The Air Force is facing legal heat after a military watchdog group sued the branch Monday, demanding transparency over a failed 2021 experiment that sought to artificially boost graduation rates for minority and female pilots. The Center to Advance Security in America (CASA) filed a lawsuit to enforce a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, seeking all records related to the controversial diversity-driven program that grouped racial minorities and women into a separate class to see if it would improve their graduation rates.
The experiment, conducted by the 19th Air Force command near San Antonio, Texas, was yet another woke initiative cooked up under the Biden administration’s obsession with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies. But, like most DEI schemes, it flopped—showing no improvement in graduation rates while officers involved reportedly expressed serious concerns over its legality. CASA Director James Fitzpatrick didn’t hold back in his criticism, saying, “This lawsuit will force the Air Force to provide the records and communications related to this effort in order to educate the public on this failed attempt by the Biden administration to inject DEI into Air Force flight school.”
The Biden Pentagon ramped up DEI efforts across the military in the wake of George Floyd’s death in 2020, turning America’s armed forces into a social experiment rather than a lethal fighting force. The Air Force followed suit by setting racial diversity quotas for recruitment and training. This particular program, known as “America’s Class,” went all-in on identity politics, stacking the flight school class with 62% so-called “underrepresented groups”—nearly double the typical demographic breakdown of around one-third.
Officers involved in the program privately warned that they were being pressured to prioritize race and gender over merit. One instructor pilot, speaking anonymously to avoid retribution, summed it up bluntly: “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.”
And that’s the real problem. America’s enemies—China, Russia, Iran—aren’t busy diversifying their military flight schools based on skin color. They’re focused on producing the best pilots to win wars. Meanwhile, under Biden, our military was more concerned with optics than outcomes, and this failed experiment proves it. The Air Force has yet to respond to requests for comment, but one thing is clear: under President Trump, it’s a new day. The woke era of military mismanagement is coming to an end.
