Air Force narrowing maintainer workforce gap

The Air Force's logistics chief said Wednesday the service is on track to rebuild its aircraft maintainer force by the end of the year after being short thousands of personnel, though he noted bringing on Lockheed Martin's F-35A will continue to pressure the sustainment enterprise.

"Frankly, we're gaining two squadrons of F-35s a year. We have to grow our manpower accordingly," Lt. Gen. John Cooper, deputy chief of staff for logistics, engineering and force protection, said at a Nov. 15 Logistics Officer Association conference. "We were 4,000 maintainers short. We've grown about 6,000 maintainers and we're going to close the gap here at the end of this year. But as more F-35s come in and we don't retire anything, we're going to need more maintainers."

The ratio of trainers to trainees will get worse before it gets better by about 2020, Cooper said. Supplementing training personnel with contractors has helped ease the burden in some areas.

"We all know the maintenance manpower story. We've also solved the maintenance manpower story," Cooper said. "It's going to be a lot of young airmen out there and it's going to require a lot of training. . . . We are short but we're getting better."

In July 2016, the Air Force's former director of current operations Maj. Gen. Scott West told House lawmakers the service was short 4,000 aircraft maintainers and worsening, Inside Defense previously reported. West expected it would take the Air Force eight to 10 years to recover from readiness issues that stem from a maintenance shortfall.