The available pool of candidates. With the problem being of United States efforts with the deficit at the point of over 1,000 total pilots. We are here to hear on the on services on their plan. We know we cannot buy our way out of the problem since the military does not compete with the potential salary and some cases of the lifestyle of commercial airlines. We must make sure services are using all lever of all control. The to incentivize these pilots and discuss the way forward to stop the flow of military pilots. I look for waward to hearing fr the witnesses to understand the retention problem and to assess the proposed resolutions for the services and increasing retention. Before i introduce our panel, let me offer an opportunity to make opening remarks chairman, thank you and thank you to our witnesses who are here today. The Arm Service Committee have been receiving quite a bit of testimony over the last few monthst on the issue of readiness. There is some debate on the readiness crisis. The shortage of military pilots does, of course, have a direct impact on readiness. It is been along the same vein to throw more money at the problem in the form of cash Retention Bonuses. Without addressing the route causes, this will do little to stem the departure of valuable experienced military pilots. As witnesses and several members of the subcommittee are well aware, our Service Members are not in it for the money. Military pilot serves for the love of country and the love of flying. There are many reasons besides money that military pilots leave the service for the private sector including family concerns and a desire for more stability too few flying hours and too many assigning task unrelated to fly. Today, i am interested to hearing how each of the services working to identify the root causes and how you use that analysis and authorities that congress provided to better target non monetary incentives as well as monetary in order to increa increase retention. I am interested to hear joint initiatives of what you maybe taking under. It costs millions of dollars to produce a single single aviator. Thank you, and i look forward to your testimony. Thank you, miss speire, well give heeeach member to present their testimony. We remind the witnesses to summarize and the high point of your written testimony in five minutes or less. Statements will be made part of the hearing record. Let me welcome our panel. Lieutenant general lakist and deputy chief of staff form man and power personnel. United states army and director Army Aviation. With that, general brilakis. Thank you, chairman coffman. Our pilots like all marines have answered all the nations call faithfully serving the American People and maintaining first class standard of excellence. Today, we need critical support to combat operations. Operational commencement and tempo and challenging deployment dwelled ratios. We are experiencing a shortage trained aviators. This is in large part exacerbated by our Current Issues of aircrafts. Addressing this issue is one of mind. Aviation readiness in the form of ready basic aircraft and resource to operate them is the single most important factor in alleviating our manpower challenges and contributing to retention. Our responsibility to train and retain the best aviators is imperative for us. And doing so for the aviation field is particularly important due to the time and expense required to train these marines. Well close limon to the trend of our aviators and take action should we see retention problem so that your core remains the most ready. Thank you for the opportunity to present this testimony. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss this status of naval retention. I am honored to represent the men and women. Aviation today is strong of the Maritime Air Force in the world and our deploy unit is ready to response to any challenge. We maintain operate and train with approximately 3700 aircraft in support a worldwide carry base to include combat operations. On any given day, two or five of our nine carrier air wings are deployed. We are prepared to deploy and our ability to sustain the effort depends on a number of factors among the most critical of our people. I am here to outline the current risk and what we must do to sustain peak combat readiness. Our able to attract our young men and women our nation have to offer is central to maintaining readiness. A number of factor making this challenge increasingly complex of low unemployment and increasing opportunities for employment in the private sector of the commercial Airline Industry. Additionally aviators have expressed dissatisfaction of Quality Service. Inhibited timely team of tactile qualifications. Those who wear the cloth of this nation do not do so of the money but rather to be part of something bigger than themselves. We have been able to positively influence retention behavior by providing a fair compensation package but more importantly we provide an enticement a few other employees can offer, call to service. The allure of service deminute issue deminute today, aviation depot struggles the get our airplanes maintenance on time. Such challenges are further exacerbated by low stats of critical parts and aging shore infrastructure while our first team on deploy is always ready and our bench and the depth of our forces at home is growing increasingly frustrated and operational tempo on certain deployment schedule and administrative burdens and life issues for families including late permanent changing stations and Housing Options especially in non fleet concentration areas to stay in the navy. Restoring short term readiness will require predictable funding which will allow our pilots flying the hours needed to maintain optimal efficiency. It would enable the navy to restore parts and returning to aircraft operational status and better prepare them to remain deploy as it requires. It will allow our pilots to do what they want to do is to fly. Well continue to pursue resolution through uses of resources and refinements of plans and process is for recruiting and addressing the Quality Service needs of our aviators. We welcome our assistance and looking forward to working with you. We appreciate your continued support for Initiative Design to help us achieve our optimal readiness and retaining the best and brightest of young men and women that have to offer. Thank you, i look forward to your questions. Thank you, general burke. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the status of the air force Pilot Shortages and our efforts to address it. During that time, we provided air dominance through Global Vigilance and global power for our joint force. Make no mistake, your air force is always there. However, being always there comes at a cost of infrastructure. We are now at a decision point. Sustained global commitment and recent funding cuts affecting capacity and capabilities for a spectrum fight. Upcoming surge of mandatory retirement of an increasing market of Global Commerce is causing civilian industry to begin hiring at unprecedented rate. This circumstances has birth a national air crew crisis. It is a result of multiple factors. High operational tep poe ovmpo years. Of this amount, the total force were short of pilots. The cost to train a fifth generation fire pilot to prepare him or her first squad is 11 million. It acivilian companies are recruiting the world class experience of our rated airmen. Out pacing our 2016 studies, they increase the salary of their pilot force by an average of 17 . These annual hiring levels are expected to continue for the next 10 to 15 years. Civilian job prospects are not the reasons jobs are lost. The air force plans to address these shortfalls, reducing requirements, increase production and retention. The air force reduces the number of operations in order to maintaining and flying. We are leveraging our partners to staff and planning positions and deployments and in Pilot Training units as appropriate. The air force recognizes the need to increase pilot production and expand undergraduate Pilot Training. Future increases will require additional manpower and infrastructure operation and maintenance resources. From a retention perspective, the air force is for example, we reduce additional duties and eliminated essential courses and out source select routine tasks just to name a few. All of these are given back time to our aviators so they can focus on flying. We are grateful of your support of the 30,000 bonus a year. We identify areas of greatest need to retain pilots and exchange commitment beyond their service commitment. The air force is committed to a wholistic strategy. Our attention is focused on developing agile set of solutions. We appreciate your support as we address our town on aviators and moving out on bold and solutions. Thank you for your time on this important matter. I look forward to your questions. Thank you, general grosso. Chairman coffman. You appreciate the opportunity to discuss our Pilot Shortages and our mitigation strategy. Providing the reach and protection and situational understanding requiring to win. At the foundation or a highly trained Army Aviation professionals, the pilot component of our total Army Aviation consists of 14,000 across the regular army, the Army National guards and reserves. Several years of sustained fiscal constraint making difficult resources choices. Out of necessity we prioritize short term readiness over longterm recruiting and training. We cannot afford to train the number of new pilots we need just sustaining a healthy force. Specifically, we have a shortage of 731 regular Army Aviation warren officers across your group 2010 through 2017. We are temporarily sustaining acceptable aggregate hiring. Over 25 of which are retirement eligible. We are addressing these challenges and well build longterm readiness through three lines of efforts. Retention of pilots is key of mitigating seven years of con strength training. Overall army retention, is healthy, we have seen an increase of Army Aviation attrition from 7 to 9 annually. Given growing commercial demand. We expect this trend to continue unless address. In anticipation, we are formalizing targets that encourages pilots to continue and retaining those who achieve advance qualifications. Additionally, we are correcting the accumulated deficits by fully resources our Flight School. Fully resourcing our Flight School is not a quick fix, it must be phased in for several years. It will require consistent funding and increase levels to be successful. We are increasing our aviation officers in sessions in increase foot of Pilot Training. We are addressing our pilot manning challenges while simultaneously meetings are in requirements. However, sustained predictable and on time funding and relief from the budget control act are vital to any solutions that we attempt to apply. Mr. Chairman and Ranking Members and distinguish members of the committee, thank you for your support of our army and your commitment to our neighbors defense. Thank you, Major General peterson. I wish to thank not yet. So let me, if we look at the biggest reasons on the demand side of this equation, i think there are two factors and i dont know which one is dominate. One factor is you got an aging population of pilots on the Civil Aviation side and that was aggravated by the fact that they increased the retirement age of pilots so now we are hitting that increasing retirement sage so we are seeing significant retirement. A significant part of demand side, too, i would think is that in response to an aviation, i am trying to remember which year it was, i think it was in new york state, 2012, the reaction to that was the plus up the numbers of hours required. I believe 1500 flight hours for civilians and airlines fa requirement. And so quickest way to get there, is to look at the military because thats very hard to get on this civilian side. And so and i dont know if if the faa needs to revisit that number if that was an over reaction to that accident or not. But, that does seem excessive, thats on the demand side. And then so on the supply side, i believe that i know lieutenant grosso, you briefed me on a Retention Bonus structure that you want to put forward. You want to tell the subcommittee about that. We did come up with the Business Model to understand where our greatest need was. This model is the model that we use to give across air force which is about manning is weighed at 40 and retention at 30 and replacement time at 10 . You put all of these numbers together and you get a ranked ordering and based on the increase in the bonus which you gave us in the 17 nda as well, we looked at the greatest need and we stair step it down to match the weapon systems that were most indeed in accordance to your need. People choose to come and go will change. Is the bonus structure the same across the board . Do you mirror the air force or do you have your own struck a chance for shower that you look at . Sure, thank you, thank you congress for the authorities and the ndaa. Since 2011, the marine core has not paid a retention bow nut y pilots. Our inventory were solid and attrition was not a challenge. We arrived at 182,000. In doing that and leveraging all the authorities that you gave us, the priority was to reduce numbers of marines. We saw an unequal reduction and our retention which ideally of 91 for aviators or in the officer committee fell down to 86 or 87 . We made that up in a session. Our challenge right now is i have got 500 officers still in the Training Pipeline more than i need. This year, because in addition to reducing the size of the force, we are introducing new type Model Service in the inventory. F35 and mb22 and etcetera, camelot is Going Forward requesting of the secretary of the navy and tho right turn tau Retention Bonus in three communities. F35 and f18 and b22 are current aly growing communities. We dont want to be caught short in those communities. We got more majors than lieutenant prefers. And so we want to make sure we have the opportunity to lev tragedy leverage to maintain those officers and coming out of the requirement of commitment and capture for a bit time. Thank you, general. Miss speire, you are now recognized. Thank you. Thats when they graduate from the training. That training takes a year and after that year, they have a ten year commitment so it is typically of the 11th year of service than airman is offered of some form of bonus. Is the 35,000 given in al a lump sum or given in per year based on the number of years that aviators continue to serve. This year, we are proposing to offer cracks for a year, two years or nine years or 13 years and you can take some of that up front and some of it will be anniversary payments. So no one aviator is going to get a 35,000 check or will they . If they tyke it fook it for. They would stay a total of two years and get a 35,000 bonus in day one. What happens if they decide to quit . Do you claw that back . Yes, maam. Thinking of the one year because of the work that we are doing of culture piece, those things take time. We have to build trust with our airman. After significant long periods of conflict where we took off the ball a little bit. We have talked about putting resources back and one of our chief goal is to revitalizing our squadran. They are giving us a year. That gives them a chance to relook and take it in another year, hey, are we doing better and is my family in a good place and did you do what you said you are going to do. Well look at the environment and what our retention patterns look like. Okay, i particularly wanted to talk about nonmonetary inducemen inducements. I noted that in the report there was a reference made to 260 days away during deployment for some of these aviators and 110 days away even when you are on home. Those are long stretches away. In your actual statement, general grosso, there is a chart here that shows the ranking of the civilian jobs is much lower than additional duties which was at 37 and maintaining Work Life Balance and meeting family commitments which is at 31 . Available of civilian jobs was at 24 . So i think the lure of commercial airline jobs while it does have some allure, i think addressing those top two would be significant so to each of you, i would like to ask the question in a minute and 36. What if anything you are doing to trying to address the nonmonetary issues. Thank you. Member speire. We did a study talking about our enlisted forces and issues. Fullyi flying hours are the most concern. They want more time in the castle rock p it a cockpit and more time in the back. The third issue which is the most concern to them was the cycle. The cycle as you know the marine core is on a 12 ratio. Three concerns, one they w, want more time to fly and time to fix and a little bit more time at home. Our deploy and while our number shipping at seas on any given day remains the same. Thats starting to come under control now. The things like pcs move, lead times and shrank down as we use pcs funding as a mean of making our top budget coming in under control so families were getting a month or a month and a half of lead time to move in the summer going from non concentration area where it was difficult to find housing and things of that nature. And then just other sort of normal quality of Service Types of things and administrative distractions and career flexibility. We really been using the tremendous flexibility that you gave us of the program to go in effect and in the aviation community. We had 13 aviators. Okay, my time is expired. We had a female of one of our top young helicopters pilots that would have gotten out