B-52 pilots are facing yet another 20 percent cut in flying hours due to sequestration budget cuts after previously enduring a 20 percent reduction over a decade spanning 2000 to 2010, according to a key Air Force official.
Air Force Global Strike Command chief Lt. Gen. James Kowalski said yesterday the Air Force deciding to protect nuclear deterrence operations at the expense of conventional forces meant that the B-52, which is also capable of deploying nuclear weapons, suffered a cut in flying hours because they’re “heavily committed” to conventional fighting.
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| Air Force Global Strike Command chief Lt. Gen. James Kowalski. Photo: Air Force. |
“We didn’t have the flying hours to fly them and keep the other crews ready for nuclear deterrence operations,” Kowalski said as part of a Peter Huessy congressional breakfast event on Capitol Hill.
Kowalski said the reduction in flying hours has a long-term effect on the force beyond just training as flying hour units have been a traditional metric for the Air Force to measure the experience of pilots and gauge promotion opportunities. With flying hours being reduced due to sequestration-related budget cuts, Kowalski said the Air Force is going to have to determine a new metric, whether it be counting individual flying events or trips to simulators.
“How do I get that right number of flying hours to get them to the right number of experience where I can upgrade them to be an aircraft commander and put them in change of an airplane,” Kowalski said. “It’s not just a problem I have, it’s a problem across the Air Force.”
Kowalski said the reduction in flying hours could not only impact the Air Force’s current pilot retention efforts, but could give pause to potential air service pilots in the future as they might question their marketability to commercial airlines after spending hours in a simulator instead of piloting jets. Despite the negative aspects of reduced flying hours, Kowalski said budget tightening could be an opportunity for the Air Force to invest in its simulators.
With fiscal year 2013 ending Sept. 30 and the Defense Department facing another round of sequestration in FY ’14, Kowalski likened the effects further cuts would have on readiness to high interest rates charged in “payday” lending, or short-term loans provided to sub-prime borrowers. Kowalski said since the Air Force wasn’t going to take readiness reductions in nuclear deterrence operations, it had to borrow from somewhere, and that was from the bank of conventional forces.
Kowalski said if flying hours were again reduced next fiscal year, instead of using those hours to maintain the readiness of the force, he’d have to spend some of those hours to get half of the crew force ready–the interest rate charged on “payday” lending.
“We’re taking out payday loans on readiness, we’re taking payday loans out on facilities,” Kowalski said. “I don’t know how many people here have taken out a payday loan, but you probably know the interest rates are pretty jolting.”
Kowalski’s remarks echo those made last week by Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans and Requirements Lt. Gen. Burton Field, who said budget austerity is changing the way the Air Force is growing its future leaders.
“People aren’t becoming flight leads or aircraft commanders until the middle of their second assignment, and then they’re not going to become instructors until the end or the middle of their third assignment,” Field said July 25 an Air Force Association (AFA) event hosted in Washington by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think tank. “Our young folks will lose a lot of experience that we come to count on and accept as ‘the way it is.’
“We were all instructor pilots either as first lieutenants or as very young captains…there’s nobody, nobody that’s going to be flying an airplane and be a weapons school instructor as a two-year captain anymore because we can’t get them through training and they don’t fly enough to get there.”