New Docs Shed Light On Air Force’s "Goal" To Reduce "White Male Population" Joining Officer Ranks

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, called a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 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.