Estimates are that the air wing needs 806 people to be effective. As of January, there were only 180 personnel. Why the shortage? For a start, candidates for the program must go through an 18-20 month vetting process that is designed to remove “candidates that have associations with criminal or insurgent activity.” In Afghanistan, where recent history is interwoven with terrorist activity, suitable candidates are a rare thing.Training is another arduous process. Because of a lack of candidates, there will sometimes be as few as two pilots in the program at a time. Trainees travel to Alabama, then to the Czech Republic to finish their training. This process is laborious, and will ultimately be too slow to train the pilots for the incoming aircraft and the approaching completion deadline for the program in 2015.
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