This article needs to be recast as "Staff Officer Shortage". Once you sign up for the bonus you'll be lucky to see a cockpit. The previously mentioned program for long term AD orders will fill the pilot slots and the bonus babies will be fodder for staff tours. The pilot bonus is only called that because that's who it is offered to. It's not a bonus to keep flying. The Air force is talking out of both sides of its mouth yet again. It takes millions of $$ to train the pilots yet Leadership continues to release pilots to staff tours, requires multiple box checking criteria, selective retention boards, passed over boards, etc. If it really costs that much to train someone, how is it cheaper to say goodbye to old head experience in favor of training new pilots? This is a perfect situation for the airlines. Many pilots are reaching 65, the DOD budget is being reduced, we're pulling out of OEF (no snickering here), and the air force is offering the door to pilots. The decade of flight experience each pilot has earned after UPT the military readily throws away. It's exactly what airlines are looking for with the new ATP rules. The old saying "one mans trash is another man's gold" is aptly applied here. This situation was so easily seen a few years ago. At the ATA convention in Nashville (2010) an AFPC 2 star general (I don't remember his name now) was asked about his slides indicating a pilot surplus through 2017 and what assumptions went into that conclusion. He stated that afpc doesn't work on assumptions and these were the facts only. The the upcoming 2012 airline pilot retirements, RIF, VSP would not effect his slides. What a crock. This short sighted vision effects reliability, safety incidents, morale, and ultimately security.

Good luck to all. Watching the change in air force mentality over the past 20 years has been staggering. The Air Force offers great experiences and life long friendships that in the private sector will be hard to find. But as leadership continues to bury its head in the sand expecting ALL persons to want to be wing commanders and political jockeying executive officers, they will forever miss the ultimate goal addressed in this article - retention. It's not about throwing money at the problem. It's the underlying morale sapping boxes that must be checked to stay and the guilt heaped on those who don't want to check them. Those who either are or want to be experts in their field are passed over and shown the door. What's left are folks who have a great many job titles that fill an OPR wonderfully. However, they have no idea how their decisions either positively or negatively effected the organization they were a part of because they left for another job. There are a great many outstanding officers who want to make things better, be an expert in their field (AFSC), reduce the pain of overly restriction ground training and serve their country. They just don't want to be subjected to the current culture that exists above the O-5 level. This is the demographic being addressed in this article. Until a major culture shift is addressed and attacked in earnest by a General with big enough Balls to acknowledge not everyone wants his job, this will continue.