Military Aviation Lack of Training Personnel and Equipment Capstone Project

Introduction

The aviation field within the armed forces has serious problems as almost all the related services are making reports that they have training, pilot retention, and general machinery maintenance challenges (Burke, 2018; Deal, 2019; United States Government Accountability Office, 2019). The reason for this malaise is not clear but there are two possible originating problems that are just as common to military aviation as they are to the other branches of the military. First, military aviation was dedicating insufficient resources, including time, to maintenance. The period of the War on Terror had many specialized personnel in many departments working around the clock to ensure things were running smoothly. Maintenance issues were, therefore, rarely a problem. With most of the maintenance work being done by contractors, pilots were left to fly several hours with some accumulating upwards of 100,000 hours within a year (Burke, 2018). The situation after the war is totally different. At home, a great portion of the maintenance work is done by service members. It is true that maintainers are putting in several hours at work. However, most of the work they do on a typical day is not aircraft maintenance.

As less man hours are directed at maintaining aircraft, a second problem arises: the military ends up with fewer aircrafts that are in good enough a condition to fly. As fewer planes are availed to pilots to fly, they end up flying less and this reduces 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. All the military services report that pilots are finding it hard to meet their minimum flying hour requirements.

A problem that is mainly seen in the Army is occasioned by the Aviation Restructuring Initiative. The initiative led to the divesting of the Kiowa Warrior helicopter and its replacement with Apache helicopters that were provided by the National Guard. Since most of the service members had racked their hours flying Kiowa Warrior helicopters, they were very inexperienced as far as Apache helicopters were concerned (Burke, 2018). There was a need to train more new Apache helicopter pilots as a result. However, as the new pilots entered service, their number was far bigger than the number of available senior Apache pilots that could help further train them on the job.

Statement of the Problem

The ability of the military to meet its operational and training requirements in the long run is at risk because of the weaknesses it has had in implementing and overseeing the contracting it has done for repair and maintenance. Further, there have been deficiencies in cost management, information systems management, and the evaluation of performance metrics. There has been a shortage of skilled workers in some areas, especially in the trades related to repair and maintenance. Every year, the Department of Defense releases the National Guard and Reserve Equipment Report. This report details the shortages in RC equipment as well as the procurement plans the department has. The 2016 report showed that…

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…under restrictive contracts (Deal, 2019).

The supply for maintenance staff has been outpaced by the demand for such skilled labor. While specialization is still present in both training and deployment of military maintenance personnel, specialization has reduced compared to the levels that were there in the 1980s. The military is leaning towards cross-utilization more and more as mission readiness and force count reduce by the year. The current operations of the military are more technology-based than they are people-based. The military now needs very skilled personnel who can collaborate with each other (United States Government Accountability Office, 2019).

The huge logistics footprint of globalization

The shortfalls the military faces today are very significant given the fact that military engagements are becoming less and less predictable. Threats such as insurgency-based aggressions can arise unpredictably and grow very quickly almost anywhere on the globe. The ability to send a fully effective force to such areas can only be ensured by having military assets that are well maintained ready to go at a moment’s notice. Further, maintenance personnel need to accompany the assets where appropriate. The logistics of such an operation requires that the military provide food, shelter, and transport to maintenance personnel (Deal, 2019).

Increasing globalization calls for greater management of logistics. In the wars of the 19th century, there were practically no logisticians employed in wars. As new developments came, a great percentage of the military force is being staffed by people working directly in logistics (Deal, 2019). In the American military aviation sector, there are…