Research for Aviation

The Navy has two pays designed to help attract and retain aviation officers: Aviation Career Incentive Pay (ACIP) and Aviation Career Continuation Pay (ACCP). In principle, these tools provide the Navy with the capability to offer compensation to aviators in order to meet its requirements. This study examines the empirical relationship between financial incentives and retention of aviation officers, as well as the relationship between civilian labor market conditions and aviator retention. Our analysis suggests that increases in relative military pay do lead to increases in pilot retention. Responsiveness to compensation is highest for propeller pilots and lowest for helicopter pilots. In contrast, we do not find any statistical evidence of a relationship between pay and Naval Flight Officer retention. We suspect that this is due to the lack of variation in retention over the time period on which we focus, rather than to the absence of a behavioral response. We also observe a negative relationship between civilian labor market conditions and pilot retention. In principle, increases in ACCP can offset the deleterious effect of a healthy civilian airline industry on pilot retention. For Naval Flight Officers, we do not find any statistical evidence of this relationship.

Amid the debate over roles and missions in recent years, claims of land-based airpower's capacity to match the contributions of U.S. Navy aircraft carriers have been a prominent theme. As part of that argument, some land-based aviation advocates have argued that basing and other constraints have little relevance to the debate--that basing constraints have not prevented land-based airpower from contributing to U.S. military operations. This argument masks a far more complicated history of U.S. access to facilities and airspace in the midst of international incidents and crises. Land-based airpower has contributed, in some manner, to every significant U.S. military operation since World War II. But basing constraints have often made this contribution more difficult or, more important, have seriously limited the capabilities that land-based airpower could bring to contingency operations. In light of the potential confusion about this issue, this paper examines the history of limitations on land-based aviation activities during U.S. contingency operations.