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• Participants talked about the career field being less proficient than the ideal. In only two discussions did a participant say there were no proficiency concerns.

Participants described a number of drivers of the proficiency problems currently affecting the career field

• There were various training problems, such as on-the-job training not meeting training needs, problems with the structure and curriculum used in initial skills training, issues with technical orders, and inexperienced trainers.

• The high volume of tasks, including its impact on skill degradation and on a high operations tempo, posed a problem.
• Leadership issues, such as inexperienced noncommissioned officers in charge, superintendents who are too junior or who are missing important depth of technical expertise in the area where they are leading, and a lack of officer advocacy for the career field, posed problems.
• Other problems included other personnel-related issues, such as morale and lack of experience.

The Air Force Aircrew Flight Equipment (AFE) specialty — created in 2008 as a merger of two previously distinct career fields, Aircrew Life Support and Survival Equipment — plays a crucial role in ensuring the safety of aircraft pilots, other aircrew, and special warfare operators via training and by engaging in maintenance, inspection, repair, and adjustment, of aircrew flight equipment, such as flight helmets, parachutes, and safety rafts. However, despite career field and Air Combat Command (ACC) leadership attention, proficiency of airmen in this career field has generally declined.

ACC/Flight Operations Division (A3T) asked RAND Project AIR FORCE to investigate the causes for the decline in AFE proficiency and develop courses of action to mitigate the issue. The effort focused on collecting and analyzing subject-matter experts' viewpoints, insights, and suggestions for addressing the proficiency issues, which were gathered from interviews with a wide range of AFE personnel from eight Air Force bases.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  Problems in the Training Pipeline

• Chapter Three

  Reducing the Number of Tasks

• Chapter Four

  Cultivating Capable Leaders

• Chapter Five

  Retaining and Using the Best Subject-Matter Experts

• Chapter Six

  Increasing Aircrew Flight Equipment's Connection to the Mission

• Chapter Seven

  Where Do We Go from Here?

• Appendix A

  Focus Group and Task Panel Participants and Methodology

• Appendix B

  Task Panel Findings

• Appendix C

  Exploring Skill-Level Changes over Time

• Appendix D

  Comments on the Reserve and Guard Impacts on Proficiency

• Appendix E

  Improving Unit-Level Trend Analysis

• Appendix F

  Comparison of Number of Tasks in the Aircrew Flight Equipment Career Field to Other Maintenance Career Fields

• Appendix G

  Aircrew Flight Equipment Job Description and Entry Requirements

• Appendix H

  Key Air Force Terms and Guidance