>>540659
>Please elaborate
Sure.
Pretty much the issue is that you have to be an officer to pilot aircraft in the USAF. To become an officer you have to go through a four year university (though in most cases with ROTC classes if you plan to go the proper route, you're looking at five years of schooling unless you get a degree in humanities), but in reality if you want to be a pilot, while it's not required, you need to have an aviation-focused degree. Then after you have your degree and become an officer, you have to spend an entire year training to get certified as a pilot for the Airforce, during which time your contract to the USAF is not officially in effect, so you're in a sort of "limbo" where the Chairforce is paying you, but you're not eliminating time on your contract. At this point you're ~23-26 years old and you're officially a pilot, but you have to serve a 10 year active duty contract with the USAF. This means you're in your mid to late 30s by the time you get out, but then the USAF's best and brightest (lol) got the smart idea to implement stop loss, because, y'know people want to be damn near 40 when they get out of the USAF. They've been forcefully extending pilot's contracts between 3-5 years extra, and if you're a pilot, it's pretty much a guarantee since 2016 that you will get stop-loss. Legally, commercial pilots are required by law to retire by age 60 (now 65 I think), so you've effectively got about 20 years of commercial piloting left in you to save up a retirement after you get out of the USAF (because the USAF is damn well not gonna keep you on for your 20 years to get military retirement). Keep in mind that the higher-end pay for Airforce pilots is ~$107,000/year (because anything the military claims is "average" is really the high-end with bonuses thrown in) whereas a commercial jet pilot starts around $100,000, but you get guaranteed raises every year, and you get bonuses for working overtime so in reality, most commercial jet pilots bring in closer to $200,000/year. Also keep in mind commercial pilots get a LOT more down time because they aren't overworked, and they get other benefits.
This leads to a lot of people not wanting to be pilots. The Air Force was short 1,500 pilots as of this summer because it's now cheaper to privately obtain your commercial jet pilot license than to go the Air Force route. So now you've got an extreme shortage of pilots, all of them are officers, and no one wants to be a pilot. If they try to overwork their current pilots more than they already do, they get sued by said officers (and the officers usually win the cases). If the USAF allowed enlistees to fly they would…
1) Solve the current issue of limited flyers
2) Be able to overwork them as much as they want because enlistees are generally too stupid to sue the military unless the military clearly violated protocols (and even then it's usually unsuccessful).
3) Can order pilots into danger zones and force them to comply with said orders.
4) Unintentionally lower the salary of commercial jet pilots when the market is flooded with former enlistees in 6-10 years. We all know there'd be a military coup if they ever did this though.