Amid an uproar over aviation officer service obligations, Army personnel officials admitted Thursday afternoon that in recent years, at least 190 active duty pilots voluntarily resigned years ahead of schedule due to an error in how Human Resources Command tracked and applied their commitments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The discovery came during an ongoing audit that the command expects will continue \u201cover the next 30-60 days,\u201d Army personnel directorate spokesperson Maj. Andrea Kelly told Army Times in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The confusion is over how overlapping contractual and statutory service obligations apply differently to pilots than they do to other officers. Kelly requested \u201cmore time to review and provide [a] response\u201d when asked whether the audit\u2019s in-progress findings indicate a systemic failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last week, Army Times reported<\/a> that the command realized around 600 pilots \u2014 each a commissioned officer in the aviation branch\u2019s 2015 to 2020 year groups \u2014 had service obligations up to three years longer than previously communicated. An officer\u2019s year group generally refers to the fiscal year that they entered active duty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All impacted officers signed \u201cbranch of choice active duty service obligation\u201d contracts while they were <\/b>West Point or ROTC cadets in the hopes of securing a flight school seat, not knowing whether the Army would charge them for it or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hundreds of impacted officers have organized in response, claiming that officials fed them inaccurate information about their contract lengths throughout their careers. Army Times obtained a letter to lawmakers that dozens signed, and its enclosures included West Point and Cadet Command briefing materials in addition to messages from branch managers, the Army\u2019s official career advisors, that affirmed a shorter-length interpretation of their obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For all branches except aviation, the three-year branch of choice commitments were served immediately after their commissioning service obligation and simultaneously with any other contractual obligation, such as those incurred for military schooling. In theory \u2014 and in the contract language \u2014 aviators\u2019 extra three years were to come after finishing a six-year pilot training obligation that began when they graduated flight school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But for years, the Army allowed many pilots with the branch of choice contract to resign after finishing their six-year flight school obligation, applying the three-year commitment concurrently with the aviation schooling time as it would for any other career field. As a result, the Army lost hundreds of years of service from experienced aviators, in addition to hundreds of millions of dollars\u2019 worth of training<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kelly\u2019s Thursday statement represents the first public acknowledgement of the previous policy\u2019s scope and impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\t