[The Federalist] According to an anonymous whistleblower letter posted by Air Force Times, Pentagon policy makers are promoting "diversity and inclusion" at the expense of high, uncompromised standards in an elite Special Operations Forces command. The letter focuses an unnamed female captain who began training with the Special Tactics Training Squadron (STTS) in 2018, hoping to become the first woman to join a combat controller team (CCT).The female captain dropped out of physically demanding combat controller course exercises several times, but unlike male trainees with similar difficulties, Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) officials kept extending special concessions to keep her in the program.
The detailed anonymous letter reported 11 examples of unusual concessions that AFSOC extended to retain the female captain, even though she had not met longstanding standards and repeatedly dropped out of essential training events, such as rigorous diving exercises and solo land navigation. Air Force Times, which confirmed details with a second source, obtained performance forms and score charts that appeared to support the whistleblower’s letter, and submitted them for comment to AFSOC Commander Lt. Gen. Jim Slife.
Slife did not refute specific allegations, citing privacy considerations, but he vehemently denied that AFSOC standards had changed: "While the standards remain the same, the norms have not." This is an equivocation, based on a half-truth.
"Norms" did change last year when U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) Commander General Richard Clarke released his Diversity & Inclusion Strategic Plan. The Center for Military Readiness analyzed the SOCOM diversity mandate, noting that 12 times on 20 pages, the document asserted without evidence that "Diversity and inclusion are operational imperatives." These vacuous, unsupported words have triggered turbulence in one of the nation’s most elite fighting forces, and probably more we don’t know about.