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Pros And Cons Of The United States Air Force

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1. The purpose of this paper is to represent the position on why the United States Air Force (USAF) should bring Warrant Officers (WO) back into service to fly unmanned aircraft. First, a positive of having WOs would be to quickly fill the current manning shortage in the Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) community because more Airmen would qualify only needing a two year degrees. However, the current solution is to push more cadets through Officer Training School (OTS) to fly RPAs. This will fix the manning shortage over time while also fitting the current USAF structure. On the other hand, another positive of WOs flying RPAs in the USAF would be saving money. After an overview, one has to understand the current demographics of the USAF. 2. Today, the USAF needs 200 more drone pilots to keep up with the current mission requirements.1 One area to pull the RPA pilots from is the enlisted corp. The USAF currently has 248,317 Enlisted, of that 25.1 percent have associate's degrees and only 8.5 percent have bachelor's degrees.2 Statistically the USAF has 16.6 percent more enlisted personnel with an associates degree than personnel with bachelors degrees. If the USAF allowed WOs with an associate’s degree to fly RPAs, it would make an additional 41,220 enlisted personnel available to apply. Next, one needs to understand the current…show more content…
The current solution is to increase commissioning thought USAF OTS. In 2016, OTS is expected to admit 1,100 cadets into the USAF officer commissioning program.3 In comparison, OTS only accepted 550 cadets in 2015.4 This solution allows the USAF to keep the current command structure and invest little money and time in reorganizing new WO command structure. Also, field grade officers can fill other staff jobs, while WOs cannot. The USAF would save some money not changing the current manning structure. Also commissioned officers have more leadership training than a typical WO. Despite that, the USAF would save more accepting
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