[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 59 (Tuesday, May 12, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H3077]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                    AIR FORCE PILOT RETENTION ISSUE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk a little bit tonight about 
the state of our military. I was with my good friend, the gentleman 
from New Jersey (Mr. Jimmy Saxton) and the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Saxby Chambliss), two great members of the Committee on National 
Security this morning, observing a very interesting and unusual 
exercise from our takeoff point at Andrews Air Force Base. That was the 
refueling of a C-5 aircraft somewhere over Pennsylvania. We went up and 
married up with an aircraft and refueled her out of Dover, out of 
Delaware, undertook a refueling.
  We had an opportunity to talk to our folks, our military folks, while 
we were doing that, briefly, before the flight and during the flight. 
Mr. Speaker, I harken back to the days when I came into Congress in 
1980. In those days one of our biggest problems was what we called the 
people problem.
  Coming from a Navy town, San Diego, I saw that problem manifested in 
the thousands of chief petty officers who were getting out of the Navy. 
Those were the people that really knew how to make the ships sail. It 
was a tremendous loss. We had a thousand petty officers a month leaving 
the Navy, and we could not replace them.
  As I was briefed by these fine young men and women in the Air Force 
this morning, I could see that we are revisiting that people problem. 
It is probably across the board, but what we focused on today was the 
United States Air Force.
  I want to quote General Ryan, Chief of Staff of the Air Force. He 
said that last year more than 800 pilots refused bonuses of $60,000 to 
extend their time in service 5 years beyond the 9 they signed up for. 
Only 36 percent of the pilots at the 9-year mark agreed to stay on, 
while the Air Force goal was 50 percent, to avoid shortages.
  Mr. Speaker, that means that we are going to probably have a shortage 
of about 835 pilots this year. The taxpayers pay about $6 million, on 
the average, to train a pilot. When we lose a pilot from the United 
States Air Force and he goes out ahead of his retirement time to work 
for an airline company or to gain employment in another civilian field, 
we lose a great asset.

                              {time}  2000

  We not only lose the $6 million of training time because when we find 
another pilot to take his place, we have to expend that $6- to $8 
million to train that pilot up, but we also lose the great experience. 
And, of course, there is a time lapse between losing those experienced 
pilots and bringing on the newly trained pilots. So we are losing this 
resource.
  We have been asking people why they are leaving. They are not leaving 
because of money. A few of them are citing dollars or pay as a reason 
for leaving, but a lot of them are citing, most of them are citing what 
they call quality of life. And a lot of that has to do with what we 
were told about this morning as being the extreme OPTEMPO of our 
operations. We have a much smaller Air Force now, for example. We are 
down from 24 fighter airwings during Desert Storm to only about 13 
today. Of course that reduction is reflected across the array of U.S. 
Air Force aircraft. What that means, if you are a pilot or a crewman on 
one of those aircraft or a ground crew, is that you are going to be 
working longer hours. You are going to be called up when you do not 
expect to be called up and when you have some pressing business to do 
with your own family. That means a lot of our folks are not there to 
see their son's graduation or their daughter's wedding or any of the 
other things that we do on the civilian side, on the family side that 
makes life bearable.
  Because of that, a lot of folks are saying, we are not in a war, this 
is not an emergency; I am going to get a job in an area where I can 
spend a lot more down time with my family. So this is a family decision 
that people are making sitting around the kitchen table and 
unfortunately they are making it, they are coming down on the side of 
leaving the Air Force.
  Mr. Speaker, a lot of these folks that are leaving are the senior 
people who are qualified in very important fields. A lot of them are 
instructor pilots. A lot of them are examiner pilots. Aerial refueling-
qualified pilots, that is very important because the United States has 
the bulk and the backbone of the free world's refueling capability. A 
lot of them are airdrop-qualified pilots and special operation pilots. 
And so, Mr. Speaker, we are facing this time when, even though we are 
paying $22,000 additional bonuses now to try to keep these pilots in, 
we are seeing this continued retreat and exodus from the Air Force of 
some of our most valuable and qualified people.
  We are going to have to do something about that. It is probably going 
to be, part of that answer to this problem is going to be raising the 
top line because we are going to need to have more planes and more 
pilots if we are going to do this job that we have been asked to do 
over the last several years which has extended our OPTEMPO. I will be 
talking tomorrow about some other problems.

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