(LifeSite) The Biden administration’s mandate that all members of the U.S. military take the COVID-19 vaccines is harming military readiness by risking a severe pilot shortage, warns an Air Force Academy graduate removed from pilot’s training for seeking religious accommodation to the mandate.
Speaking at a Flag Day press conference hosted Tuesday by the medical freedom nonprofit Truth for Health Foundation, which was live-streamed here on LifeSiteNews, Truth for Health president and CEO Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet introduced Lt. John Bowes as “an Air Force Academy distinguished graduate” and “former F-16 student pilot” who was “punitively removed from training and since has become intimately familiar with the dire consequences of this vaccine mandate to our national security, to military recruiting.”
“I’d like to start off first by saying that this group of pilots and the group of individuals in the Department of Defense that are speaking up about this mandate is not a small contingent, and it’s not a contingent of rebellious individuals or those who simply want to act out for the sake of acting out or for political motivations or anything else of the sort,” Bowes stressed. “All of these service members are just trying to uphold their oath to the Constitution, United States, and stand up for their beliefs that define who they are as a person and their relationship with God. Currently, I am aware of more than 136,000 service members who are actively speaking up and resisting this mandate.”
“I’m aware of more than 700 pilots that are actively unvaccinated and trying to stand up for their constitutional and statutory rights within the military. The implications of 700 pilots is pretty extreme,” he warned. “And a report was sent to Congress detailing those exact outcomes that could potentially happen if these service members were to be discharged. A survey was conducted of about 357 pilots, to be exact, actually 357 pilots. And some data was collected in terms of how many years of service they have, how much they’re worth in taxpayer dollars and training costs and metrics like how many are instructor pilots?”
“To give some background before I give that data, I’d like to preface that. In 2015, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General [David] Goldfein, stated that a 1,500-pilot shortage was a crisis and that number has since grown to 1,650,” Bowes continued. “We’re already in an extreme pilot shortage in the Department of Defense, and that’s across all service branches. The survey was conducted with all service branches in mind without the Coast Guard. So that’s Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force pilots. And these 357 pilots are worth 4.8 excuse me, $7.8 billion in your tax funds. On top of that, the average years of service of these members is 14 years.”
“These are highly experienced aviators who have lethality and experience and the ability to teach new aviators that we’re trying to replace currently,” the lieutenant noted. “To fill this shortage, 69% of those aviators are instructor pilots. Now the implications of this might not be immediately apparent, but given the crisis and meaning that we already have within the Department of Defense for pilots, just those 357 pilots alone, not to mention the 700 total and likely more would be a humongous detriment to our national security. Not only would we be losing these aviators who are highly experienced and capable of fighting wars for us in a time when tensions with China and Russia rise.”
“Why are we doing this?” Bowes asked. “Why are we denying these service members their religious beliefs? Why are we fighting them when they’re speaking up about what they believe to be their constitutional oath over a vaccine that still causes people to get COVID and still causes people to spread COVID?”
