RE:
http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,189376,00.htmlNice, another $500 million band-aide on a broken program. Flight School XXI is not the solution, it's the problem. How, with any amount of funding, can we expect to fly each student 80 hrs or more on their advanced airframe prior to leaving Fort Rucker. The fleet of training aircraft is ragged and some only airworthy by multiple "local policy" letters reducing the requirements to remain operational. Now to use those same aircraft for even further RL training? The product coming out of Fort Rucker now is often lacking because the standard has been continuously lowered to meet required numbers. The solutions is not more simulators which are often broken and do not teach the vital lessons most important to a young aviator such as crew coordination and flight management. Here's how to fix the problem.
1. Retain the experienced Pilots in the Guard and Reserves by providing full ACIP (with additional requirements of flight hours, crew status, etc. to prevent a MAJ or CW4 that will never make PC and fly's only enough to meet minimums from drawing an undeserved $850 per month) along with other incentives for additional skill identifiers such as IP, MP, and maybe even the additional responsibilities help by a pilot in command etc.
2. If the goal is 1500 aviators per year, start the classes with 2500 total per year, take the good, and ditch the bad. If they can no longer trust students to fly alone on cross country flights and perform to the standard, why would you send that substandard aviator to a unit and a combat zone shortly after? The kinder gentler Army is causing us to toss all standards aside and it has turned into the no flight school student left behind program. WHERE IS OUR CANDOR?
3. Return to the cheaper alternative of training. The operating and maintenance cost of a smaller aircraft such as an oh-58 a/c (or here's a novel though, a Robinson R22 or R44) is dramatically less than the cost of a UH-60, CH-47, or AH-64. Yes aviators need experience in their advanced airframes but make them prove themselves in a basic aircraft first. When I left Fort Rucker only 5 years ago I quickly realized nearly half of what I learned needed to be unlearned. Fort Rucker is in their own little world and trying to do too much. Teach them the basics of flying, and support the units with the necessary funds to mold them with combat proven SOP's, not "Ruckerism's" and war stories from fights long past.
We've been sold a bill of goods full of gadgets and gizmos to "improve" training, but we seem to have forgotten the basics.
