Attrition: Hit the Books Then Hit the Road
24th May 2019
After a decade of training Afghan military pilots in the United States the Americans have decided to train all Afghan pilots in Afghanistan. The problem was that more and more of the trainees deserted while in the United States and many sought to gain legal residence as asylum seekers in Canada or even the United States. This is not a new problem, the first pilot trainee desertions took place in 2015. Eventually over 40 percent of the pilot trainees deserted while in the United States. It is not much better in Afghanistan where the government accepts desertion by soldiers and police as a customary, if annoying, custom. The Afghan Air Force has additional problems.