The (active duty) military is a COMPLETELY different lifestyle than airlines. Almost night and day.

1. Officers exist to be officers, flying is secondary in the grand scheme. There will be non-flying tours and after 15-20 years the vast majority are done flying... that last causes people to have a tendency to bail while they're still flight current.

2. Up or out. Nobody can stay in the military forever, only a 3-4 star officer could reasonably retire for good upon retiring from the military. If you don't get promoted, you're out so there's a fair bit of competitive pressure along the way.

3. Deployments are hard on the family.

4. The military lifestyle model is based on a 1950's stay-at-home spouse... it's lethal for a spouse's career in most cases, and most spouses today expect to do something other than housewife.

Guard/Reserves of course is vastly different. You can be closer to "just a pilot" with less non-flying duties and assignments.



There's no entry-level shortage, unless the training pipeline can't keep up. The problem is retention of mid/senior grade officers... unlike an airline new-hire right off IOE, a newly-winged O2 cannot substitute for an O3/O4 flight lead, an O5 squadron CO, or an O6 wing commander. Also need a lot of experienced people for staff jobs to ensure that high-level planning and execution is properly informed and influenced by the voice of operational experience (as opposed to say war-planning by career civil servants )

With the airlines hiring gang-busters, there's no way the mil can retain people... even big short-term retention bonuses pale in comparison to long-term airline pay. And QOL is of course a huge factor... you just have to be really motivated with the family on board to gut it out for 30+.