Air Force Diversity Pilot Program Not Only Failed, It Likely Violated Its Own Non-Discrimination Policies

Air Force Diversity Pilot Program Not Only Failed, It Likely Violated Its Own Non-Discrimination Policies

The hits just keep coming for the United States military these days, and are all self-inflicted.

Whether its the Navy using transgender “Harpy Daniels” to boost recruiting, as we reported here: Navy Drag Queen Recruiters – Definitive Evidence that the Military has Lost Its Way and here: ‘Harpy Daniels’ Update – Navy Disavows Endorsement of Social Media by Its Own Drag Queen “Digital Ambassador”, or whether it is the Army giving away over a third of its front-line inventory of critical Javelin anti-tank missiles and Stinger anti-air missiles, among billions of dollars of other weapons, free-of-charge to Ukraine, as we reported here: U.S. Weapons Stockpiles “Uncomfortably Low” Due To Arms Shipments to Ukraine and here: U.S. Weapons Stockpile Disaster Limiting Our Ability To Deter China In Taiwan, the U.S. military just can’t seem to stay out of its own way.

Not to be outdone by the Navy and Army, we now find out that in 2021 the United States Air Force held a pilot training class that largely excluded white male pilot trainees, as the Daily Caller has just reported: EXCLUSIVE: US Air Force Ran A Social Experiment To Graduate More Minority Pilots. It Didn’t Go As Planned:

As part of the larger military-wide effort to promote diversity in the service’s pilot ranks, the 19th Air Force command near San Antonio, Texas, “clustered” racial minorities and female trainees into one class, dubbed “America’s Class,” to find out if doing so would improve the pilots’ graduation rates.  However, not only did the effort fail to boost minority and women candidates’ success rates, but officers involved say they were ordered to engage in potentially unlawful discrimination by excluding white males from the class, documents show.

Two officers involved in creating “America’s Class” report that while initially the make-up of the class was designed to mirror U.S. census demographics, “once it became clear that the demographics of the current pool of students would prevent a demographic percentage that mirrors the US census as a whole, the order was changed by verbal order of the [Air Force] 47 OG/CC [Operations Group Command Section] to restructure the class with ‘anybody non-white.'”

The officers were concerned that this verbal order constituted “discrimination based on race” that was “a violation of the Air Force Nondiscrimination Policy (AFPD36-27 1.1).”

That Policy, found here, and which is an “Order of the Secretary of the Air Force,” states at Section 1.1 that “[u]nlawful discrimination against military members is any unlawful action that denies equal opportunity to persons or groups based on their race [or] color…”

One of the officers “contacted the Laughlin [Air Force Base, where the class was taught] Equal Opportunity (EO) office…to inquire on the legality of the order with regards to possible racial discrimination,” but was “told the act of restructuring a class based on race in itself was not illegal…”

But the officers did not “agree with the [verbal] order from an ethical standpoint,” noting that Air Force “class structures have never been based on a minimum quota for race or gender,” and that “the message this send to students and future students is harmful.”

Another current Air Force Instructor Pilot, “who spoke on a condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal,” had this to say:

“When other priorities, like gender or race, are introduced as a metric of assignment and advancement, the foundations of performance-based competition are sacrificed and the emphasis on safety takes a backseat.”

Of course, those fears are not unfounded, as Matthew Lohmeier, a former Space Force Lieutenant Colonel who was fired, forced to retire, and and subjected to an Inspector General investigation within the Pentagon found out after publishing his bestselling book, Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military, which tears the lid off the military’s obsession with racist and radical “woke” ideologies.

The problem is that this is the inevitable result of an Air Force culture that prizes “diversity” and “equity” over merit.

Since March 3rd of this year, the Air Force has opened three new jobs for supervisory “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) jobs paying from $82,000 to $183,500 per year.

In addition, the DOD’s Strategic Management Plan for Fiscal Years 2022-2026, available here, has as specific performance goals to increase recruitment and promotion/retention of “underrepresented groups” every year.

And the Air Force released its own Diversity Plan for “rated” officers, like pilots, two months after Joe Biden took office: U.S. Air Force Rated Diversity Improvement Strategy, March 2021.

This plan aims to “develop and retain the Air Force’s best rated aircrew by harnessing diversity as a force multiplier and fostering a culture of inclusion,” and permits addressing “barriers and hindrances to cohesion among students and instructors” in training programs and to “remove rated minority and female aircrew integration and retention barriers.”

But what do you do when the numbers, despite your best efforts, still don’t meet the perceived diversity goals?  Issue verbal orders that can’t be traced mandating desired class racial demographics, Air Force Policy, the Civil Rights Act, and the United States Constitution be damned.

All of this occurs, of course, as Joe Biden nominates General Charles”CQ” Brown, Jr., curently the Air Force Chief of Staff, to replace Army General Mark A. Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  As the Washington Post reported last week, General Brown, has, among other things, “put an emphasis on diversity and racial justice,” and

While awaiting his confirmation to become Air Force chief of staff, Brown memorably released a video describing his experience as a Black man in the military after the police killing of George Floyd.  He said in it that he was aware of the “immense expectations” that came with his historic promotion, “particularly through the lens of current events plaguing our nation.”

Stay tuned.

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