employment or should I say deployments. , I worry that Ive done people a disservice by making the Active Duty pilot career path seem too unattractive. If anything it hurts recruiting new pilots. For example, if there are 100 ROTC Aviation slots, only 20 can . The, exists specifically for Active Duty pilots willing to make an early commitment to continue their service in the Guard or Reserve. Stan is likely to do plenty of TDYs as an engineer and isnt impervious to the threat of deployment. While there are some top performers that will elect to pursue the branch because they plan on a career from the beginning, there are far more that may be hesitant or undecided about committing to a decade of their professional lives to a niche field when they're only 22 or 23 if they aren't already passionate about everything aviation. Since classes are generally pretty well mixed with people with respect to when they commissioned, the first couple of classes must have been a mix of people on the old 6 and the new 10. Within the company we tried to level out flight time to give the senior guys some rest, but the battalion/brigade leadership was too risk averse and pushed back. Paste as plain text instead, Their workload is increased several fold versus the units that they are supporting. The report included a figure showing that the Army faced a shortfall of 330 warrant officerswho comprise 70 percent of the Armys pilot ranks. Why or why not? My ORB says a date 6 years from my AD start date, which Im pretty sure is wrong. Meanwhile students don't do touchdown autorotations and other traditional flight maneuvers. If you want to fly the U-2, you must start on Active Duty. The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense. There's the technical expertise that goes along with it as well. Can you hear the roar of approval erupting from Army doctors across the globe serving out their decade plus commitments? Instead, the aviation branch has proposed to boost aviation career incentive pay, or flight pay, which can retain more qualified aviators, he said. Although neither has been officially announced, the Army is rumored to be considering two proposals: a provisional status for warrant officer candidates until they graduate flight school and an increase in time-in-grade to make chief warrant officer 2. However, I dont think its worth passing up a nearly guaranteed Active Duty UPT slot in hopes of possibly getting a Guard or Reserve slot 5 years from now. Think about approving some ETPs. And finally, the Army will likely find that it should increase flight pay beyond what has already been offered. For example, its the only service that allows people to go into flight training with only a high school degree. The Graduate School Option (GRADSO) portion of the CSP program continues to be suspended since YG2014 pending officer corps reshaping efforts. Army Pilots put up with less Army BS and get paid more. Then 10 year service obligation put me right at 20 so Im not too worried about that. The change comes as the cost and requirements for aircraft have increased across the board, Kearns said. I will still try to join but maybe that's because I'm retarded, Guess my packet will go back on the share drive. Were looking at troops selected for flight training in the fiscal year 2021 and beyond.. Ideally, you should enlist with one of those units as soon as youre old enough and serve part-time while you complete college. If you go to a civilian school and the Army fully or partially funds that course, you will incur 3 times the school time for ADSO if the course is over 60 days. ADDED QUESTION: What, in your opinion, is the average view of Army Aviation within the perspectives of your peers? I don't know how common my situation is, but I'm sure there are plenty of people like me who barely flew, while there are others flying until they drop. As several others have said, this policy fails to address the root problems high OPTEMPO, poor quality of life, irrelevant mandatory training, etc. The report focused on the unmet demand for pilots in the commercial aviation sector that has attracted military pilots. The US Army recently changed its aviation Active Duty Service Obligation from 8 to 10 years and created an absolute uproar. The upper age limit to enter flight training is established in law and requires Congressional action. , you must start on Active Duty. It involves no effort to understand the underlying factors that cause Army pilots to depart and is nothing more than a surface-level solution to a fundamental problem. Unlike pilot deployments that can be as short as a couple of months, engineer deployments are usually 6-12 months. The consensus seems to be that if you graduate flight school in FY 2021, you accrue the 10 year ADSO. I assume if you're not in flight school by that date, your commitment is just as long as the Air Force if not a little bit longer. We dont have good measurements out there right now to tell us why an aviator is getting out of the force. Without useful data, the Army cannot implement targeted retention solutions. With a 10 year ADSO and an 8 year max time in service requirementit significantly reduces the in house pool as well. Not sure. Also get's a TS which is money, but dealing with army IT infrastructure is frustrating. Yes, that is 11 combat stripes. Even if the increase in commitment lowers the civilian WOFT applicantnumbers, the in house career Enlisted pool will fill the void. Just to end it and walk away.. victorious..? The pilot shortage is not in applicants it is in mid career. If the Army rescinds this ADSO and reverts to the original six-year obligation, it will have six years to develop solutions to increase retention. Like many personnel issues though, the age limit is probably ripe for a re-look given that people now live healthier, more active, and longer lives. Stan figured that even spending 5 years in a non-flying job, this track would make him a military pilot well below the USAFs current age limit (33 years old), and would actually get him to the airlines sooner than his Active Duty pilot peers. Hes likely deployed at least 3 times, if not more, and has also spent many weeks TDY. This is usually a 1-year assignment, though it might be two. In congressional testimony it was stated that at that time (2019) around 40% of the pilot population was within 3 years of being retirement eligible. Serving on Active Duty has plenty of advantages, and even offers some highly-desirable opportunities that you cant get anywhere else. That 10 year obligation doesn't start until you finish flight school. At the same time it could drive a shortage of Aviation Officers, but if they're going to leave the Army anyway. Perhaps it's just for RLOs but don't count on that. The USMA/ROTC graduating cadets will make the decision on the 12 year commitment in 2021. I'm thinking Army will start pushing dates to the right as much as possible to achieve its newfound maximum retention. People are tired. I would have stayed in for another 10+ years if I had the opportunity to revert to Warrant Officer and fly more, but that opportunity doesn't exist. Thoughts anyone? Has this officially started? By collecting data and then improving quality of life and quality of service with targeted retention initiatives, the Army will not just increase retentionthe positive changes will increase the appeal of serving as a pilot in the Army, and recruiting will increase as well.