NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Between a shortage of pilots, daily strikes against the Islamic State group and a budget crunch that forces tough choices between modernization programs, the US Air Force has its hands full. For years, the Pentagon has sought to offload some requirements onto partner air forces, with mixed results.
The issue came to his mind, Dunford said, during a recent visit to Afghanistan, where his nephew is serving with the US Air Force as a trainer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I grabbed three or four of the other officers in his organization on a recent visit to Kabul, and I said: \u2018Hey, is this a good deal for you?\u2019 They looked down, didn\u2019t want to answer me directly, and I said: \u2018Is this good for you? Is this something that is competitive and people really want to do, and this is looked favorably on in your career?’ And their perspective is no,” Dunford relayed to the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“So all I would ask you is to think about what\u2019s important and how you incentivize that,” he continued. “If our young captains think maybe doing something like building the Afghan Air Force is not something that makes them competitive and is not valued by the institution, then we won\u2019t get the right people to go. And if we don\u2019t get the right people to go, we won\u2019t grow the right air force.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last month the Afghan Air Force received their final batch of MD-530 helicopters, which brings the total to 27. In addition, the Afghans have taken possession of eight A-29 Super Tucano light-attack planes, with another 12 scheduled for delivery by the end of 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pilots are trained both in the US\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Afghan airmen are currently at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, training on the A-29s\u00a0\u2014\u00a0as well as abroad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The mission is a “core” one for the service, Dunford said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":84099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":26,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[7,11,48,26],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3378],"class_list":["post-44186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air","category-global","category-the-americas","category-training-sim"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"JTIYLQ2HOVBI3FMPMAMMEO3Q3U","arc_canonical_url":"\/training-sim\/2016\/09\/26\/dunford-us-air-force-should-incentivize-foreign-training-mission\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n