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Without the maintainers to keep fighter jets serviced and without the pilots to fly them, modern fighter jets are little more than extremely expensive pieces of equipment gathering dust at an airbase. The US Air Force is demonstrating in 2026 its ability to carry out high-tempo and intense combat operations around the world. At the same time, it has a worsening underlying manning situation that threatens to reduce its ability to sustain these operations in the future.
The US Air Force is an organization of global commitments without equal, and sustaining those efforts requires a high level of manning. The USAF is not expected to be an air force on paper. This distinction is particularly important when comparing the USAF with other air forces (e.g., Russia). A country can maintain a large aircraft inventory on paper while having a much smaller number of aircraft that are genuinely operational and available for combat. Aging aircraft, maintenance requirements, limited spare parts, exhausted airframe life, and shortages of trained personnel can all reduce the usable strength of a fleet. The question is whether the USAF’s current workforce base is sufficient to sustain that power over the long term.
Active Air Force Manning Levels
In Fiscal 2027 budget documents, the United States Air Force justifies the need to boost the aviation bonus program because of sharply falling manning levels across its aircraft communities. It says, “The amount requested for each aircraft type category is necessary to influence the retention behavior of specific experienced aviators in order to meet emerging Service requirements and increased demand.” The bonus would be available for enlisted members, nuclear officers, aviation officers, and members with certain specialized skills.
It adds, “This new program has been integrated into the existing aviation bonus program and is tiered to incentivize aviators to enter into bonus contracts earlier and for longer service commitments.” The Air Force then lists the aircraft personnel manning levels across its aircraft types, and they are bad. The fighter jet community had a manning level of 75.4% in Fiscal 2025, 69.4% in Fiscal 2026, and is forecast to be just 67.2% in Fiscal 2027. This is the lowest manning level of any community and is followed closely by the bomber community (68.7%). Mobility is forecast to be 88.4%, Special Ops at 84.0%, and rescue at 89.2%.
The overall active manning levels will fall to 88.5%. Some context for these figures: they apply to the active-duty Air Force and describe aircraft-community aviation manning rather than aircraft availability or readiness. They should not be interpreted as the percentage of all personnel — such as maintainers and other ground personnel — assigned to each aircraft community. The accompanying discussion focuses specifically on pilots, aviators, and interchangeable pilot billets, and the Air Force says the overall pilot manning level must also be considered.
It should be noted that the numbers for the Air National Guard (ANG) are somewhat better than those for the active Air Force. The most recent numbers for the ANG are for Fiscal 2026. These show better numbers (Fiscal 2026) than the active-duty Air Force, with manning levels of 77.5% for the fighter community (vs 69.4%), 77.8% for bombers (vs 75.1%), and 93.3% for rescue (vs 90.0%).
However, ANG manning levels were worse than their Active Duty counterparts in other categories. This included 85.6% for mobility (vs 92.8%), 69.8% for special operations (vs 80.9%), 89.4% for C2ISR (vs 92.2%), and 86.9% for Remotely Piloted Aircraft (vs 111.3%). For the fighter community, the numbers may be marginally better, but they are far from good.
Air Force community (per budget docs) | Active Duty Fiscal 2025 | Active Duty Fiscal 2026 | Active Duty Fiscal 2027 | ANG Fiscal 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Fighter | 75.4% | 69.4% | 67.2% | 77.5% |
Bomber | 81.5% | 75.1% | 68.7% | 77.8% |
Mobility | 99.9% | 92.8% | 88.4% | 85.6% |
Importantly, it should be noted that there is a non-linear relationship between manning levels and effectiveness. A squadron at 77% manning does not mean it is 77% effective. It also matters enormously which sub-communities are affected. For example, a squadron may have enough pilots, but if it doesn’t have enough maintainers, the aircraft may not be available for those pilots.
Impact On Aircraft Readiness
Maintainers are just as important as pilots. Without either community, the fighter jets won’t fly. In a May 2026 GAO report, the watchdog wrote, “While all three depots have filled 90% or more positions since 2020, they have experienced shortages in specific occupations. According to depot officials, pay competition with the private sector is the primary challenge in recruiting and retaining personnel in occupations such as engineers and mechanics.”
The Air Force has been unusually explicit in 2026, informing Congress that it is short of more than 9,700 maintainers, which is around 10% of the total maintenance workforce requirement. It directly said that this is reducing current aircraft availability. It adds that the remaining maintainers are having to work extra hours, and this is creating a negative feedback loop for both people and equipment.
The F-35 is a particularly dramatic example of poor aircraft readiness rates, falling from 67% in Fiscal 2021 to 44% in Fiscal 2025, with the full mission capability rate falling from 38% to just 25%. The E-3 Sentry availability rate has fallen from 50% to critical over the same period. However, it would be impossible to attribute a specific share of this deterioration to manning shortages alone. F-35 readiness is also being affected by shortages of spare parts, sustainment infrastructure, corrosion inspections and remediation, software delays, and the program’s continued reliance on contractors.
Operation Epic Fury: A High Tempo Rate
One of the USAF’s (and Navy’s) major issues is that it is essentially being tasked with wartime tempos and deployments, while continuing to operate on a peacetime budget and footing. During Operation Epic Fury, the USAF was able to sustain a very high-tempo air campaign (10,000 missions in 38 days) with its fighters, bombers, tankers, mobility, and other support sorties.
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Catch what other flight trackers miss
Emergency squawks, holds, NOTAMs — live signals, no signup.
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This demonstrated that the Air Force could generate and sustain high sortie rates despite the underlying manning shortfalls. However, this masks underlying problems. The surge has stressed the system, accelerating wear and tear on airframes and increasing the amount of maintenance they require. The sustained high rates have strained personnel (fatigue, retention risk) and logistics.
The risk is that the already understaffed communities will have an even greater amount of work, which could encourage more personnel to leave the force. The high tempo also risks lowering the aircraft readiness rates further by forcing cannibalization of airframes and using up remaining flight hours. Put another way, these high-intensity deployments risk making the manning shortfalls even worse in future budget cycles. High-tempo operations consume readiness margin at a time when that margin is already limited.
An Issue Affecting Many Air Forces
Fighter jet manning level shortfalls are nothing new and are not restricted to the United States. The Royal Canadian Air Force has been struggling to retain enough fighter pilots for years, although it appears to be stabilizing. Having enough pilots has been an issue for the Indian Air Force, the Royal Air Force, and many others.
It is one of the pressures pushing air forces to adopt autonomous and semi-autonomous platforms to help relieve some strain. The loss of dozens of its limited pool of experienced pilots early in the Ukraine conflict in 2022 is believed to have strained the Russian Air Force and constrained its ability to maintain a large and high tempo of operations.
RUSI-sourced estimate held that Russia entered the war with as few as around 100 pilots fully worked up on its most capable fighter and strike types, with a much larger pool of aviators flying combat missions before finishing the standard syllabus. While on paper, the Russian Air Force has over 1,000 combat aircraft, Rand estimated in 2024 that it had fewer than 650 tactical aircraft when accounting for end-of-life aircraft. To some degree, it seems the Russian Air Force has contracted onto a Su-30/34/35-centered core plus MiG-31s and Su-57s.
Manning Is Central Issue Alongside Aircraft Themselves
The United States Air Force currently has around 13,000 pilots, alongside approximately 322,000 active-duty airmen, 151,000 civilian personnel, 96,000 reserve airmen, and around 105,000 Air National Guard. It operates around 4,000 non-drone and non-trainer aircraft, over half of which are fighter jets. By a considerable margin, it is the largest and most capable air force in the world.
However, the Air Force’s global commitments place the force under an exceptional amount of stress. The Air Force is being asked to maintain a high operational tempo while simultaneously modernizing its fleet, preparing for a potential major-power conflict, and meeting commitments around the world.
The manning shortages in the Air Force are structural and are difficult to solve. At the same time, they are known, and the Air Force is making efforts to solve those problems by improving recruiting, retention, training, and force management. Time will tell how successful the measures will be and how much it will take to reverse the worsening manning shortages. The USAF’s central challenge is not just possessing technologically advanced aircraft; it’s maintaining enough personnel to operate and sustain that fleet on its global scale.
