My personal opinion is that there is a severe lack of proficiency, talent, and resources to have a well trained aviation force. The army is hurting for pilots.

This is huge and hopefully someone higher up understands this. I know the Army has to train and execute missions with the resource they have and not what they wish they had. The shortage was a big problem when I was getting out. I can’t imagine it now.

However, your statement hits really hard for me because I can remember coming up through the ranks and our new pilots went months doing nothing but MTFs and super easy training flights. I knew pilots who were W2s with hardly any flight hours.

One of these pilots, doesn’t matter which one, was my soldier back in the day. I picked him as a brand new private. I spent years with him building his resume. Promotions, fighting to get him schools, letters, etc etc. He just graduated flight school a couple months ago. And I feel like absolute shit for pushing him so hard to be a warrant. It wasn’t like that when I was coming up. From my perspective and what my expierence was, I’m baffled how they have pilots with almost zero hours flying at night, under nods, doing close formation flights. Even if they were going to be doing something risky, our new guys ALWAYS got stuck with W4s and our senior w3s with a fuck ton of hours under their belts.

I should clarify I’m not suggesting that was the problem in this flight. Just hard for me to comprehend that this is even a scenario compared to when I was brought up.