Air Force officials told the Air Force Academy’s Board of Visitors May 4 that the school’s new class will not reach minority recruiting goals and that future classes could face an even more daunting challenge if DOD eliminates academic waivers. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told the board, which met at the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based campus, that minority lawmakers have hampered the efforts by the military academies to recruit black and Hispanic students by their inaction. According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, Wynne said, “They are not influencing qualified candidates they know of to attend military academies.”
The Air Force wants to pump more than $12 billion over the next five years into its new affordable long-range missiles program and recently asked industry to push the flights of some of those munitions beyond 1,200 miles.