Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked university and professional military education students to participate in our fourth annual writing contest by sending us their thoughts on strategy.

Now, we are pleased to present one of the essays tied for third place, from Derrick Franck, Jr., a student at the U.S. Army War College.

Advocates of a strategic view often emphasize an outward orientation focused on external threats. However, just as relevant to senior leader competency is an inward focus on development of credible and competent capabilities generated from limited physical, monetary, and human capital resources. The United States Air Force faces a severe and growing deficit of pilots that requires strategic force development efforts. These shortfalls are particularly concerning in the fighter pilot community, with over 1200 empty billets across the total force fighter enterprise.[1] A recent RAND study predicts this number will increase to over 1600 by 2023 without changes to production or retention.[2]

Producing new fighter pilots is not an overnight proposition. In essence, it requires at least three years of training through production pipelines costing between $5.6 million and $10.9 million per basic qualified pilot, depending on the aircraft type.[3] Increasing the capacity of production pipelines is a costly and long-term endeavor; as a result, the Air Force has proposed short-term capacity gains by operating the fighter pilot training systems at surge tempo and shortening time in the pipeline through syllabus reductions. Correspondingly, an oversupply of new fighter graduates with less-developed airmanship skills transfers risk to front-line units. Recent incidents within the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet offer a cautionary tale of unacknowledged systemic risks. What can the Air Force learn from the fleet as it attempts to reverse the downward flightpath of the fighter pilot force structure, modernize for peer competition, and continue armed-overwatch in U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility?

In 2017, the USS FITZGERALD and USS JOHN S MCCAIN were involved in separate accidental collisions with commercial vessels, resulting in the deaths of 17 sailors. An in-depth study reveals years of institutional pressures to generate efficiencies due to high operations tempo, force structure reductions, modernization priorities, and reductions in training and readiness resources triggered a steady accumulation of unacknowledged institutional risk. A careful comparative analysis reveals similar institutional pressures within the U.S. Air Force’s fighter fleet due to insufficient readiness pipelines, an inadequate force structure given global demands, maintenance resource shortfalls, and changing career incentives reducing operational squadron experience and expertise. The F-16 fleet already displays “normalization of deviation,” warning signs that mask the totality of institutional risk.[4] The Air Force must take a holistic approach that treats the fighter pilot enterprise as a complex adaptive system requiring careful management rather than a linear equation with a simple solution. Failure to balance competing institutional tensions risks growing a generation of fighter pilots without the fundamental skills necessary to ensure continued air superiority.

Death at Sea 

On the morning of June 16, 2017, the USS FITZGERALD departed its homeport of Yokosuka, Japan. Following a long day of training in the Sagami Wan operating area, the FITZGERALD began its transit to the South China Sea at 2300.[5] The commanding officer directed an expedited night transit through congested shipping lanes to maximize training in open seas the following morning, left his standing orders, and retired to his cabin.[6] Around 0100 the next morning, the FITZGERALD approached three commercial vessels in a crossing situation in which international regulations required the destroyer to yield by altering its course, preferably to starboard to pass astern of the merchant ships.[7] However, the Combat Information Center’s radar operators, visual observers, and the officer of the deck failed to detect the looming conflict and deviate accordingly. When it became apparent a collision was imminent, the watch officer panicked, directed a turn in front of the freighter, ACX CRYSTAL, rather than astern, an acceleration to full power rather than full-reverse, and failed to ring the crash alarm to warn of the impending danger.[8] At 0130, CRYSTAL’s bow sliced into the FITZGERALD’s starboard side, resulting in the deaths of seven sailors.[9]

Another collision at sea due to navigation and seamanship failures occurred a few short months later, revealing that problems extended beyond a single ship.[10] In the pre-dawn darkness of August 21, 2017, the USS JOHN S MCCAIN was halfway through a six-month deployment in the Western Pacific with a planned port of call in Singapore. The MCCAIN approached the Singapore and Malacca Straits to transit through one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. The commanding officer had been on the bridge since 0100, providing oversight for the higher risk transit. Around 0519, the commander observed the helmsman struggle to maintain steering and engine control with unsteady seas and directed the helmsman to shift engine control to another station.[11] Unfortunately, the helmsman inadvertently transferred steering rather than engine control, resulting in an unrecognized and non-standard steering configuration. This atypical configuration, compounded by an ill-timed watch relief, unleashed a series of unintended consequences that confused the helmsman, officer of the deck, and commander.[12] The MCCAIN began an ostensibly uncontrolled turn to port in heavy traffic as the bridge crew misperceived the true nature of the steering errors. As the destroyer slowed, the crew failed to observe the impending collision from astern as they crossed into the path of another ship. At 0524, the ALNIC MC’s bulbous bow pierced the hull of the MCCAIN below the waterline, resulting in the deaths of 10 sailors and 48 injuries.[13] Again, the Navy’s initial response stressed the individual culpability of the commanding officer.[14]

Comprehending Institutional Risk 

The combination of the FITZGERALD and MCCAIN collisions unmasked the unacknowledged risk of a community in crisis, forcing the U.S. Navy to undertake an introspective appraisal of the surface fleet with two formal reviews. ProPublica also completed an independent, in-depth investigative journalism effort. A review of these works offers several key observations. The first report, the Comprehensive Review, focused on the proximate and tactical causes of failure by reviewing several recent mishaps in addition to the FITZGERALD and MCCAIN. This report focused on five main areas of needed improvement for safer operations: the fundamentals of navigation and seamanship, teamwork in challenging situations, operational safety processes and tools for risk mitigation, assessment via critical self-examination and shared lessons learned, and a culture of values defining the surface warfare force.[15] The report alludes to resourcing shortfalls with the demand for surface forces in the Western Pacific exceeding the quantity that forward-based forces could supply while still executing maintenance and training regimes.[16] Finally, the report found cultural issues within the surface fleet of how a can-do attitude prioritizing mission accomplishment without culturally robust feedback mechanisms to collect and act on mishap leading indicators enables the steady growth of risk.[17]

The Strategic Readiness Review, commissioned by the Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV), focused more on macro institutional pressures and resulting challenges to the surface fleet. The review used a system-of-systems view of readiness to examine systemic issues pervading the surface fleet.[18] Decades of resource constraints from post-Cold War drawdown to the 2011 Budget Control Act (colloquially known as sequestration) drove successive commanders in never-ending searches for efficiencies that steadily built up normalization of deviations leading to increased institutional risk as the surface fleet continued with its mission-focused orientation.[19] Another point noted that balancing readiness opportunity costs across time often privileges immediate short-term operational requirements over the long-term health of the fleet.[20] Finally, the Strategic Review recommended the Navy re-establish readiness as a priority, match supply and demand, establish clear command and control relationships, and become a true learning organization.[21]  

Another review, from outside the Department of Defense (DoD), stressed the culpability of senior naval officers and civilians in the deteriorated state of the surface fleet. ProPublica published a series of three investigative journalism articles in 2019, outlining a sequence of leadership failures to take action amidst clear and mounting evidence of increased risk due to the imbalance between resources and requirements.[22] Senior leaders failed to appreciate the extent of the difficulties and the cumulative risk to force.[23] ProPublica outlined an operations tempo and preference for shipbuilding over readiness investments that overwhelmed the once-great Pacific fleet. The articles painted a dire picture of fleet readiness with countless examples of deferred maintenance, destroyers sent to sea without scheduled repairs, broken equipment patched with subpar workarounds, a modernization program that made every destroyer a unique snowflake of different patchworks of control systems, and severe manning shortfalls that regularly required commanders to borrow sailors from other ships to fill watchbills while underway.[24] In hindsight, it was only a matter of time before the FITZGERALD and MCCAIN tragedies. Janine Davidson, the Undersecretary of the Navy in 2016, would later say, “It’s like sleepwalking into a level of risk that you don’t realize you have.”[25]

These sources reveal a navy struggling to define accountability, responsibility, and a path forward in the face of systemic failure to balance force structure, modernization, recapitalization, and readiness with short-term and long-term opportunity costs. A synthesis of this literature imparts four key takeaways. First, institutional risk increases non-linearly and unpredictably with increased supply-to-demand shortfalls. Since the end of the Cold War, the Navy’s supply of ships has contracted to the lowest levels after World War II.[26] Concurrently, the insatiable demand for forward presence with the emphasis on great power competition resulted in severe strain on the force. The Navy’s force generation model for providing ready surface forces—trained, maintained, and modernized for a broad spectrum of mission roles—could not keep pace. The post-Goldwater-Nichols command structure’s inherent tension between force providers (the services) and force employers (combatant commanders) exacerbates supply and demand dilemmas as each organization has different priorities, timelines, and incentives. The Global Force Management processes and rulesets to adjudicate tradeoffs in the Department of Defense often privilege near-term requirements over long-term health. Over time, risk accumulates as the fleet’s health steadily decreases.

Second, the Navy’s can-do cultural attitude and must-do mission-focus contributed to the accumulation of unacknowledged risk through the erosion of standards. A can-do attitude is a comparative strength in times of crisis, as it seeks victory despite the odds.[27] However, a can-do attitude produces negative consequences when indoctrinated in a must-do culture that distorts shared perceptions of readiness over longer timelines.[28] Commanders routinely identified resourcing shortfalls and readiness gaps caused by excessive taskings, but tasking from headquarter staffs and commanders who had difficulty saying “No” in the Global Force Management process continued. Anecdotal vignettes of under-resourced, undertrained, and overtasked forces lost their impact at the higher echelons as those surface forces continued to accomplish successful missions despite known shortfalls. Continued success led headquarters to waive pre-deployment certification requirements in the name of short-term mission accomplishment.[29] Subsequently, destroyer commanders commenced waiving internal training requirements in the name of expediency due to the scarcity of training time, leading to a wholesale erosion of standards that pervaded the entire surface fleet culture down to the lowest level.[30] This cultural phenomenon is known as the normalization-of-deviation, where sailors viewed certifications and standards as roadblocks to success rather than integral components of training and readiness systems.[31] Normalization-of-deviation contributes to system fragility by initially masking increased institutional risks as individuals make well-meaning short-term risk-tradeoff decisions with no one entity perceiving the cumulative risks across the enterprise until the inevitable tragedy strikes.

Third, the decreased institutional capability of surface warfare officers contributed to the FITZGERALD and MCCAIN accidents. Following the end of the Cold War, the Navy consolidated accession training for surface warfare officers in Newport, Rhode Island, at the 16-week Surface Warfare Officer Division Officer Course (SWOSDOC). In 2003, the Navy disestablished the course and shifted the burden of surface warfare training to the operational fleet.[32] New surface warfare officers reported directly to their ships and received the course on compact disk, sarcastically known as “SWOS in a Box.”[33] While the Navy re-established an eight-week surface warfare officer course following the 2011 Balisle report, the FITZGERALD and MCCAIN accidents underscore continued deficiencies in education, competency, and proficiency of the pipeline for surface warfare officers.[34]

Additionally, the Goldwater-Nichols Act and Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA) changed the promotion structure and incentives for the joint force, resulting in unintended consequences. Time-at-sea and maritime competency became less important measures for continued advancement than joint breadth and experience, resulting in decreased comfort-at-sea and risk-averse commanding officers.[35] Staff positions increased across the joint force, which, combined with low-retention rates, required the Navy to expand the number of junior officers aboard each surface combatant to ensure enough officers remained to fulfill requirements. This expanded junior officer wardroom further decreased surface warfare officer experience, proficiency, and competence by spreading decreased training and development opportunities across a larger population of junior officers.

The systemic pressures for increased production efficiency and unbalanced institutional incentives resulted in a generation of surface warfare officers without the fundamental skills necessary to ensure continued maritime superiority.[36] Creating a promotion incentive structure appropriately balancing in-depth specialization with broad expertise across the spectrum of potential military interventions is highly dependent on the operational environment. The return to peer competition requires a relook by the Department of Defense to ensure the appropriate balance between the virtues of deep specialization with the benefits of broad joint expertise.[37] A balanced officer force structure with an optimum mix of depth and breadth is a difficult ideal to achieve in the vast defense bureaucracy with shifting threats and static legislated requirements.[38]

The fourth key takeaway is that individual accountability for mishaps is insufficient and hollow without first addressing the underlying institutional causal factors.[39] Indeed, the Navy initially preferred negligent homicide charges against the commanding officers of both the FITZGERALD and MCCAIN before withdrawing them.[40] Such actions assign individual responsibility for human fallibility. They fail to alleviate the underlying institutional factors increasing the probability of catastrophic outcomes and are inadequate  in preventing future recurrence.[41] Instead, meaningful institutional accountability for the FITZGERALD and MCCAIN should focus on balancing supply-and-demand tensions, countering the cultural normalization-of-deviation, and ensuring adequate pipeline training and appropriate career incentives for surface warfare officers to regain maritime competency.

The F-16 Enterprise: An Emerging Institutional Crisis 

The U.S. Air Force faces a severe and growing deficit of fighter pilots, with a predicted shortfall of over 1600 by 2023.[42] Former Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson directed the Air Force to ensure 95% pilot manning by 2023 and 95% fighter pilot manning by 2028.[43] The Air Force convened the Aircrew Crisis Task Force to synchronize efforts towards her directive. While the task force initially advocated a balanced approach to retention, production, and absorption, the Air Force’s leading steps have concentrated on maximizing accession through increased production to meet optimistic goals. The required annual number of new pilots to reach these objectives requires a 33% increase from 1200 pilots per year to 1580, given current and predicted retention rates.[44]

The F-16 fleet is the most abundant fighter Mission Design Series (MDS) in the Air Force inventory, encompassing approximately 41% of combat-coded fighter aircraft.[45] As a result, Aircrew Crisis Task Force planners targeted the F-16 enterprise to bear a sizable absorption burden to achieve desired fighter pilot requirements. The burden falls on a community already exhibiting signs of stress due to over-tasking, undertraining, and under-resourcing. A comparative analysis between the U.S. Navy surface fleet and the F-16 enterprise reveals strikingly similar circumstances, with desires for production pipeline efficiencies propelling increased risk, high operational tempo precluding adequate training opportunities, maintenance resourcing shortfalls, and changing career structure incentives that reduce front line expertise.

First, viewing fighter force structure and readiness as interconnected production pipelines with supply and demand is illuminating. Generating ready forces requires linking hundreds of labor and capital pools to converge personnel, equipment, and training at operational units for mission execution.[46] The complex production pipeline for fighter pilots begins with Undergraduate Pilot Training, flows into Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals, then into Formal Training Units, and finishes with years of training requirements in operational Combat Air Force units until pilots are absorbed as experienced fighter pilots. The Air Force defines an experienced pilot as an officer who can fulfill roles not unique to their primary aircraft (staff, Undergraduate Pilot Training instructor, or non-flying instructor), and still return to their primary aircraft on subsequent assignments without substantial retraining. Each primary aircraft community defines experienced slightly differently, with averages between 200-250 sorties and a four-ship flight lead qualification equating to around a 5-year process from Undergraduate Pilot Training to experienced aviator.

Each step of this production-to-absorption chain depends on upstream variables that often lag direct demand signals. Due to fighter force structure cuts from the 1990s through 2010, the readiness pipeline across Undergraduate Pilot Training, Formal Training Units, and Combat Air Force absorption only generates around 280 experienced fighter pilots each year—a figure that must increase to around 400 by 2021 to achieve the 95% goal by 2028.[47] As a result, Air Combat Command (ACC), the lead major command (MAJCOM) for fighter pilot management policies, directed Air Education and Training Command (AETC) to maximize the production of fighter pilots through Undergraduate Pilot Training and Formal Training Units. Air Education and Training Command recently restructured the syllabus for Undergraduate Pilot Training, cutting syllabus events by 10% to increase production capacity without adding resources.[48] Air Education and Training Command also plans to reduce the F-16, F-15, and A-10 Formal Training Unit syllabi by 15% in 2021 (following a previous 10% reduction to the F-16 in 2014).[49]

Another problematic factor in the F-16 readiness pipeline is that force structure decisions since 2010 have failed to account for balancing resources between production and absorption capacity. The F-16 has the highest production-to-absorption cockpit ratio at 1 to 1.9, while every other fighter type averages around 1 to 3.9.[50] In other words, the F-16 force structure skews towards overproduction and under-absorption, driving down experience levels and qualifications in Combat Air Force units. The table below shows F-16 actual and planned production from 2014 to 2021. The Aircrew Crisis Task Force working group for Combat Air Forces calculated the healthy baseline of F-16 total force absorption capacity as 105 new F-16 pilots per year and max absorption at a stressed rate of 120 new pilots per year.[51] Exceeding 120 new pilots per year provides insufficient opportunities for second operational tours as the Air Force Personnel Center (AFPC) prioritizes billets for new pilots, places too few experienced instructor pilots in operational squadrons, and markedly increases risks to readiness and safety.[52]

In 2015, RAND completed a study outlining steps to reduce fighter pilot shortages. It also defined characteristics of healthy, stressed, and broken operational squadrons, given experienced-to-inexperienced ratios, sorties per crew per month, instructor pilots per squadron, and manning numbers.[54] Over-production of inexperienced pilots increases manning, reduces per month sorties, and reduces squadron qualifications as the Air Force Personnel Center transfers more-qualified pilots earlier to create space for more Formal Training Unit graduates. Similar to the Navy’s model of “SWOS in a Box,” current Air Force policy shifts massive training burdens to operational squadrons by flooding the Combat Air Forces with inexperienced pilots.

The Air Force has experienced this phenomenon before, in the early 2000s, when the demand for ready fighter pilots exceeded supply due to inadequate force structure, funding levels, and the shrinking number of units in the Combat Air Forces.[55] Critically, the F-16 enterprise is approaching the same depth of crisis—broken in nearly every one of RAND’s categories—even before considering the planned 38% production increase in 2021.[56]

The second similarity between the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet and the F-16 enterprise is the impact of a high operational tempo on future readiness. While the U.S. Air Force’s employment model for air expeditionary forces differs slightly from the naval surface fleet, the F-16 enterprise faces similar resourcing tensions between current operational requirements, training opportunities, and future readiness. Absorption of new pilots requires adequate home station training opportunities to produce combat-certified wingman, flight leads, and instructor pilots. The average active duty F-16 squadron deploys for six months every three years for a roughly 1:5 deployment-to-home dwell ratio. Each squadron also receives additional operational and training taskings (e.g., Red Flag, NOBEL EAGLE, Combat HAMMER/ARCHER) that further reduce upgrade training availability.

These events generally increase squadron capabilities with exposure to complexities unavailable in day-to-day training, but also limit absorption opportunities as fighter crews must be previously combat-certified at their qualification level to partake in Flag-level exercises or operational missions. As a result, upgrade productions for wingmen, flight leads, and instructor pilots cease for three-to-four weeks per readiness exercise, reducing a squadron’s pilot absorption capabilities. Fighter readiness is a delicate balance between home-station upgrade training opportunities, more complex readiness exercises, and real-world taskings. Air Combat Command recognized the unsustainable pace in the fighter force and has attempted to realign to a 1:5 away-to-home station dwell (not including deployments) by increasing contract red-air initiatives, reducing non-absorbing duty away from home, and working with combatant commands to reduce forward presence requirements.[57] However, demand for ready forces for operational and training events consistently outstrips supply, which results in the 1:5 dwell as an aspirational goal rather than an objective measure of fighter force ops tempo.[58]

A third similarity between the surface fleet and the F-16 enterprise encompasses maintenance manning challenges and resourcing shortfalls for aging systems. Maintenance sortie generation capabilities are a critical component to readiness and pilot absorption and beget another series of complex, interrelated labor and capital pipelines. In 2015, the Air Force experienced a 4000-person shortfall of aircraft maintenance personnel due to end-strength reduction and force structure decisions made in 2014.[59] The Air Force improved upon the overall shortfall with end-strength increases through 2019 but remains critically understaffed in 5/7-level certifications (five-to-seven year training timeline).[60] The Air Force must develop a strategy to raise the retention of experienced maintainers.[61]

The F-16 continues to age with problematic sustainment challenges. Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis ordered the Air Force and Navy in 2018 to increase mission capable rates to 80% for four tactical aircraft (F-35, F-22, F-16, and F-18) in response to years of deteriorating readiness.[62] Yet, the F-16 continues to face declining mission capable rates due to maintenance challenges associated with aging aircraft and depot-level delays (increased inspections, added preventative maintenance, lack of spare parts, and modernization and airworthiness improvements requiring depot).[63] Meaningful improvements in mission capable rates and fleet health can only occur with a significant capital investment to increases organic industrial base depot capacity and sustainment contracts for spare parts availability.[64]

The fourth similarity between the F-16 enterprise and the U.S. Navy surface fleet is unacknowledged opportunity costs associated with changes to career path incentives. A fundamental tension exists between breadth and depth of experience that challenges the human resource policies of large bureaucracies. The joint requirements outlined in the Goldwater-Nichols Act and Defense Officer Personnel Management Act prioritize the promotion of broad, joint experience over deep specialization for flag officers. In addition to these joint requirements, the Air Force recently added another career requirement—an institutional instructor tour—for continued progression. Former Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson said, “Being an instructor or recruiter helps to shape the future force, but, in the past...we gave it lip service. We’re changing that.”[65] This change hopes to incentivize high performers to select so-called institutional assignments as recruiters or instructors with the Reserve Officer Training Corps, the Air Force Academy, Air University, Undergraduate Pilot Training, and Formal Training Units over operational assignments. Under this new proposal, the “K-prefix” of a combat-certified instructor pilot earned at an operational squadron would become less valuable for career progression than the “T-prefix” of an instructor in Undergraduate Pilot Training or a Formal Training Unit. While investing in Air Force institutional organizations may be long overdue, the U.S. Air Force must consider the opportunity costs to operational readiness by disincentivizing operational instructor tours during a fighter pilot shortage.

Learning from the Navy

The F-16 enterprise demonstrates numerous similarities to conditions outlined in the investigations of the U.S. Navy surface fleet. The Air Force must learn from the Navy’s miscalculations as it attempts to reverse the downward trend in fighter pilot manning. Systemic pressures shared in both the F-16 fleet and the Navy destroyer community often lead Type-A, can-do cultures into must-do, mission-first behaviors with normalization-of-deviation habits masking composite risk.

The F-16 community already exhibits early warning signs of erosion of standards as it attempts to over-absorb new pilots. Formal Training Unit students increasingly graduate with waivers for incomplete requirements such as air-to-air refueling, shifting significant training burdens to operational units. Overtasked operational squadrons routinely waive training and currency requirements, viewing them as impediments to mission success rather than integral components of training and readiness systems. In one Shaw squadron from 2017 to early 2019, 100% of flight lead and instructor pilot entrants required an entry-waiver for below-minimum number of hours to ensure availability of enough instructor pilots and flight leads for day-to-day operations and combat taskings.[66]

Wholesale disregard for minimum qualifications is a bright indicator of normalization-of-deviation, resulting from severe institutional pressures. As the Navy’s 2017 Strategic Review highlighted, normalization-of-deviation occurs because mission success reinforces risky decisions to operate beyond the boundaries of established standards as inconsequential.[67] Multiple commanders, from Undergraduate Pilot Training to operational squadrons, waived requirements in the name of mission accomplishment and assumed the risks taken were appropriate given the absence of mishaps. How does the Air Force accurately judge the inherent risk of the downward spiral of less-experienced instructors teaching less-experienced student pilots who themselves eventually become even less-experienced instructors? Air Force leaders must embrace the lessons from the surface fleet by viewing the fighter enterprise as a complex adaptive system, balancing force structure for production and absorption with operational demand, and seeking out leading indicators of mounting institutional risk to counter normalization-of-deviation.

Balancing readiness, ops tempo, recapitalization, and modernization with force structure is not a simple process to model. The theory of complex adaptive systems equips decisionmakers with a framework to view real-world problems as interconnected systems with dynamic boundaries, populated by humans, that non-linearly change in response to internal and external stimuli.[68] The F-16 enterprise is a complex system of intertwined dependencies that eludes simple “X results in Y” causal logic. Variables interact in unexpected, unpredictable, and adapting ways, and Air Force leaders must view the fighter force as a delicate ecosystem with complex causalities rather than a linear problem with a solvable equation. Problem management becomes less about static, prescriptive solutions towards well-defined end states, and more focused on experimental interventions that test alternate theories of change towards new, desirable equilibriums.[69] Numerous stakeholders simultaneously changing multiple variables across the fighter pilot enterprise results in unacknowledged institutional risk outside the control of any individual actor (e.g., widespread, untested Undergraduate Pilot Training, Replacement Training Unit, and operational syllabus reductions/waivers). As the Strategic Review opined, emphasizing individual commander accountability for human fallibility is an inadequate measure in complex adaptive systems that fails to prevent future recurrence.[70]

The U.S. Air Force’s continual emphasis on production efficiencies undercuts operational resiliency with potentially disastrous results.[71] “Once a system has been pushed out of equilibrium—once an imbalance has been created—events tend to develop a momentum of their own.”[72] Attempts by Air Education and Training Command and Air Combat Command to produce and absorb 170 F-16 pilots in 2021, combined with the already fragile state of the F-16 community, volatile operational obligations, aging aircraft maintenance challenges, and changing career path incentives may thrust the system into a disequilibrium defined by a downward spiral with destructive synergies and years of unpredictable risks to force and mission. Much like the Navy’s surface warfare officer career field and decreased maritime competency, the Air Force risks breeding a generation of fighter pilots without the fundamental skills necessary to ensure continued air superiority.

Finally, commanders at all levels must seek out leading indicators of normalization-of-deviations that signal growing institutional risk. U.S. Air Force fighter mishap rates continued to climb through 2019.[73] However, these post-event mishap rates are lagging and incomplete indicators that often fail to identify complex, underlying problems.[74] The Air Force Safety Center (AFSC) is an outstanding safety-focused entity, but a recent Government Accountability Office report highlighted issues in analysis across the Department of Defense in how training shortfalls contributed to recent mishaps.[75] Preemptive risk mitigation requires qualitative and quantitative data to identify leading indicators such as waiver rates, near misses, and other potential causal factors that foreshadow impending mishaps. The Air Force Safety Center hopes to capture more leading indicators through the military flight operations quality assurance (MFOQA) and the airman safety action program (ASAP) initiatives, but these efforts still introduce some lag as they centralize data at the Air Force Safety Center and the Major Command level before releasing to the operational units.[76] These programs also focus on tactical miscues and individual lessons learned rather than institutional risk or policy analysis.

The professional gloves-off debrief that epitomizes fighter pilot culture is an admirable quality that achieves tactical excellence through dedication to root-cause analysis. Air Force leaders must apply this same dedication to institutional and policy analysis at higher levels of the organization in order to safeguard the nation’s blood and treasure. In 2018, General Goldfein ordered a stand-down day to focus on safety risks to aviation, explicitly to discuss “high ops tempo, lack of aircraft availability, inexperienced maintainers, and culture that always pushes airmen to execute the mission.”[77] However, a one-day stand-down cannot undo years of decaying readiness caused by resource limitations and force structure tradeoffs that prioritized short-term results over long-term enterprise health. Air Force leaders must not just focus on individual accountability in risk mitigation, but also on “institutional accountability, which addresses the underlying systemic contributors to the event, is, in many cases, equally culpable.”[78] Plainly stated, leading indicators already convey that the current F-16 absorption plan is an unsustainable policy with disproportionate risks to force and mission. Meaningful institutional accountability would focus on balancing supply-and-demand tensions, countering the cultural normalization-of-deviation, and ensuring adequate pipeline training and appropriate career incentives to ensure continued air superiority.

Any strategy focused on peer competition must include an inward focus on force development. Accordingly, the Air Force must learn from the Navy’s missteps in the attempts to reverse the fighter pilot shortage. Policymakers should view the fighter pilot enterprise as a complex adaptive system requiring careful management. Failure to balance production with absorption leads to broken organizations with unacknowledged institutional risk. The current disequilibrium in the F-16 enterprise risks growing a generation of fighter pilots without the fundamental skills necessary to ensure continued air superiority. Commanders at all levels must be alert for leading indicators of normalization-of-deviation behaviors in can-do organizations. Ultimately, failure to identify and counter these erosions of standards leads to strategic failure by “sleepwalking into a level of risk you don’t realize you have.”[79]

Derrick Franck, Jr. is an officer in the United States Air Force and is currently a student in the Carlisle Scholars Program at the U.S. Army War College. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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Header Image: A U.S. Air Force F-16 during a mission over Iraq on 10 June 2008. (U.S. Air Force Photo/MSgt Andy Dunaway/Wikimedia)

Notes:

[1] U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO), Military Personnel: DoD Needs to Reevaluate Fighter Pilot Workforce Requirements, GAO-18-113 (Washington, DC, April 2018) 35, https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-18-113.             

[2] Albert A. Robbert et al., “Reducing Air Force Fighter Pilot Shortages,” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2015), ix, http://www.rand.org/t/RR1113.

[3] Michael G. Mattlock et al., “Is It More Cost-Effective to Retain Pilots or Train New Ones?,” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2019), 16, http://www.rand.org/t/RR2415.

[4] “Normalization of Deviation” defined in Office of the Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV), Strategic Readiness Review, by the Honorable Michael Bayer and Adm. Gary Roughead (ret.), (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 3 December 2017), 12, http://s3.amazonaws.com/CHINFO/SRR+Final+12112017.pdf. This is described in further detail later in the paper.

[5] U.S. Department of the Navy, Enclosure 1 - Report of on the Collision between the USS FITZGERALD (DDG 62) and Motor Vessel ACX CRYSTAL, (Washington, DC, 23 Oct 2017), 6, http://s3.amazonaws.com/CHINFO/USS+Fitzgerald+and+USS+John+S+McCain+Collision+Reports.pdf.

[6] T Christian Miller, Megan Rose, and Robert Faturechi, “The Inside Story of an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy,” ProPublica, February 6, 2019, https://features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/uss-fitzgerald-destroyer-crash-crystal/

[7] U.S. Department of the Navy, Enclosure 1, 6.

[8] U.S. Department of the Navy, Enclosure 1, 7.

[9] U.S. Department of the Navy, Enclosure 1, 7.

[10] The U.S. Navy’s initial reaction to the collision was: “In the Navy, the responsibility of the Commanding Officer for his or her ship is absolute. Many of the decisions made that led to this incident were the result of poor judgment and decision making of the [CO].” See U.S. Department of the Navy, Enclosure 1, 20. Many also question the CO’s absence from the bridge, given the prevailing traffic conditions and speed of transit—CAPT Albert Lord (USN Ret), (U.S. Army War College Professor, retired Surface Warfare Officer), interview by author, Carlisle, PA, 17 Dec 2019.

[11] U.S. Department of the Navy, Enclosure 2 - Report of on the Collision between the USS JOHN S MCCAIN (DDG56) and Motor Vessel ALNIC MC,” (Washington, DC, 23 Oct 2017), 46, http://s3.amazonaws.com/CHINFO/USS+Fitzgerald+and+USS+John+S+McCain+Collision+Reports.pdf.

[12] U.S. Fleet Forces Command, Comprehensive Review of Recent Surface Force Incidents, by Adm. Phil S Davidson, (Norfolk, VA, 2017), 30,https://www.public.navy.mil/usff/Documents/USFF-Comprehensive-Review-2017.pdf

[13] U.S. Department of the Navy, Enclosure 2, 52.

[14] In fact, the collision reports for both used identical language: “In the Navy, the responsibility of the Commanding Officer for his or her ship is absolute. Many of the decisions made that led to this incident were the result of poor judgment and decision making of the Commanding Officer. That said, no single person bears full responsibility for this incident. The crew was unprepared for the situation in which they found themselves through a lack of preparation, ineffective command and control and deficiencies in training and preparations for navigation.” See U.S. Department of the Navy, Enclosure 2, 59

[15] Adm. Davidson, Comprehensive Review, 8

[16] Adm. Davidson, Comprehensive Review, 42.

[17] Adm. Davidson, Comprehensive Review, 93.

[18] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review, 16.

[19] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review, 18

[20] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review, 2

[21] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review, 5

[22] Robert Faturechi, Megan Rose, and T Christian Miller, “Years of Warnings, Then Death and Disaster: How the Navy Failed Its Sailors,” ProPublica, February 7, 2019, https://features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/us-navy-crashes-japan-cause-mccain/ 

[23] When a GAO report serious readiness issues involving maintenance and crew certification shortfalls in the Pacific 7th Fleet, Navy leaders responded that “they were well aware of the risks… and accepted them as the cost of increased presence in the region.” See Faturechi, “Years of Warning...”

[24] Faturechi, “Years of Warnings…”             

[25] Faturechi, “Years of Warnings…”             

[26] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review, 19.

[27] Adm. Davidson, Comprehensive Review, 19.

[28] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review, 2.

[29] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review, 22.

[30] CAPT Albert Lord (USN Ret), interview.

[31] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review, 23.

[32] Faturechi, “Years of Warnings…”,

[33] CAPT Albert Lord (USN Ret), interview.

[34] “The “Balisle Report” highlighted critical shortfalls within the USN surface fleet resulting from GWOT “capital-for-labor” substitions that reduced DDG authorized billets and reduced SWO training opportunities. See U.S. Fleet Forces Command, Fleet Review Panel of Surface Force Readiness, by VADM Phillip M. Balisle, USN (Ret), (Norfolk, VA, 26 Feb 2010). https://www.scribd.com/document/76227312/Balisle-Report-on-FRP-of-Surface-Force-Readiness

[35] CAPT Albert Lord (USN Ret), interview.

[36] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review, 23.

[37] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review, 49.

[38] Defense leaders must actively monitor and adjust talent management policies (coordinated with external stakeholders such as Congress) to ensure adequate promotion incentive structures that recognize how the inherent tradeoffs between breadth and depth interact with the expected operational environments. See Ash Carter, “Remarks on ‘Goldwater-Nichols at 30: An Agenda for Updating,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 5 April 2016, https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Speeches/Speech/Article/713736/remarks-on-goldwater-nichols-at-30-an-agenda-for-updating-center-for-strategic/.

[39] Following the FITZGERALD and MCCAIN accidents, the Navy assigned blame to the destroyer COs and their immediate superiors. Admiral Richardson, CNO, stated that: “The tragedies of USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain reminded us that all commanders, from the unit level to the fleet commander, must constantly assess and manage risks and opportunities in a very complex and dynamic environment… But at the end of the day, our commanders make decisions and our sailors execute and there is an outcome — a result of that decision. The commander ‘owns’ that outcome.” See T. Christian Miller, “The Inside Story of an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy.”

[40] The Maritime Executive, “Navy Drops Homicide Charges Against USS Fitzgerald’s CO” The Maritime Executive June 18, 2018. https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/navy-drops-homicide-charge-against-uss-fitzgerald-co

[41] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review,80.               

[42] Albert A. Robbert et al., “Reducing Air Force Fighter Pilot Shortages, ix.

[43] Amy McCullough, “Aircrew Crisis Task Force Gets New Leadership”, Air Force Magazine, 5 July 2018. https://www.airforcemag.com/Aircrew-Crisis-Task-Force-Gets-New-Leadership/

[44] Stephen Losey, “Air Force 2019 Budget will Grow Pilot Training Pipeline as Service Fights Severe Shortage.” Air Force Times, 13 Feb 2018. https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/02/13/air-force-2019-budget-will-grow-pilot-training-pipeline-as-service-fights-severe-shortage/.

[45] Oriana Pawlyk, “How Many Fighter Jets Does the Air Force Need?” 8 Jun 2017, https://www.military.com/dodbuzz/2017/06/08/how-many-fighter-jets-does-the-air-force-need

[46] Laura J. Junor. “Managing Military Readiness,” Institute for National Strategic Students Strategic Perspectives, No. 23. (National Defense University Press, Washington, DC, February 2017), 2.

[47] Author’s ACTF conference working notes, Aug 2018.

[48] Amy McCullough, “Aircrew Crisis Task Force Gets New Leadership”.

[49] Air Education and Training Command, 19AF F-16, F-15C and A-10 production plans, 4 Feb 2020.

[50] Author’s ACTF working notes.

[51] Author’s ACTF working notes.

[52] Albert A. Robbert et al., “Reducing Air Force Fighter Pilot Shortages, 29.

[53] AETC, 19th AF production plans.

[54] Robbert, “Reducing Air Force Fighter Pilot Shortages,” 49.

[55] This condition was so prevalent at Pope Air Force Base that it gave rise to the term “Pope syndrome” as shorthand to describe the environment of overabsorption. See William W. Taylor, et al., “Absorbing Air Force Fighter Pilots: Parameters, Problems, and Policy Options,” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2002), 2, https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1550.html and Robbert, Reducing Air Force Fighter Pilot Shortages,” 8.

[56] Mid-level Air Force leaders have coined a new colloquialism to describe the F-16 over-absorption readiness crisis—the “Shaw puppy mill” on account of the inundation of inexperienced pilots to the three CAF squadrons at Shaw AFB since FY17. Reference Air Combat Command, ACC A3 Fighter Exp-InExp Summary 6 Dec 2019, unpublished working Excel file.

[57] 1:5 TDY to home dwell ratio would result in ~1:3 overall dwell ratio with rotational deployments.

[58] Stephen Losey, “Here are the Fighter Squadrons Currently in the Middle East,” 4 Feb 2020, Air Force Times, https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2020/02/04/here-are-the-fighter-squadrons-currently-in-the-middle-east/

[59] General Mike “Mobile” Holmes, “USAF’s Holmes on Readiness Investment, Pilot Retention, Budget Priorities, JSTARS,” interviewed by Vago Muradian Defense and Aerospace Report, 23 Feb 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESw-EJWTYg8.

[60] U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO), Strategy Needed to Improve Retention of Experience Air Force Aircraft Maintainers, GAO-19-160 (Washington, DC, February 2019) 17, https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/696747.pdf.

[61] GAO-19-160, 20.

[62] Aaron Mehta, “Mattis Orders Fighter Jet Readiness to Jump to 80 Percent in One Year,” 9 October 2018, DefenseNews.com, https://www.defensenews.com/air/2018/10/09/mattis-orders-fighter-jet-readiness-to-jump-to-80-percent-in-one-year/.

[63] Stephen Losey, “Aircraft Mission-Capable Rates Hit New Low in Air Force, Despite Efforts to Improve,” 26 July 2019, Air Force Times, https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/07/26/aircraft-mission-capable-rates-hit-new-low-in-air-force-despite-efforts-to-improve/

[64] The Air Force consolidated higher-level maintenance functions at organic industrial base depots like the Ogden Air Logistics Complex to capitalize on maintenance economies of scale. These earlier efforts to increase fiscal efficiency have created backlogs of waiting planes that shrink operational aircraft availability. See Stephen Losey, “Aircraft Mission-Capable Rates Hit New Low.”

[65] Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs, “Air Force Announces Selection Process for Officer Instructor and Recruiting Special Duty Assignments,” 11 Apr 2019, https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1811802/air-force-announces-selection-process-for-officer-instructor-and-recruiting-spe/.

[66] From author’s experience as Commander, 79th Fighter Squadron, Shaw AFB, SC from May 2017 to March 2019. During the same time period, 91% of scheduled home station sorties to upgrades or upgrade support, crowding out required continuation training qualifications. Additionally, mission requirements forced the squadron to certify “two-ship” flight lead qualifications without requiring additional syllabus events due to the lack of flight leads and bottlenecked upgrade schedules. The dire shortage of available sorties and resources required that IPs discuss sorties with the weapons officer, director of operations, or squadron commander before failing an upgrading pilot for non-progression.

[67] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review, 23.

[68] Dr. Andrew Hill, “The Devil You Know: Strategic Thinking in Complex Adaptive Systems,” (faculty paper, Department of Command, Leadership and Management, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA, 2018), 1.

[69] Dr. Andrew Hill, “Introducing Complex Adaptive Systems: Stories, Metaphors, Pictures,” U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA, September 26, 2017, https://players.brightcove.net/1146543845001/default_default/index.html?videoId=5590851663001.

[70] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review,80.               

[71] Jake Alleman, “The Siren’s Call: Flaws of Efficiency,” 28 Feb 2020, War on the Rocks, https://warontherocks.com/2020/02/the-sirens-call-flaws-of-efficiency/.

[72] Dr. Andrew Hill, “The Devil You Know: Strategic Thinking in Complex Adaptive Systems, 10.

[73] Stephen Losey, “Fighter Accidents Rose in 2019 Despite Overall Decline in Mishap Rates,” 18 March 2020, Air Force Times, https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2020/03/19/fighter-accidents-rose-in-2019-despite-overall-decline-in-mishap-rates/.

[74] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review, 74.

[75] U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO), Military Aviation Mishaps: DOD Needs to Improve Its Approach for Collecting and Analyzing Data to Manage Risks, GAO-18-586R (Washington, DC, 15 August 2018) 10, https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-18-586R.

[76] Air Force Safety Center, Proactive Aviation Safety Division, accessed 19 March 2020, https://www.safety.af.mil/Divisions/Aviation-Safety-Division/Proactive-Aviation-Safety/.

[77] Stephan Losey, “Fighter Accidents Rose in 2019…”

[78] SECNAV, Strategic Readiness Review, 75.

[79] Faturechi, “Years of Warnings…”