Military Aviation Challenges: Equipment, Training, and Personnel

Introduction

The aviation field within the armed forces faces serious problems, as nearly all related services report challenges in training, pilot retention, and general machinery maintenance (Burke, 2018; Deal, 2019; United States Government Accountability Office, 2019). The source of this malaise is not entirely clear, but two originating problems appear to be common across military aviation and the broader military. First, military aviation has been dedicating insufficient resources — including time — to maintenance. During the War on Terror, many specialized personnel across numerous departments worked around the clock to keep operations running smoothly, and maintenance issues were rarely a problem. With most maintenance work performed by contractors, pilots were left to accumulate substantial flight hours, with some logging upwards of 100,000 hours within a single year (Burke, 2018).

The situation after the war is markedly different. At home, a large portion of maintenance work falls to service members themselves. While maintainers are putting in long hours, most of the work they perform on a typical day is not aircraft maintenance. As fewer man-hours are directed at maintaining aircraft, a second problem emerges: the military ends up with fewer aircraft in flyable condition. As fewer planes are made available to pilots, pilots fly less frequently, reducing the urgency for training and retraining. This is especially true for non-deployed military aviation units (Burke, 2018). With fewer training sessions, pilots tend to make more mistakes, and all military services report that pilots are struggling to meet their minimum flying-hour requirements.

A problem seen primarily in the Army stems from the Aviation Restructuring Initiative. This initiative led to the divestiture of the Kiowa Warrior helicopter and its replacement with Apache helicopters transferred from the National Guard. Since most service members had accumulated their hours flying Kiowa Warriors, they were largely inexperienced with Apache helicopters (Burke, 2018). A large number of new Apache pilots therefore needed to be trained. However, as these new pilots entered service, their numbers far exceeded the available pool of senior Apache pilots who could provide on-the-job mentorship.

The military's ability to meet its operational and training requirements over the long term is at risk due to weaknesses in implementing and overseeing maintenance and repair contracting. Further compounding the issue are deficiencies in cost management, information systems management, and the evaluation of performance metrics. There has also been a shortage of skilled workers in certain areas, particularly in trades related to repair and maintenance.

Every year, the Department of Defense releases the National Guard and Reserve Equipment Report, which details shortages in Reserve Component (RC) equipment and the department's procurement plans. The 2016 report revealed that the department was short $23.9 billion worth of Army National Guard (ARNG) equipment and $8.9 billion worth of U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) equipment — figures that do not account for authorized substitutions (DOD, 2016). The report also notes that constraints on the military budget have led to declines in procurement funding for RC equipment, and that the longstanding practice of transferring aging equipment from Active Component (AC) units to RC units has created gaps in interoperability and capacity.