Building a Healthy MQ-1/9 RPA Pilot Community: Designing a Career Field Planning Tool
Abstract
Remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) and the personnel that operate them are well understood to be crucial to mission success in today's Air Force, and demand for skilled pilots continues to grow rapidly. However, recent studies have suggested that personnel in the RPA pilot career field are dissatisfied with aspects of the job and are experiencing stress as a result. Although those studies suggest that a variety of workplace factors are leading to the stress and dissatisfaction, a large portion of them relate to issues associated with career field planning. These career field planning issues exist, in part, because of the newness and rapid growth of the RPA enterprise. The 18X RPA pilot force (those whose first and only rated job is as an RPA pilot) is only six years old, and plans for the future of the career field are still evolving. Moreover, as the rapid growth in demand for 18X pilots has outpaced the Air Force's ability to produce them, the Air Force is now struggling to train and retain enough personnel to meet the demand. As a result, Air Force leadership has recognized that a more thoughtful and stable plan for how to manage the career field is needed to ensure the health of the force in the future. The Director of Training and Readiness (AF/A3T) therefore asked RAND Project AIR FORCE to assist in building a long-term field planning model that addresses those force health issues and the timeline required to build a healthy and sustainable career field. This report documents RAND's efforts to develop that long-term career field planning model; explains its main features, underlying content, and data inputs; and describes key technical aspects of the model.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2018
- Accession Number
- AD1085748
Entities
People
- Alexander C. Hou
- Chaitra M. Hardison
- David Schulker
- Leslie A. Payne
- Tara L. Terry
Organizations
- RAND Corporation