Requiring officers to be enlisted first would be a great idea, in my opinion. And yes, most jobs nowadays require a college degree, and flying F-22s is one of t

Requiring officers to be enlisted first would be a great idea, in my opinion. And yes, most jobs nowadays require a college degree, and flying F-22s is one of them. Again, the problem is not that they can't find enough people to train, show me anything that says that. It's that they can't retain the people they have already trained. Since their incoming pipeline is completely full, if you want to use enlisted pilots you are going to have to pull some officers out of line to replace them with enlisted. I'm not saying enlisted guys can't do the job, just that this is the way the system works, and this part doesn't seem to be too broken. If you're enlisted and want to do it, the government will pay for your entire college and give you a stipend on top (ROTC, GI Bill), you can even do it part time while you are still enlisted in the military[1], then give you a nice raise to become an officer. Pretty good deal. The numbers might not always add up for free tuition, but there are a lot of schools in the yellow ribbon program that will cover additional costs for servicemembers[2]. [1] https://www.military.com/education/money-for-school/air-force-tuition-assistance.html https://www.military.com/education/money-for-school/air-forc... [2] https://www.benefits.va.gov/GIBILL/yellow_ribbon/yrp_list_2018.asp https://www.benefits.va.gov/GIBILL/yellow_ribbon/yrp_list_20...