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The Air Force must grow its reserve component and combat fighter inventory to address its chronic shortage of pilots, according to a new report from the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
The Air Force must solve this "crisis" as its airpower "is on the verge of collapse from both an aircraft inventory and human capital perspective," the report argued.
"The Air Force’s pilot corps is now too small and poorly structured to sustain a healthy combat force that can prevail in a peer conflict and meet the nation’s other national security requirements," it said.
"The 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," the report added.
Fighter aircraft missions — such as establishing air superiority — are essential for effective joint force operations.
Yet the Air Force was short by nearly 1,850 pilots in 2024, the report noted, with 1,142 of those vacancies being fighter pilot billets.
"The Air Force must not underestimate the expertise and operational value of the Reserve Component in creating the strategic depth and combat-ready reserve that the nation needs in a peer conflict," retired Maj. Heather Penney, the report’s author and a MIAS senior resident fellow, said during a virtual discussion about the report conducted Jan. 23.
"Shuttering fighter squadrons across the Reserve Component will further stress the Active Component’s forces, which are already too small to need," she added.
"The experience base that sits in the Reserve Component is absolutely crucial," said retired Lt. Gen. Marc H. Sasseville, the National Guard Bureau’s former vice chief. "We need to be able to retain that and feed it and grow it."
Penney and Sasseville were F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter pilots for the District of Columbia’s Air Guard during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The Air Force’s approximately 160 bombers and 2,000 fighters now mark its smallest combat aircraft inventory in history, the report said.
These bombers are on average about 50 years old, while the fighters are about 30 years old.
The Air National Guard currently has 25 fighter squadrons, many of which fly aging airframes the Air Force plans on retiring in the coming years.
For example, the Air Force is gradually divesting its entire fleet of A-10 Thunderbolt IIs nationwide, a decision that will ultimately impact several Guard wings.
Take the Idaho Guard’s 124th Fighter Wing, which the Air Force said in 2023 will transition from the A-10 to the F-16 in 2027.
NGAUS considers recapitalizing the Air Guard’s fighter fleet a legislative priority as the service phases out older airframes like the A-10.
— By Mark Hensch
