Posted on 05/30/2024 11:27:34 AM PDT by MtnClimber
During their final year at the Air Force Academy (AFA), cadets choose the specific jobs they will be assigned while on active duty. This crucial decision, made in the nascence of one’s career, has far reaching implications with regard to career advancement. The Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC) links available jobs with an alphanumeric designation, and not surprisingly, pilot training represents the most popular AFSC for graduating cadets at the AFA. But the second choice is astonishing for cadets who have received a four year education worth $416,000 at an institution that is tasked to train career Air Force officers.
The minimum commitment for an AFA education is five years of active duty service, and the AFSCs that obligate cadets for the least amount of payback time represent the second most popular job selections in the aggregate. The act is known among cadets as “dive in five,” and it is borne of disillusionment and the realization that DEI entrenched military leadership, quota-based promotions, and falling standards are not what they signed up for.
DEI’s nonsensical, unsupported claims that phenotype and sexual identity are indispensable components of superior military performance and the intimidating effect of DEI political officers embedded within the cadet wing breed cynicism and psychological fatigue. Recent undercover investigative reporting that exposes blatant corruption within Air Force DEI programs and an admission of DEI’s lack of benefit, affirms the negative view of DEI held by most cadets. If the real Air Force is at all similar to the academy experience, then why devote a career to an organization with priorities more in line with Cloward-Piven than the Constitution?
DEI receives unabated, effusive praise in the AFA Association of Graduates (AOG) magazine Checkpoints, the primary information source by which graduates receive news about their alma mater. Other than an occasional, truncated letter to the editor, the settled science of DEI is treated like a godsend. The editors promote an embellished, one-sided narrative of DEI’s dubious benefits, but fail to sound the alarm that cadets are subjected to attend mandatory indoctrination sessions on gender identity. Delving deeply into the murky world of pseudoscience, civilian professors, who constitute 42% of the faculty, proclaim the proven existence of fifty-odd gender types—the validity of which cadets cannot contest in the classroom.
The ideological direction of the academy provokes escalating concerns from the graduate community, and as a result, their financial contributions to the AFA Foundation have plummeted. Corporate donations compensate for the shortfall, but as in the case of the United Services Automobile Association’s sponsorship of a DEI Reading Room at the academy’s McDermott Library, there is a risk of further polarization to the institution. Dependence on large contributions from entities committed to corporatism and stakeholder capitalism disenfranchises individual donors whose commitments are based on loyalty and commitment rather than politics.
Most graduates and cadets understand that DEI leads to detrimental repercussions and these problems will not be solved in the absence an open, non-censored forum. Too little free speech once again embroils a noble institution in a quagmire of its own making, and as a consequence, cadets are diving in five.
This article is complete BS. There’s a sizable percentage of officers who leave as soon as their commitment is up, me being one of them. It may very well be true that officers are leaving because of DEI, but the 5 year ADSC has always been utilized by many. My reason was to get a top notch 4 year education and 5 years of work experience while serving my country as my parents were going to have a hard time affording any 4 year college and I didn’t want the loans.
Combat Control Team, ParaRescue, Air Commando, seem like some pretty awesome non administrative roles too.
They never made it clear what happened to that sign after it was removed but was inferred that it’s in a safe place if ever it’s needed again. I wondered whey the couldn’t just go commercial with the sign and change it to “Bring Me Mennen” or “Bring Me Mentos.”
You are the carbon they want to decarbonize.
There are plenty of reasons former cadets leave the military at the end of their first contract. DEI is one but probably not a prime one.
Most I know just leave to go to graduate school and join the work force.
Also, cadets can leave without penalty if they leave before the beginning of 3rd year. A few do that.
Take only pictures. Leave only... oops gotta watch those footprints too!
It would warm my heart to learn that DEI slime currently infecting the Academy feared going out alone at night.
My daughter did AROTC in order to pay for her nursing degree. She is finishing up her AD commitment and getting out this year. Not solely because of the $$ she can make on the outside, but also because of toxic leadership. I think also because her first 5 months AD were spent doing COVID exams in a parking lot...COVID impacted a lot of military from PCSing to new duty stations, so folks weren’t leaving, but new officers were coming in...with no place to put them. And, add on that she was dumped on the Oncology ward (where she has worked going on 3.5 years now). At some point she decided she had had enough—when they asked her what specialized school she wanted to attend, which would have added another year to her commitment—she said she was getting out. So, no incentive at that point for her leadership to move her to a different ward or clinic.
No, “Duty, Honor, Country” is still the West Point motto, as it has been since 1898. The West Point Mission Statement changes frequently, and "Duty, Honor, Country" was only a part of it for a short time, having been added during the Clinton regime.
Along with the members who are duplicitous in congress, you know them the ones who showed up just about broke, and are now millionaires.
And yet the Air Force Academy has been a leader in allowing Christian-hater hater Mikey Weinstein to force his anti-Christian ideologies into the regulations and punishments at the AFA.
— Air Force desperately needs John Boyd and his acolytes back!
They despised him the first time
“I just saw an 18 year officer walk this year.”
What didn’t you see?
I’m not saying the 18-year officer did this but a lot of those folks that get out and with less than 20 go to the Civil Service immediately, get a job pay a little bit into their civilian retirement and work till they’re 72 and they’ll probably start them out as a GS-9 or 10.
Their time in service is calculated into the total retirement package computation from the government.
I know exactly what and who you mean...I agree 100%...
I know exactly what and who you mean...I agree 100%...
I tried, but I don’t yet grasp the ‘second choice’ for AFSC.
So, what are the most popular 5 and dive AF jobs?
I remember after Vietnam, during the middle '70s into the Reagan years, we called it the hollow Army because our units were sometimes 60% full. I was in a East-West German Armored Cav Regmt back in '71-72 pulling border patrol. We had a Troop (they call companies troops in the Armd Cav) strength was about 120 men. We had less than 70-75 at most times. When it came time for each of our three platoons to go up to the border for duty, we were supposed to take turns pulling the duty. So, instead of going up every three turns for our troop, we had to go each time. We were severely short Sergeant (E-5) squad leaders. When it came time to go, 10 had to go. We had 15. So, with various excused absences (on leave, sick/injured) we had to go every time. The duty up there was fairly routine, we had to man an OP right at the border, watching the East German farmers plow their fields with 1935 style tractors or animals and the East soldiers patrolling up and down the mine strip. We also had a roving patrol that rode in Jeeps and made stops at various sites to glass the East side and see what was going on. I loved border duty. Once glassed a Russian general and snapped a photo of him with a long-range camera we had to take photos of what we might see over there. But we were very short people for years. So, appears the Army is back to the Hollow Army days.
Hollow Army indeed. But the optempo is as high as ever so more and more leave before retirement.
The toxic/clueless senior leadership in the Army is its biggest problem. DEI is a side-show. Continuous rotating to 9 month deployments and long stints at the training centers is destroying Army families.
When I was at 3/11ACR at Bad Hersfeld we were busy but never away from home for more than a month. Today’s Army have constant multi-month rotations and training events. They can barely keep their equipment running because they are so short handed.
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