In the blink of an eye, the middle of 2022 has arrived, and the various services of the US military have to start planning and briefing the military budget for the next year. Recently, the various services of the US military have been complaining through various channels.

2022 is here in the middle of the year, and all branches of the US military have to start planning and briefing for the military budget for the next year. Recently, all branches of the US military have been complaining through various channels. The Navy is complaining that according to the current purchasing power of the U.S. dollar, if the budget is not significantly increased, the Navy will have no ships available. The Air Force Secretary himself personally came forward and published an interview article in an official Air Force magazine, talking about the current challenges faced by the U.S. Air Force. various difficulties.

According to the key points raised in the Air Force Magazine’s exclusive interview with General Kendall, the biggest problem currently facing the U.S. Air Force’s tactical aircraft force is that the size of the fleet does not match its needs. There are too many old and backward aircraft. There are too few aircraft in use; this results in the U.S. Air Force being forced to spend a large amount of its budget every year to maintain these old aircraft fleets that are essentially useless and not even easy to train pilots, but cannot purchase enough A large number of new aircraft and the development of new projects. Another big problem related to it is the general lack of pilot training in the U.S. Air Force.

According to the data given in the article, in the past year, the average monthly flying time for US Air Force pilots was only 6.8 hours, a 16% decrease from the previous year. This is also a problem caused by too many old aircraft and insufficient budget, and it has seriously weakened the US military's combat capabilities. It may not be intuitive to say that the monthly flight time is not intuitive, but if you multiply it by 12 to calculate the adult flight time, it is actually only a little over 80 hours. This is really an extraordinary achievement among the air forces of mainstream countries, especially the air forces of major military powers. Unable to see the level.

Let’s make a simple comparison. European countries are often ridiculed by us for their lack of armaments, but basically the pilots in their air force who are capable of flying can fly more than 100 hours a year. This time they are looked down upon by many people, and they are The Russian Aerospace Force, assessed by the American media as lacking training and operational capabilities for large-scale air operations, has averaged 120 hours of annual flying time per capita in recent years; the Air Force on the other side of the Taiwan Strait, which we ridicule every day because of its insufficient training level, has only a few third-generation aircraft. Basically, every pilot in the wing is still guaranteed to fly about 100 hours a year. The average value of the US military is probably only slightly better than that of the air force of North Korea, Iran, etc. that are restricted by sanctions.

As for our military, since the Air Force adopted a new syllabus in the past few years, the intensity and density of flight training has increased rapidly: most units equipped with third-generation and above fighter jets have pilots whose annual flying time exceeds The average annual flight time of many troops in the southeast and northeast has reached 180 hours. This means that the pilot training level of our air force combat units has already surpassed that of the U.S. Air Force. The average flight time of some units is even twice as high as the average of the U.S. Air Force. In other words, there is a gap between the pilot level of the U.S. Air Force and the average level of our military pilots, starting from 50 hours to about 80 hours of annual flying time.

Flight time is very positively related to the level of the pilot. For pilots, combat effectiveness is accumulated by feeding flight time, flying more, practicing more, and fighting more; pilots with the same level at the beginning can fly 40 hours more per year. In the competition, it has a huge advantage over the one that flies 40 hours less. This cannot be compensated by dropping guided bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan for a few days.

The experience accumulated by our army using the new syllabus in the past few years can well illustrate this fact. Those flying J-20 and J-16 in the trial training base are specifically responsible for the development and training of tactics of our Air Force fighter force. For seed pilots, their flying time is calculated into hundreds of hours a year. Sometimes they can fly more than 6.8 hours in one flying day.The effect of flying more than 500 hours a year is also very obvious. After completing the scientific research trial training mission and returning to the regular combat troops, when conducting confrontation exercises, they can overwhelm ordinary pilots who have not participated in scientific research flights and obtain large exchanges. There is no need to explain what will happen if a US military pilot who flies 6.8 hours a month encounters a Chinese pilot who flies 6.8 hours every flying day.

The same is true in the US military. Although the professional enemy pilots in the enemy squadron have never fought on the front line and have stayed in Nellis or some air force base to fly projects for many years, they can do it in various military exercises of the US military. Fight against the so-called experienced troops who have returned from the front line. Therefore, the situation that the U.S. military is facing is indeed very dangerous. Serious insufficient training means that the U.S. military now lacks the opportunity to engage in fair air combat with equal opponents. It is no wonder that the current U.S. Air Force Secretary, General Kendall, is so anxious every day. Come and publish a long section of complaints in Air Force Magazine.

However, it is a bit exaggerated to say that the flight time of American pilots is less than half of ours. After all, the US military has more large platform aircraft. The pilots of transport aircraft, tanker bombers will lower the average flight time of the entire military. ; But even if we take into account that the large number of large transport aircraft, special aircraft and bombers with low flight time and low dispatch rate will reduce the flight training time of fighter jets, the number of flying hours of US Air Force fighter pilots is still low. , and it is much lower; based on the current fleet size of the US military's special aircraft, the number of pilots and the strength of the personnel, after removing these aircraft, the average annual flying time of fighter pilots will hardly exceed 100 hours.

Those who think that Americans are invincible are very good at finding ways for Americans to step down. Some people interpret the fact that the current training level of the US military is far inferior to that of our army to mean that the US military's simulators have developed too well and can be replaced by simulators. A lot of actual flight training; I can only say that you are happy. It is not that our army does not have simulator training. Basically, every aviation brigade camp has specially purchased and installed the software and hardware facilities supporting the simulator, but this is just a As a supplementary method, no one will count it into the actual training flight intensity, and the simulator cannot simulate many situations. It’s not as good as it is, and there’s nothing surprising about the current state of the U.S. military.