Not to say you’re wrong but I know numerous pilots in the fleet. Some who just graduated. They all have said it is a pipeline issue.
1) COVID happened, students piled up while everything was temporarily paused.
2) T-45 being grounded every other week. As of 1.5 months ago the T-45 (Jet Strike Trainer) has been grounded and there is no foreseeable timeline when the issue will be solved. So every Jet Strike student has no airplane right now because of the T-45 grounded.
3) Students are not getting through the syllabus fast enough. Not enough instructor pilots right now to help out with that. In result students are going through the pipeline slower.
Just relaying what I have been told by US Navy pilots themselves, and also people currently in the pipeline. So I do think based on what I’ve been told by SNAs currently in NIFE, NAs in the fleet, that we can’t say it is not a pipeline issues.
ExNavyOffRec, Much Love! Just telling you what I’ve been told!
Again pipeline issues are one thing, selection are another.
The numbers don't lie, they still sent and are sending those to OCS for SNA, and they have a lot waiting, the numbers for the FY are lower than what they were a few years ago but they still kept selecting even though they knew the numbers weren't there to support it.
To give you an idea of where we should be, at this point in the year they should have just hit about 50% to 75% for FY23 selections and they have them stacked up for FY24.
Those you are talking about are seeing what is affecting them, but they haven't dealt with accessions, 2 vastly different things.
This also happened with nukes 14 years ago and the same things were said because they were stacked up in the pipeline, just like this they just held off sending them to boot camp and OCS to allow for things to calm down, when it opened up they had nearly entire classes of nukes at OCS and boot camp.