The Air Force's Faltering Effort to Get More Diversity Among Officers May Be Out of Time
Military.com | By Thomas Novelly
Published December 17, 2024 at 5:42pm ET
An Air Force effort to get more diversity among its officer candidates over the past two years fell short in most cases and now faces an uncertain future under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
The diversity targets set in 2022 marked the first time in nearly a decade that the service had amended the benchmarks for commissioning officers from a variety of backgrounds. The Air Force was unable to reach many of those goals in the 2023 and 2024 school years for the Air Force Academy and Reserve Officers' Training Corps, or ROTC, according to data provided by the service.
Some Republicans have criticized the Air Force diversity targets -- and the wider long-term military effort at creating a force that better reflects American demographics -- as counterproductive or part of a left-wing political agenda. Trump and his pick for defense secretary, if confirmed, are widely expected to gut initiatives to bring more women and people of color into the military and government.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/12/17/air-force-misses-officer-diversity-goals-trump-administration-signals-end-effort.html
