The Air Force recently released documents outlining its efforts to reduce the number of white male applicants in its officer programs, following months of delays. A 2022 memorandum from then-Air Force Chief, now Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman C.Q. Brown, emphasized diversity and inclusion goals, setting racial and gender quotas for officer applicants in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).
The documents, obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, reveal the Air Force’s goal of reducing white male applicants from 60% in 2019 to 43% by 2029, while increasing other demographics.
These measures are part of the Biden administration’s broader Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) agenda, despite concerns over declining morale, recruitment shortfalls, and political divisions within the military. Critics argue that such diversity initiatives undermine merit-based recruitment and contribute to the military’s growing challenges in attracting young recruits.
The Air Force finally handed over a trove of documents pertaining to its sweeping “goal” of reducing the number of white male applicants in a popular officer program after spending months stonewalling requests for their release.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman C.Q. Brown — at the time the highest-ranking member of the Air Force — issued a memorandum in 2022 that the branch was updating its racial and gender demographic goals for applicants seeking to become officers, in a bid to prioritize “diversity and inclusion.” Internal documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation include a slideshow from 2022 where the Air Force outlines racial and gender quotas and details how it hopes to “achieve” a reduced number of white males in its Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) officer’s applicant program.
The documents reflect the Biden-Harris Pentagon’s intense focus on implementing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies in the armed forces, even as the military continues to combat dwindling morale among its rank-and-file, recruiting and retention shortfalls and low pay.
“The American people are rightly concerned that, at a time when our country is facing dangerous and increasing threats throughout the world, the Air Force is focused on recruitment efforts based on arbitrary racial diversity goals — not merit or increasing the force’s lethality,” James Fitzpatrick, director of the Center To Advance Security In America (CASA), told the DCNF.
CASA requested records regarding the Air Force’s new officer applicant standards through a federal transparency request in 2023. At the time, the Air Force said it couldn’t find any records, according to a letter obtained by the DCNF.
CASA then sued the Air Force for the records in April 2024 and received hundreds of documents and slides in response, which the DCNF subsequently obtained.
A spokesperson for the Air Force told the DCNF “The FOIA request was being processed at multiple levels within the Air Force.”
“One of the units responded to the FOIA request with a ‘no responsive records’ response after conducting their own local search, while the remainder of the units continued to process the responsive documents that were ultimately provided,” the spokesperson told the DCNF.
One of the slides in question, labeled “AFROTC White,” depicts a graph that shows the percentage of white male ROTC officer applicants declining from approximately 60% in fiscal year 2019 to a projected 50% in fiscal year 2023. The graph further details how the Air Force’s goal is to reduce that percentage down to approximately 43% by fiscal year 2029, denoted by a star with the label “achieve(d) goal.”
“White male population will decline as other demographics increase,” the slide reads.
A screenshot of an internal Air Force slide deck titled “Officer Accession Applicant Pool Goals Diversity & Inclusion Outreach Plans” from January 2022.
The respective slides in question also explain that the Air Force is either on track or needs to do more to hit racial and gender quotas in the ROTC’s officer applicant pool.
For example, with the African American population, the slideshow suggests the Air Force “target [the] male population through ongoing programs and marketing” and notes it has already met its “female goal” for ROTC officer applicants. For the American Indian, Asian and Hispanic applicants, the slideshow says the Air Force is “on track to grow diversity.”
“These documents show us that the Air Force has taken steps toward implementing their new directive of specific racial quotas for officer recruitment and enrollment throughout the branch,” Fitzpatrick told the DCNF.
Included in the slide deck are funding requests for diversity recruiting initiatives, including $500,000 for “diversity advertising campaigns” and $250,000 for “influencer engagements.”
In a separate set of documents from as early as 2022, the Air Force outlines its efforts to modify ROTC scholarship programs, which “play an important role in accession and diversity goals.” The Air Force suggests modifying the scholarship models could remove certain “testing barriers” to entry for under-represented groups.
A screenshot of an internal Air Force slide deck titled “Officer Accession Applicant Pool Goals Diversity & Inclusion Outreach Plans” from January 2022.
The diversity plans extend to the Air Force’s Aim High Flight Academy (AHFA), an aviation scholarship program for high school, ROTC and Air Force Academy students, according to the documents. The Air Force notes that the AFHA applicant pool should be made up of a “minimum” of 60% underrepresented groups, further noting that it must be at least 35% minorities.
Like other branches of the military, the Air Force has struggled to keep up with recruiting and retention targets in recent years. The Navy is expected to miss its recruiting goals in 2024; the Marine Corps, Army and Air Force are on on track to meet their goals, although the latter two branches missed their targets in 2022 and 2023, according to Military Times.
Only approximately 57% of servicemembers or military families polled by the Military Family Advisory Network in 2023 said they’d recommend joining the service, compared to 74% in 2019. Among some of the reasons the respondents wouldn’t recommend service were the politically charged nature of the military, differences and divisions, and low pay, among others.
A year-long study from the Arizona State University Center for American Institutions found that the Pentagon has turned into a “vast DEI bureaucracy” in the last four decades, a challenge that has been exacerbated by the Biden-Harris administration.
“It’s no surprise that young people are turning away from military service in record numbers… DEI indoctrination has become a core component of military training that begins for officers even at the service academies,” Matt Lohmeier, former Space Force commander, said in a statement in June.
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