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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

The Army also has a pilot shortage, but they've done a little better than the Air Force due to allowing warrant officers to fly. Many pilots just want to fly, they don't want to deal with all the other management responsibilities and staff assignments that come with being a commissioned officer. When the Air Force split off from the Army they decided they only wanted commissioned officers as pilots and eliminated WO ranks.

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It's interesting how the US military copied the British class-based system of management, officers v other ranks. It does stymie a lot of creativity and talent.

> It's interesting how the US military copied the British class-based system of management, officers v other ranks.

That’s been the military system the world over for millennia - not really a uniquely British thing is it!

And officers don’t just manage - they lead.

Also - you can be a pilot and an enlisted soldier (Sgt and up) in Britain unlike in the US, so we do not differentiate as much for that role as the US does!

The way I see this is that the US Air Force does allow enlisted to fly. First, get a college degree, and go through the application process to become an officer. Prior enlisted with the smarts to do it are seen as better officers. Then once you've done that you can get a pilot slot. Why would I want someone who is not willing or able to get a college degree pilot my $150 million dollar jet?

You'd want that because a college degree is a 4-year delay during which the human body ages. Everything gets worse with age: hearing, eyesight, neck strength (needed for high-G pilots), etc.

That cuts the career by 4 years, meaning that a larger portion of it is training and a smaller portion is being useful. There is then an incentive to let excessively older people keep flying, meaning a reduction in the physical standards (eyesight, etc.) for the people who fly that $150 million dollar jet. Good eyesight matters more than college gunk like "Art Appreciation" and "Intro to Humanities".

This is a strong argument, but that 4 year delay also helps you mature and figure out how life works and become more independent and self-sufficient. A 19 year could do a great job I'm sure. I know a guy that was flying combat missions in Vietnam at that age. From what I hear he was a phenomenal pilot. I think he made some decisions he wouldn't have made if he was a little older though.

Also I have a feeling the older guys can handle the G's ok, better than a lanky 18 year old who hasn't gotten his man-physique yet.

With the technology we have I think I'd rather have an older, wiser 40 year flying my F-22 than a 22 year old, but maybe I'm wrong, I have no stats for their relative performance.

Many of the best pilots in history had no university degrees. Chuck Yeager famously had none. Jacqueline Cochran had none. Amelia Earhart dropped out of Columbia. Charles Lindbergh dropped out of UW-Madison. Howard Hughes dropped out of Rice. Hanna Reitsch dropped out of medical school at Kiel.

If the idea is simply use willingness to pay for / put up with university as a proxy to test seriousness and dedication, why not ask prospective aviators to get full-face tattoos? Surely that stunt would prove more dedication than a college degree, and waste less of everybody's time.

One of the arguments for pilots to be officers is that they are the ones who ultimately make the final decision on dropping bombs. The U.S. Air Force took a heavy mental beating over the horror of indiscriminate bombings it conducted in the Vietnam War (that was not a war...), and has internalized it.

The thinking is that officers are personally responsible for the command decisions that they execute. If you are ordered to do something you think is illegal it is your responsibility as an officer to refuse. Enlisted are not expected to be held to this requirement. I understand the realities of things, but this is the theory.

The tie-in with a university degree is that that is supposed to have exposed you to enough other thinking that you are better (not to be confused with "well") prepared to make those sort of decisions.

The supposed connection between ethical behavior and university degrees is totally spurious. It's a post-hoc justification for blatant class discrimination, plain and simple. I recommend you dig into the life of Jacqueline Cochran in particular; she was far more than merely one of the best pilots to have ever lived.

> Why would I want someone who is not willing or able to get a college degree pilot my $150 million dollar jet?

You could ask this same question about almost any requirement. You just finished saying that prior enlisted are seen as better officers. So why not require all officers to have previously enlisted? (in addition to college or instead of college)

And there are blanket answers to your question that apply to just about anything. souprock pointed out that a college degree takes four years, cutting short their career. And any extra hoops or delays reduce the candidate pool. Remember, the article is discussing a shortage of pilots. The answer might be "because otherwise no one will fly your $150 million jet" or "because otherwise your very few, very perfect pilots will make poor decisions from exhaustion".

Requiring officers to be enlisted first would be a great idea, in my opinion. And yes, most jobs nowadays require a college degree, and flying F-22s is one of them. Again, the problem is not that they can't find enough people to train, show me anything that says that. It's that they can't retain the people they have already trained.

Since their incoming pipeline is completely full, if you want to use enlisted pilots you are going to have to pull some officers out of line to replace them with enlisted.

I'm not saying enlisted guys can't do the job, just that this is the way the system works, and this part doesn't seem to be too broken. If you're enlisted and want to do it, the government will pay for your entire college and give you a stipend on top (ROTC, GI Bill), you can even do it part time while you are still enlisted in the military[1], then give you a nice raise to become an officer. Pretty good deal.

The numbers might not always add up for free tuition, but there are a lot of schools in the yellow ribbon program that will cover additional costs for servicemembers[2].

[1] https://www.military.com/education/money-for-school/air-forc... [2] https://www.benefits.va.gov/GIBILL/yellow_ribbon/yrp_list_20...

Why would I want someone who is not willing or able to get a college degree pilot my $150 million dollar jet?

Because very little you learn in college is relevant to whether you can fly those military jets?

This is true of basically every army on Earth, because it works. In fact, the USSR notably attempted to do away with the idea of an officer class in the Red Army (since it was seen as un-Socialist) and wound up changing their mind and re-instituting officers about a decade later.

The US Army has an interesting program called 'High School to Flight School' for Warrant Officer pilot candidates.

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