In October 2020, Major General Ed Thomas — who at the time was the commander of the Air Force Recruiting Service — wrote an op-ed for Yahoo News. It was entitled, “86% of Air Force pilots are white men. Here’s why this needs to change.”
In about 800 words, Major General Thomas outlined his plan to recruit pilots without regard for their competence or fitness or loyalty to the United States. Instead, Thomas explained, the most important thing for the Air Force to focus on was the skin color of its recruits. He said that hiring more black and brown recruits was vital in order to keep pace with Russia and China. They’re busy developing hypersonic missiles that can fly at 20 times the speed of sound, the general wrote — but we’ve got our secret sauce that will keep us competitive. And that secret sauce, as he described it, is diversity. According to Ed Thomas, “Our…
