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 “five and dive,” 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?
The AFA entices prospective cadets by falsely claiming that they will be challenged to the full extent of their abilities. Those times are gone, and to revisit them, one must return to the academy’s early years. The performative expectations of academy administrators and their political enablers have fallen precipitously—a disappointment for patriotic men and women, who do not expect, nor bargain for an Ivy League attitude at a U.S. military academy.
The 4th class system at the AFA essentially no longer exists. During basic summer training, upper class instructors cannot raise their voices, and safe spaces are available for those sensitive personalities bearing the brunt of criticism. Basic cadets are limited to performing three pushups if commanded by an upper classmen. Summer training concludes with Hell Day, which lasts only hours, after which time members of the fourth class are allowed to function at ease for the remainder of their time at the academy. Ask contemporary commanding officers to defend training that minimizes psychological and physical hardship, and they will respond in unison of their commitment to train “warfighters.”
Hellbound and Down 