The Air Force finally fixed its maintainer shortage this year, closing a gap that had grown to 4,000-6 percent of requirements-as recently as two years ago. Now the service needs to deal with the maintainer knowledge gap. Getting back to a full complement of 67,000 maintainers is only the first leg in a years-long trek to solve the problem. That's because the shortfall was made up almost entirely by recruiting new maintainers, rather than retaining experienced mechanics-and also because major deficits persist in the Guard and Reserve.
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