USAF Needs More Fighter Squadrons & Fighter Pilots

VOANews:  “The U.S. Air Force says a shortage of fighter pilots has become so dire that it is struggling to satisfy combat requirements abroad.  ‘We have too few squadrons to meet the combatant commanders’ needs,’ Major General Scott Vander Hamm, the general in charge of fixing the fighter pilot crisis, said in an exclusive interview with VOA. The Air Force is currently authorized to have 3,500 fighter pilots, but it is 725 fighter pilots short. And with fewer pilots, the number of fighter pilot squadrons have also dropped, from 134 squadrons in 1986 to 55 in 2016.”  See: “Air Force Has Too Few Fighter Squadrons to Meet Commanders’ Needs.”

See also “Attrition: Fighter Pilots Threatened On All Sides.” and “Fighter Pilots Aren’t Flying Enough to Hone the Skills of Full-Spectrum War.”